Monday, April 20, 2015

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: ON THE RE-BURIAL OF RICHARD III's RECENTLY DISCOVERED BONES AND SHAKESPEARE AND HISTORICAL FACTS AND PEOPLES' ALMOST LIMITLESS ABILITY TO BE HORRIBLE


John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO A STORY BY DAVID PRIESTLAND IN THE GUARDIAN


Well, the reference to "hunchbacked" shows something important of the writer's understanding.

We now know definitively from his bones that Richard was not a hunchback, that legend undoubtedly having been created by apologists for the Tudors, apologists like the brilliant but biased Shakespeare.

I love Shakespeare’s Richard III, one of his greatest histories, but it is riddled with exaggeration and inaccurate information.

The historical Richard actually appears to have been a rather brave and admirable king, at least according to some serious recent biographers.


As far as his re-burial's negative effect on the city owing to his bad reputation, I am sure it will in fact prove the opposite, to be beneficial in economic terms. Like it or not, tourists do go to see the places associated with villains. We actually had people going to the place O. J. Simpson’s wife and another person were literally butchered like livestock to take smiling snapshots of themselves.