Digging Up Richard III: A Man for Our Season

Oh yeah? It you were really with it you would have gotten "solioquy" too. So there.

Posted by vanderleun at February 4, 2013 2:43 PM

Hitler wound up in a parking lot too.

Posted by james wilson at February 4, 2013 4:37 PM

Richard was a good king. Shakespeare's play is just the real tyrant's drive-by media at work.

Posted by Punditarian at February 4, 2013 7:19 PM

Richard was a good king. Shakespeare's play is just the real tyrant's drive-by media at work.

Posted by Punditarian at February 4, 2013 7:19 PM

Two good arguments for Richard III being a good king, and not at all like Shakespeare's RIII, are Thomas B. Costain's "The Last Plantagenets" and Josephine Tey's mystery "Daughter of Time". Both books are really, really excellent. Sir Thomas More, among other things an advisor and secretary to Henry VIII, wrote the biography of Richard III that Shakespeare used as history; but, Henry VIII’s father, Henry VII, was the one who beat Richard III in battle and claimed the crown, and it was important for the new Tudor line to make Richard III look like a monster.

Gee, why does this sound familiar—the claim that one’s predecessor was the one to be blamed for every evil . . . .?

Posted by Minta Marie Morze at February 4, 2013 10:56 PM

Plucking good characters out of medieval English kings is a dicey business.

Posted by james wilson at February 5, 2013 12:05 AM

I have explored the U of L site and it is well done and worth your while. That being said I didn't see any commentary on the missing feet. Weird.

Posted by Sherlock at February 5, 2013 6:55 AM

Dude had some serious scoliosis. He was measured as 5' 8" with the bent spine. How tall would he have been with a straight one? At his "twisted" height he was at least a couple inches taller than average for men of 15th century England.

Posted by Don Rodrigo at February 5, 2013 9:49 AM

Plucking good characters out of medieval English kings is a dicey business.

The were very much men of their times, where "goodness" could quickly earn a man a knife in the back, or a poisoned dinner. They learned to survive the almost casual brutality prevalent in their day by becoming equally brutal. If one king or prince was worse than another, it's more in degree (eg. Richard's contemporary Vlad Tepes) than in kind.

Posted by waltj at February 5, 2013 10:02 AM

Waltj has it. When you were voted out as a monarch you were carried out.

Posted by vanderleun at February 5, 2013 10:17 AM

I read that they think some Victorian construction destroyed the feet. It was just luck that the rest of the skeleton wasn't disturbed. He wasn't very far below the surface, and a Victorian building was erected just inches away from him. I suppose no one noticed a few small bones when they dug the foundation. Those bones are probably pretty fragile now and just were crushed when the digging reached them.

Posted by Dr. Mabuse at February 5, 2013 5:39 PM