London
Op-Ed Columnist
A ‘Son of Hell,’ Reconsidered
By ROGER COHEN
Published: February 7, 2013
Damon Winter/The New York Times
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SO the last — and worst — of the Plantagenets is back after a long sojourn beneath a Leicester parking lot, here to give the lie to that Tudor propagandist, William Shakespeare. At school, influenced by the bard’s devastating portrait, we knew him as Dick the Bad. But no, King Richard III is simpatico.
I say “is” not “was” for Richard lives, almost 528 years after his death in 1485 at Bosworth Field, debated on page after page of the British press as he awaits reburial in Leicester Cathedral (if rival claims and an e-petition from York are rebuffed). His identity proved “beyond a reasonable doubt” through DNA analysis, Shakespeare’s “troubler of the poor world’s peace” bestrides the stage once more.
Einstein observed that “the only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.” We have moved beyond time.
No “bunch-backed toad,” no “slave of nature and the son of hell,” no “bottled spider,” the exhumed Richard is enjoying a remake as a physically challenged fellow with spinal curvature who might have starred in last year’s London Paralympics if given the chance.
Alas he got clobbered several times with a halberd (presumably wielded by a halberdier ignoring late 15th century safety regulations), and may have suffered the ignominy of being sodomized with an unlicensed dagger while being carried naked on horseback to Leicester. There inglorious burial awaited him after just two years on the throne. The Plantagenet dynasty, which had ruled England since 1154, was no more.
“I’ve spoken to scoliosis experts and they say acute scoliosis like that was painful,” Philippa Langley, a Richard III enthusiast, told The Guardian. “So we know that he was working through the pain barrier every day just to do his job.”
Right. Langley, a leading member of the Richard III Society (founded in 1924 as the Fellowship of the White Boar to clean up the king’s Tudor-besmirched image), suggested the deformed schemer of Shakespeare’s play had been misunderstood: “He had an incredibly powerful, strong work ethic. This man never stopped. He was on a horse every day, fighting skirmishes, doing everything they had to do.”
Such duties for a workaholic English monarch during this era of violent feuds included plotting dynastic murder on a substantial scale. But of course this, like most things, is now up for debate. Granted, history is written by the victors: The Tudors, in search of legitimacy, were hard on Richard, commissioning eminent scribblers to pen hatchet jobs. The king, his would-be rehabilitators say, passed some good laws and cared for the common people (living, like himself, without painkillers or disability welfare.)
Still, too much smoke swirls around Richard III for there to be no fire. And besides, don’t we need our villains in all their ugly, scheming iniquity to give shape to our moral universe? Spare me Leonardo DiCaprio as this unquiet king. Give me a snarling Javier Bardem!
Richard III has been implicated in the killing of his brother, Clarence, and may well have dispatched Edward, Prince of Wales, in cold blood after the battle of Tewkesbury before wedding the prince’s widow within a year (“Your beauty that did haunt me in my sleep” — Shakespeare allows his villain a voluptuary’s charm). Did he not kill Henry VI and, most damning of all, have his nephews, aged 9 and 12, murdered in the Tower of London after getting them declared illegitimate by an act of Parliament? Dick was very bad.
The remains of the princes in the Tower (where you can push a button to register the most likely suspects in their murder — Richard III leads comfortably), are now in Westminster Abbey, contained in an urn designed by Sir Christopher Wren. A movement is afoot to do DNA testing on these little vestiges in order to date them and help settle the matter of the princes’ killer. The idea has been resisted on the grounds it may lead to “sensational speculation,” in the words of a former dean of the abbey, and a cascade of further exhumations. Besides, what would be done with the bones if they all prove bogus?
These arguments smack of ageism: The kids deserve their day with the scientific-archaeological team, too. I see no reason why equal opportunity should not be extended to bones. With luck many wrongs will get righted. There will be grounds for a deluge of retrospective apologies from tearful, lip-biting folk stretching all the way back to the case of Cain.
I happen to work near Buckingham Palace, and strolling in the twilight the other day I noticed a hunch-backed fellow of murderous mien clutching the wrought-iron railings. Something in his malevolent gaze troubled me. “Because I cannot flatter and speak fair, do not hold me a rancorous enemy,” he said. “Can you direct me to a parking lot where I might find some peace?”
“Head up Pall Mall, sir, and take the first left — but you’ll need to text your credit card number to the authorities.”
The horror on his twisted face was terrifying. “A hearse!” he wailed. “A hearse! My kingdom for a hearse!”