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Unread 03-07-2013, 12:44 AM
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John Whitworth John Whitworth is offline
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Default Speccie Competition Ghostwritten

Lucy seems to have been insistent that a Shakespearean soliloquy must be in blank verse in spite of my scholarly refutation of that position. But what are scholars? Mere harmless drudges, to steal a Johnsonian turn of phrase. Of course the truth is I can't do blank verse. Never mind. Chris O'Carroll was there for us with another strong showing. Is Roger Theobald one of us? Caroline Thomas-Coxhead certainly is.

Lucy Vickery 9 March 2013
In Competition No. 2787 you were invited to submit a Shakespearean soliloquy delivered by the ghost of Richard III reflecting on the discovery of his bones in a Leicester car park.

The last Plantagenet king is, it seems, even further from the psychopath conjured up by Shakespeare’s pen than previously thought. Psychologists who have spent 18 months studying historical records from the period spanning the monarch’s life have come up with the rather unglamorous alternative diagnosis of ‘intolerance to uncertainty’ syndrome.

The rollcall of unlucky losers is long: Caroline Gill, Carolyn Thomas-Coxhead, John Renwick, Neil McEwan and Godfrey Ackers narrowly missed the cut. Those printed below earn £25, except Alan Millard who takes £30.

An ‘R’, upon a Council car-park writ,
Condemns my broken bones to Leicester’s light
Where Fox’s Glacier Mints aromas mask
The bloody stench of Bosworth’s battleground;
I am not in a living frame today
Yet framed I am, in dust disturbed by trowels,
The last Plantagenet, once planted deep
In flower-filled gardens, purchased from the friars,
Where warring roses fought the march of time
Till tarmac sealed them in the grave we share.
Now weary, wronged by wrongs I never did
And longing to be laid in holier ground,
I fain would travel to my final rest
But, having neither horse nor strength to walk,
My cry resounds throughout the universe:
A hearse! a hearse! my kingdom for a hearse.
Alan Millard

On Bosworth Field was I, though worthy, felled,
My kingdom gone, and I to Kingdom-Come
Despatched. That day I lacked not just a horse —
They would not coffin me, the less to bear,
But bore me bare to Leicester, there to lie
All twisted in the Grey Friars’ narrow grave,
While Shakespeare’s wider lies soon twisted me
Into a crookbacked killer. I was not.
Years passed. I watched the Welsh and then the Scots,
And even Germans sit upon my throne,
Until the magic cypher D-N-A —
Domine Nos Adiuve! — proved: I am.
Doomed Richard shall now have a richer tomb,
Yet what dark counsels lay behind the plot,
When all men had this poor king’s lot forgot,
That his plot be a council parking lot?
Brian Murdoch

Was ever rightful king so foully used?
Here harried to my death and more beyond,
My body laid below but not to rest,
My name not royally graved in stone but hacked
By every bidden blade in Clio’s ranks.
The hellhound knew he had a double prize,
To stop my breath and with it stop my tongue.
In death I was reborn a slave and mute,
To writhe in thrall and cry the truth unheard.
And now these schoolmen dabble with my bones
And make a Yorick of the head of York.
The prying world may see how I was formed
And in their thoughts may ossify the lie
That as my back was bent my soul was warped.
Bared here or buried in some holy place,
I cannot falsify my false disgrace.
W.J. Webster

Five hundred years and more our bones have lain
In Leicester Town, and many changes seen.
Of late, our resting place has been reserved
For mobile frames, of glass and metal made,
Whose riders hie to shoppes of wondrous size,
And there buy ‘meat of cattle’ — though oft’times
Of that which I sore lacked on Bosworth field.
But now, our bones revealed, we are resolved
To play the martyr, slain by Tudor knaves,
Then libelled by a slavish Stratford scribe,
Apologist for Henry and his line,
Who wrote but one true verse: how our good deeds
Lie hidden in our bones. But now to work!
Campaigns for a state funeral must start,
Using the foremost forum of these times,
In tweets with letters up to seven score.
Roger Theobald

Five centuries of wintry discontent,
Interr’d scant leagues from fatal Bosworth field,
Was all the peace Plantagenet could find.
My bones, at first by Nature’s whim deform’d
To shape fit lodging for a villain’s heart,
Were then, at the usurper Richmond’s hand,
Profanely desecrated, hack’d and haul’d
To an unroyal Greyfriars burial.
The dust reclaim’d my flesh. New dynasties,
And new technologies by petrol fuel’d,
Roll’d over my forgotten resting place.
Now come grim-visag’d archaeologists
To make a trophy of my cold remains.
‘Despair and die’, I heard my victims say,
But fate contrives a crueller curse for me:
This freakish sideshow immortality.
Chris O’Carroll

Now that my flesh is rotted from my bones
To be devour’d by th’all-consuming worm,
And the mechanical with pick and spade
Hath rudely disinterr’d my royal corse,
So that the meanest subject in my realm
Can read my reliques as it pleaseth him;
And that cruel bow, my spine, is set on show
To be the butt and scoff of rancourous men,
I learn that mongst the rabble who disturb
My royal sleep are some who seek to harm
My reputation. I was fierce and proud;
I gain’d my ends with much dissentuous scheming,
By murthers and by subtle villainies,
Which I rejoicèd in. Yet now my own
Society would have me lily-liver’d,
Genial, benign. My curse upon you all.
Gerard Benson
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Unread 03-07-2013, 02:49 AM
Brian Allgar Brian Allgar is offline
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Congratulations to Chris, and to Carolyn.

But if you're right, John, then while I can understand a competition that insists that poems must rhyme, it seems curiously perverse to disqualify them for doing so. Of course, Shakespeare had a whole play to get through, so blank verse is understandable. But a mere 16 lines is another matter.

And ... err ... is it just me, or, with the exception of a line or two, do you get the impression that Lucy wasn't looking for much in the way of humour either?
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Unread 03-07-2013, 08:16 AM
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Jayne Osborn Jayne Osborn is offline
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Well done, Chris, and to Carolyn for an HM.

Brian,
It's the Literary Review that says "Poems must rhyme, scan and make sense"; there's no insistence on rhyme from the Speccie.

Jayne
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Unread 03-07-2013, 08:39 AM
Brian Allgar Brian Allgar is offline
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Yes, I know, Jayne. When I said "I can understand a competition that insists ...", it was the LitRev that I had in mind. But have you ever heard of one that insists that it doesn't rhyme?
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Unread 03-07-2013, 09:26 AM
Chris O'Carroll Chris O'Carroll is offline
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It's a fair observation that funny doesn't seem to have been essential for success this week (despite the fact that Richard has more of the comedian about him than any other Shakespeare villain). On the other hand, four of the winners are blank verse speeches buttoned with rhyming couplets (with a triple rhyme in Brian Murdoch's case), and Alan Millard grabs the fiver with a rhyming finish that's the most overtly comical bit in any of the six speeches -- there's the odd chuckle elsewhere, but that's the only real laugh -- so we can't say that humor was entirely unwelcome.
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Unread 03-07-2013, 04:14 PM
Peter Goulding Peter Goulding is offline
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Well, to be fair, we were asked to write a Shakespearean soliloquy and Shakespeare does not generally provoke many belly laughs, in me anyway. So perhaps humour wasn't paramount and my line about "I thought the princes were on holidays in Weymouth" wasn't what was called for.

On the plus side, I was more than pleased with my final poem (like John, I can't do blank verse) and I also learned a bit about Richard III in case he ever comes up in a pub quiz.
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Unread 03-07-2013, 05:04 PM
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John Whitworth John Whitworth is offline
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The Porter's soliloquy in Macbeth can be made very funny indeed.
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