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7 Quick Takes (2/8/13)

7 Quick Takes (2/8/13)

Last updated on: February 8, 2013 at 1:51 am by Leah Libresco

7 Quick Takes (2/8/13) 2013-02-08T01:51:25-05:00 Leah Libresco

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Sorry posting has been so scant here! I have something delightful happening in my non-blogging life, which I can discuss on Monday. There will probably be a bit of a slow period during the logistical madness, but that’s when I plan to start posting the delightful guest posts for the Math and Theology bookclub that some of you have been contributing.

To make it up to you, this is awesome:

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Now, from here to the end, it’s all Richard III links, but don’t worry there’s no filler. There is just a lot of delightful reporting! Start off with the in-depth BBC coverage, which includes great photos of his scoliosis-stricken spine.

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I later actually learned history, but I primarily know about Richard III through Richard III, which has one of my favorite seduction scenes in any play:

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The Shakespeare is very well known, but I wasn’t aware of this Chesterton piece on Richard III til everyone started pulling Richard III trivia down from the shelves:

If we desire at all to catch the strange colours of the sunset of the Middle Ages, to see what had changed yet not wholly killed chivalry there is no better study than the riddle of Richard III. Of course, scarcely a line of him was like the caricature with which his much meaner successor placarded the world when he was dead. He was not even a hunchback; he had one shoulder slightly higher than the other, probably the effect of his furious swordsmanship on a naturally slender and sensitive frame. Yet his soul, if not his body, haunts us somehow as the crooked shadow of a straight knight of better days. He was not an ogre shedding rivers of blood; some of the men he executed deserved it as much as any men of that wicked time; and even the tale of his murdered nephews is not certain, as it is told by those who also tell us he was born with tusks and was originally covered with hair.

Yet a crimson cloud cannot be dispelled from his memory and, so tainted is the very air of that time with carnage, that we cannot say he was incapable even of the things of which he may have been innocent. Whether or no he was a good man, he was apparently a good king and even a popular one; yet we think of him vaguely, and not, I fancy, untruly, as on sufferance.

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There’s a controversy brewing about whether Richard III will be buried in a Catholic or Anglican ceremony (should be Catholic, duh), but it was via First Things that I found this bizarre logistical measure in the meantime:

A Catholic priest is keeping watch over Richard’s remains (as is an Anglican, I believe)

Funerals are not like baptisms! They seldom happen stealthily!

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Via fellow Patheos blogger Joseph Susanka, a video of Sir Ian McKellen discussing the opening of Richard III

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My brother is a theatre major, and I had the privilege of seeing a really excellent production of Richard III that he was in. The part of Richard was played by two people simultaneously — a boy and a girl. I was surprised/concerned when my brother told me, but it worked beautifully. For one thing, whenever Richard breaks off for an aside on his plan, the other Richard was still harrying his latest victim, instead of giving him/her a moment’s piece. When the Richard’s divided some of the dialogue during a manipulation scene, the audience had a tremendous, visceral sense of how constantly wrong-footed everyone else at court was. It was terrifying and delightful.

For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!

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