Thursday, March 26, 2015

This Post Has (Almost) Everything I Love

Guys.

Remember in 2012, when the remains of King Richard III were found under a freaking parking lot?

He looks rather peeved about being dumped unceremoniously
in the ground, as well a freaking King of England should.
Well, today he got a royal re-burying. Check this out: His remains were positively identified thanks to DNA from a living descendant. But this relative isn't just any relative: He's a cabinet-maker, so he made the goddamn coffin Richard finally got to have after 530 years.

How cool is that?

And then, something happened that I now demand be duplicated at my own funeral (in approximately 80 years): Benedict Cumberbatch read a poem written specially for the occasion.

It would totally be worth it to be an unnoticed heap of bones for 500 years if Benedict Cumberbatch showed up to read me a poem at the end of it all.

The poem, by the way, is gorgeous. It was written by Britain's poet laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, who turns out to be pretty good at this kind of thing.

Have you ever read/seen Shakespeare's Richard III? You know: "Now is the winter of our discontent," "A horse, my kingdom for a horse," and my personal favorite, "Dispute not with her; she is lunatic."

Seriously, if you've never read it or it's been a while, go here and have at it.

Oh yeah, and watch this about 50 times.





I love everything about this story. Someone should write a play about it. Or at least a sonnet. Or an episode of "Sherlock."

Definitely going to watch the video a few more times.

1 comment:

  1. After Ted Hughes was pushed by the icy hand of Death out of the position of Poet Laureate Duffy was suggested as a possible candidate, and I remember some commentators saying "There's no way in Hell a lesbian will ever be Poet Laureate. At the time I thought she would be an excellent choice, and I guess someone agreed-although it took ten years for them to get around to it. Now that seems like a good thing. Ten years ago no one would have thought to invite Benedict Cumberbatch to read one of her poems.

    I didn't read Richard III originally. I saw it performed. The guy who played Richard was terrifying. The next day I ran into him in a drugstore and didn't recognize him because he was nice.

    There's a story of an actor playing Richard III so well that an audience member stood up and shot him. I don't want to shoot anybody, not even a fictional character, but I could kind of understand the feeling.

    ReplyDelete

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