Speccie Richard the Third by 27th February
 

Well I'm sure we were all waiting for this one. A bumper entry I'll bet.

No. 2787: ghostwritten

Let’s have a Shakespearean soliloquy delivered by the ghost of Richard III reflecting on the discovery of his bones in a Leicester car park (16 lines max.). Email entries to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 27 February.

I lay beneath a parking lot,
at peace with Men and God,
when--au secours! My peace was shot
with strife sown in the sod!

Some eager academic beaver
crowned her bleakest feat.
(Though she 'll never find the cleaver
that sliced me princely meat.)

We dead are not such greedy folk.
Is it so much to ask?
To let us lie--it's not a joke!
at this most rotten task.

I heard the bones of monarchs shudder
good kings and princes all.
"They've carboned Richard!" I heard them utter,
to feed some newsy scrawl.

This seems too slight so I did a second.

Now is the bitterest moment for my bones.
Battered at Bosworth, they were lying lean,
at peace with worm and clod until the itch
for fame and gold began to goad his heart,
that clawing academic toad, the very face
of rude and callous. Yes, I hear him now,
like Madeleine of the coffin, I can
feel the chunk chunk of shovels pry into
what I had called my little world made cold.
The rattling grows, the worms and denizens
of mold and rot are fleeing from my skull!
For they can hear the tortured syllables.
And there they are! Those massive fleshy faces!
The women dressed like men! Oh, let me lie!
Let me lie at peace--by all the Holy Graces!
Too late! Too late! What use was there to die?

You’d think, the brains being out, the head might sleep
In dreamless peace. Not so! Each fretful hour
I do bethink me (though I do not weep)
Of my dear nephews, strangled in the Tower,
And how they plagued me for their pleasant sport.
By crookback and by withered arm unmanned,
I was their fool. ’Twas time to take, methought,
Their education (and their throats) in hand.

My crownless head uneasy still doth lie,
Though wholly unafflicted by remorse,
And ’tis an unkind irony that I,
Who would have giv’n my kingdom for a horse,
Should be tormented by the reek and rave
Of horseless carriages above my grave.
So now, though worms have made of me their diet,
I prithee, re-inter me somewhere quiet.

An ignominious end for a King,
more fitting for a fool or court jester.
No devil born deserves that final sting –
to end up being laid to rest in Leicester.

I'm a bad man. My life has made me tough.
Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.
As for myself, I go abroad o' nights
And kill sick people, groaning under walls.
I have been one acquainted with the night
And hollow, hollow, hollow all delight.
Sometimes I go about and poison wells.
If one good deed in all my life I did
I do repent it to my very soul.
The croaking raven bellows for revenge.
I'll be revenged on the whole pack of you.
Why I can smile and murder while I smile.
And wet my cheeks with artificial tears.
Like the wild Irish, I'll ne'er count thee dead
Till I can play at football with thy head.
I am a bastard. God stand up for bastards!

Why does the curving of my spinal cord
Give curious pleasure to this scrum I see
Of busy fools all flocking round my bones
In the dull confines of the car-park buried?
I had a tomb, but other busy fools
Dispersed the monks and overturned their church
And I was left with not a stone to show
That here lay Richard, Shakespeare’s future star,
Who thrills the playhouse with his pithy wit
And ready way with axe and chopping block.
I staged my own ascent, to some applause
(Arranged by allies, nothing left to chance,)
And nearly beat that grasping Henry Tudor
Had I but found another willing horse.
Interred again in Leicester? Dismal fate!
York is the place where I should rest in state!

It’s been the custom--long before Achilles
dragged Hector’s corpse--to stab your enemies’
dead bodies, gouge their eyes, and dock their willies.
Why should I stoop to whine of tricks like these?
Nor does it fret me to have been paraded,
tied to a horse, a sword stuck in my bum,
jeered through the Leicester streets, naked, degraded.
Such are the losers’ rites till kingdom come.
The winners shape the story. I became
a villain whose deceits made groundlings chortle,
cutting a swath through all my kin to fame—
a twisted monster, witty and immortal.
But centuries have passed, and so should spite.
It seems ungenerous and downright surly
for those who found my bones to spread the slight:
“His back was crooked, and his arms were girly.”

L16: "but" changed to "and"
May I inquire of those who know The Spectator better than I do whether the language of this would be considered inappropriate?

Susan, I don't see any reason why this wouldn't qualify as "a Shakespearean soliloquy." I'm guessing that most of the winners will be 16 lines of blank verse, but I doubt that a rhyme scheme will be cause for automatic disqualification.

If your inappropriate language concerns involve non-Elizabethan diction or phrases such as "dock their willies" and "stuck in my bum," I don't think you have anything to worry about.

What Chris said - I love it. Shouldn't "but" be "and" in the last line, though?