King Richard III, the villain of Shakespeare's great play, was found buried under a parking lot, it was announced this week. That set off a lot of commentary, including comparisons to finding Jimmy Hoffa.
Columnist Clayton Hardiman took a look at history, mythology and reality in his comments about King Richard in "The king is dead (and buried under a parking lot). Long live the king."
Here's a sampling of what MLive and Muskegon Chronicle readers thought:
Not that many of us did. I suspect that’s partly because he has done such a capable job of shadowing us despite having been dead these past five centuries and more.
They actually found him last summer. The manner of his discovery was positively Jimmy Hoffa-esque. They dug up his skeleton from a rough-hewn grave beneath a parking lot in Leicester, England.
It took a while to identify him, of course, but that’s a natural consequence of 527 years in the grave. Not only do centuries take a toll on a body, but it’s hard to find someone who remembers what you look like.
Yet another reason, I suppose, why God gave us DNA tests.
When the results were announced Monday, there was an eerie sense that history had wandered off the trail into storybook territory. It was as if they had announced the discovery of Hamlet’s bones. Or the Great Gatsby’s. Or Peter Pan’s.
And that’s what this is about, really. This is not just a story about William Shakespeare’s iconic villain, the murderous hunchback king. It’s about us, too, and the world we occupy. It’s about how lines blur between history and theater, how fiction turns back into fact.
And we thought politics today was rough. What was considered living in splendor then would equate with squalor today. For those of us of British ancestory this is a pretty big deal.
I knew who you meant, and what an interesting find that was! King Richard was a handsome man going by the recreation of his face. Too bad they couldn't do things for scoliosis and other malformations (not to mention diseases!) and surgeries and the list goes on and on . . . didn't matter if you were royalty or not. I'd rather be a pauper today than a king back then.
My kingdom for a parking pass.
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