Richard III

Sometimes I wonder why I was such a big Shakespeare fan when I was an English major back in college. The hack stole most of his material from other writers, he completely fabricated his story about Macbeth, he misrepresented the entire Hamlet story and he totally maligned one of the fairest and most progressive kings in English history, Richard III. Richard was from York and is still beloved in this part of England despite Shakespeare's propaganda. Shakespeare was kissing up to his own monarch whose claim to the throne was actually much weaker than the disputed claims of Richard's. Much like today's revisionist history where Nixon is portrayed as pure evil despite many of the great deeds he accomplished, Shakespeare portrayed Richard III as a hunch-backed, club-footed ogre with no redeeming qualities. Oddly enough, contemporary accounts of Richard's reign depict him as a ruler dedicated to equal justice and reform. He just happened to be the loser in the ensuing rebellion. As they say, the winners get to write history. In any case, we didn't have time to tour the museum so that has been added to my list of things to do.