[Chris O'Carroll]

Actually, "bunch-back'd" is Shakespeare's word -- at least in my Riverside. Queen Margaret says to Queen Elizabeth:

Poor painted queen, vain flourish of my fortune,
Why strew'st thou sugar on that bottled spider,
Whose deadly web ensnareth thee about?
Fool, fool, thou whet'st a knife to kill thyself.
The day will come that thou shalt wish for me
To help thee curse this poisonous bunch-back'd toad.

[Brian Allgar]

Good grief, Chris, you're right! Although (clutching at straws) I find "this" rather than "that" for the last line.

Later, there is also

Q. Eliz. O! thou didst prophesy the time would come
That I should wish for thee to help me curse
That bottled spider, that foul bunchback’d toad.

My apologies, Mary, for not recognizing the quotation!

Now I'd better go and drown myself in a butt of Malmsey.

[Susan McLean]

Mary, your syntax in L2 is rather crabbed. You might try something like "endorsing Thomas More's assumption that" instead.

Susan

[Mary McLean]

Thanks, Susan, sounds good.

[Don Jones]

False Anglican this isle, once true White Rose
Of York. September sun finds me a gnome
With a serpent’s spine to those who loathe me still.
Unfit for war my slender arms, they say?
I had unhorsed John Cheyne* in my race
To kill Welsh Henry and his dormant seed
That sprouted fat blasphemer—anti-Pope!—
And ransacked monasteries, shattered shrines,
Obliterating traces of my grave.
E’en Becket’s bones were smashed to dust and hurled.
All this Northumberland’s betrayal wrought!
No hunchback after all, no withered arm,
Last king to fight and die in battle, I.
Behold who walks above my tar-paved tomb:
Unwarlike, coddled, heretics abound!
I'd have prevented them had I my crown.

*Two syllables.

[Peter Goulding]

Hi Don,

I'm only knew here but it all sounds pretty authentic to me. Would probably lose the indefinite article in L3 to scan it better.

And I'm not sure about the 'Abort them would' in the last line. Doesn't sound like a stand alone phrase, even in middle English? But I am open to correction.

[Don Jones]

Hi Peter,

Thanks! I wasn't trying to capture the historic Richard III's English but that of Shakespeare's Richard, a nasty business he, but not so much so historically, not as much as the Tudor propaganda made him out to be. My aim for this exercise was to match a more historically plausible Richard, in terms of the facts presented, with the seething evil displayed in the Bard's smear campaign.

This isn't middle English and like everyone else's exercise on this tread it's really "faux Shakespeare." And fun to boot!

Don

[Brian Allgar]

Don, I agree with Peter that "abort them would" is an odd construction that seems to be lacking a subject.

And I agree with you that writing "faux" Shakespeare is great fun. In England (and perhaps in America?) we call it "cod Shakespeare", so I suppose it could be said that we're all writing cod-pieces.

[John Whitworth]

I do think 'the bard's smear campaign' is the wrong way of looking at it. Richard the Third was ancient history. Nobody cared whether the Tudor claim to the throne had any merit. They had been there for over a hundred years and Elizabeth had done for the horrid papist Spaniards and that was that. What Shakespeare saw was a good story. Richard the villain had already had a most successful outing in Henry the Sixth Part Three. He returned, as it were, by popular request.

Th new boring Richard is a most unfortunate development. Bad kings are good box office. Was Jack the Ripper a royal prince? Oh I do hope so, don't you?

Nice work, all the same, Don.

[Don Jones]

Thanks Brian,

Actually "faux Shakespeare" was my invention but one out of ignorance of the true term "cod Shakespeare". I will use the latter from now on. Thanks.

John,

Thanks.

You're correct that "smear campaign" is a bit much. It is also true that you had better not give a nuanced picture to the Tudors when dealing with Richard III on stage. He had to be the fall guy whose end presaged the birth of England's rise as a world power. Who's to argue in favor of a bygone king long buried under what is now a parking lot?

My exercise simply dismisses the details that have somewhat "un-manned" Richard via Shakespeare, namely that he was twisted and frail (no limp, no hunchback).

Added in: Actually, the new Richard isn't boring. Now we know how high-spirited he was. The chronicles all tell of the man's bravery, but upon finding his skeletal remains it shows you what a strong mind and will can do for a man of such small and contorted stature. You have to give the man some credit for pluck.

Admittedly, though, a nuanced rehabilitation of R-III won't stand up to the tour de force of the play. So, a villain he will have to remain in our imaginations.

Don