Richard III: Was he really that bad?
(Read article summary)Richard III's skeleton was recently discovered in a parking lot in England. Shakespearean expert Peter Saccio dissects the myth of "the murderous monarch."
"Why, love forswore me in my mother's womb;
And, for I should not deal in her soft laws,
She did corrupt frail nature with some bribe
To shrink mine arm up like a wither'd shrub;
To make an envious mountain on my back,
Where sits deformity to mock my body;
To shape my legs of an unequal size;
To disproportion me in every part,
Like to a chaos, or an unlick'd bear-whelp
That carries no impression like the dam."
Shakespeare really knew how to knock a guy down to size.
That's his description, in "Henry VI, Part 3," of King Richard III. Shakespeare would devote an entire play to the doomed king, creating perhaps the greatest villain in the history of the stage.
Was Richard III really a deformed monster? Now we know at least part of the answer thanks to the discovery, confirmed this week, of his skeleton under a parking lot in the British city of Leicester. Yes, he had a severely curved spine, although there's no evidence he bore a "mountain" – a hump – on his back.
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