With Richard III and Jeremy Clarkson, we buried both monster and dinosaur

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/mar/27/richard-iii-clarkson-buried-monster-dinosaur

Version 0 of 1.

What a dismal and humourless interpretation Polly Toynbee puts on the re-interment of Richard III (Britain mourns a monster – because he was a king. Richard III’s burial was absurd, theguardian.com, 26 March). Leicester in the rain is not very exciting but the free pageant with full ceremonials was pure street theatre and made it a bit more so. It was almost Shakespearean. It was a mystery play of a sort, a carnival, and for those of a religious and royalist disposition there was the added bonus of the archbishop and a couple of dukes. Memories of Olivier in the film role, knights in battle, flags and banners, uniforms and that sense of a past rediscovered were uppermost, I would guess, in most people’s minds and feelings. If one current alternative to this event is a million petrolheads signing up to see more of the oafish Jeremy Clarkson, then give me the thousands who came to see the reburial of the last Plantagenet king anytime.David TownsendWellington, New Zealand

• There’s been a lot of comment on Shakespeare’s vilification of Richard III this week. Of course he had to make his Richard bad and his Henry Tudor good, since the winner at Bosworth was Elizabeth’s grandfather and he wouldn’t have got a licence to stage his play otherwise. But he refused to be quite tongue-tied by authority, making Richard so entertainingly wicked and Henry so unbelievably saintly, any audience understands they can’t resemble the real historical figures.

In act three, Hastings is accused of treason, and executed. In a very short scene, often cut in performance, a scrivener who records public events in London admits he’s helping to falsify this one while it’s happening. He daren’t refuse. The scene warns us, right in the middle of Richard III, not to trust histories, especially Richard III. Even archival material is controlled by the winners.

Shakespeare could have played the scrivener himself, though that might have made his unorthodox point a bit too obvious for his own safety. Richard III is a brilliant last episode in Shakespeare’s run of history plays. It admits its own fictionality. It doesn’t even pretend to tell us what he thought about the real Richard III.Loraine FletcherReading, Berkshire

• It may interest Cliff Davies and Nick Floyer (Letters, 24 March) that Ricardians have long wanted the “princes’ remains” in the Westminster Abbey urn to be re-examined using modern techniques, but every request has been refused. This is likely because the last investigation (in the 1930s) suggested that the bones were not of boys of the right ages, being as likely to be girls, some not human, and perhaps not medieval. When they were discovered, such credence was given to Thomas More’s fiction (don’t forget his claims of Richard III’s two-year gestation and withered arm) that it was assumed any bones found under a staircase must be those of Edward V and Richard of Shrewsbury – conveniently forgetting that More also stated the boys’ bodies were dug up later and reburied somewhere more suitable – or thrown into the Thames! As usual, cherrypicking of “evidence” to fit a theory.

A full dissection of the case can be found in Annette Carson’s meticulously researched The Maligned King – but perhaps, as Carson is a fellow “Ricardian loon” to Philippa Langley, her sources can be disregarded in favour of anything written under the Tudors, espoused as “truth” by David Starkey and his like.Carol Fellingham WebbKeighley, West Yorkshire

• To finally settle the argument, the bones should first be carbon-dated. Only if they prove to be of roughly the right age need more exhaustive and invasive tests – DNA, pathological, forensic, even isotope – be carried out. Perhaps now we have Richard’s DNA to match them against, the abbey authorities, in the interests of historical accuracy, might oblige at last?Pam ThomasChippenham, Wiltshire

• Nick Floyer’s suggestion that the DNA of the two skeletons from the Tower be matched with that of Richard III leads me to inquire why Leicester did not match the DNA from Richard’s skeleton with that of his sister (the last of the Plantagenets), lying here in Wingfield church.Tommy GeeWingfield, Suffolk

• Might I suggest that in light of the renewal of interest in the Plantagenets, the time is ripe to update the late Marquis of Ruvigny and Raineval’s work tracing all the living descendants of King Edward III? Considering that Edward III was the great-great-grandfather of Richard III, any living descendant of Edward III would thus be related to Richard III.Edward KendallShouson Hill, Hong Kong

• Anne Ayres (Letters, 24 March) should be challenged in her assertion that Henry VII never linked Richard III to the death of the princes in the Tower. While the bill of attainder brought by Henry made no definitive mention of the princes, it clearly accuses Richard of “the unnatural, mischievous and great perjuries, treasons, homicides and murders, in shedding of infants’ blood, with many other wrongs, odious offences and abominations against God and man”. This surely suggests that Richard’s involvement had become common wisdom, and it certainly chimes with what was said by the chroniclers of the time.

What we’re seeing at the moment is a mistaken attempt to see Richard through the prism of our own age, and not in the context of his time. That time could be brutal, ruthless and bloody; for Richard – a man in a politically perilous position – their death would have had a very practical logic to it.Paul WorthingtonNewport, Gwent

• Following the attention given to the reburial of Richard III we wish to propose the foundation of a Henry VII society, to commemorate the great king who restored peace, prosperity and legal government to England; introduced the art of the Italian Renaissance to this country; and sponsored the first English explorations of North America. He needs no reburial as he lies in his glorious chapel in Westminster Abbey. But the first business of the society would be to erect a statue in his memory on Bosworth Field.Professor Hugh Brogan and John TusaLondon

• I wonder how Leicester’s two most favourite comic writers, Joe Orton and Sue Townsend, would have reacted to the recent, royalish(sic) shenanigans in their city? I worked with them both early in their careers and I wish that they were still around to exploit facts that far exceed even their wildest fictional imaginings. Adrian Mole would certainly have enjoyed a plot situation and mise en scène for which there is only one accurate description – “Ortonesque”.John TydemanFormer head of of BBC radio drama, and Trustee of the Peggy Ramsay Foundation, Diss, Norfolk

• I find it odd that the archbishop of Canterbury on committing Richard’s body to the ground should say “In the sure and certain resurrection to come…”. This guy has been dead for 500 years. Hasn’t he been resurrected yet? If not – why not?Bob GoughWalton-on-Thames, Surrey