King Richard Iii William Shakespeare Hdt What? Index

PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

“POISONOUS BUNCH-BACKED TOAD”

WALDEN: Near the end of March, 1845, I borrowed an axe and went down to the woods by Walden Pond, nearest to where I intended to build my house, and began to cut down some tall arrowy white pines, still in their youth, for timber. It is difficult to begin without borrowing, but perhaps it is the most generous course thus to permit your fellow-men to have an interest in your enterprise. The owner of the axe, as he released his hold on it, said that it was the apple of his eye; but I returned it sharper than I received it. It was a pleasant hillside where I worked, covered with pine woods, through which I looked out on the pond, and a small open field in the woods where pines and hickories were springing up. The ice in the pond was not yet dissolved, though there were some open spaces, and it was all dark colored and saturated with water. There were some slight flurries of snow during the days that I worked there; but for the most part when I came out on to the railroad, on my way home, its yellow sand heap stretched away gleaming in the hazy atmosphere, and the rails shone in the spring sun, and I heard the lark and pewee and other birds already come to commence another year with us. They were pleasant spring days, in which the winter of man’s discontent was thawing as well as the earth, and the life that had lain torpid began to stretch itself.

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1452

October 2, Saturday: Richard Plantagenet of the House of York was born in Fotheringhay Castle in Northamptonshire (the royal infant was not defective).

1464

May 1, Sunday: This may be the day on which King Edward IV got married with Elizabeth Woodville (in violation, it would be made to appear, of some sort of “precontract” that he was to get married with Lady Eleanor Butler).

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1465

The Tower of London became the venue for a lavish court when King Henry VI became a prisoner in the royal accommodations there, with his throne usurped by King Edward IV (this Henry would be restored as a puppet monarch in 1470 but eighteen days after a battle at Tewkesbury in which his only child, Edward, would get killed, he would die at the Tower).

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May 26, Friday: King Edward IV’s wife Elizabeth Woodville, a commoner, was crowned as his Queen Consort. At some point during his adolescence, which would have begun in about this timeframe, the king’s brother Richard Plantagenet of the House of York would develop idiopathic scoliosis.

A person with this sort of deformity lives day to day with pain.

1471

April 1, Saturday: After the battle at Tewkesbury in which King Edward IV of the House of York defeated Queen Margaret of the House of Lancaster, wife of King Henry VI, a battle in which his only child, Prince Edward, was killed, King Henry VI was committed to Wakefield Tower of the Tower of London. George Neville, Archbishop of York, was also sent to the royal residences in the Tower (after a couple of months the Archbishop would be released, but would then secretly be arrested with his lands forfeited — he would be taken to the Castle of Guynes and would die there in 1476).

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April 11, Tuesday: King Henry VI of England, who actually had been a resident of the Tower of London since 1465, was formally deposed when it became clear that his House of Lancaster was losing a war of the roses. Mem: Try not to lose any wars over roses.

May 4, Thursday: King Edward IV of the House of York, after defeating and killing Richard, Earl of Warwick, at Barnet, was able to make his triumphal entry to London.

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May 21, Sunday: Eighteen days after his queen had been defeated and his only child, Edward, killed in battle, by order of King Edward IV, King Henry VI was murdered at the Tower of London.

Now there is an annual commemoration of this murder, the Ceremony of Lilies and Roses.

1472

Richard Plantagenet of the House of York was appointed by his brother King Edward IV as the initial Lord President of a new “Council of the North,” to administer for him the whole of northern England. This council was to meet each three months.

King Edward IV required that British merchants import four yew bowstaves for every ton of other goods they carried into England. Most of this vital war material was coming from Portugal (which helps us understand the historic ties between the British and Portuguese governments).

1483

April 9, Monday: Edward IV of England died. Before Richard, Duke of Gloucester (Richard Plantagenet of the House of York), his brother who up to this point had managed the entire north of England for him, could take the crown as King Richard III of England, and hold his major celebrations at the Tower of London, he had an obstacle he needed to overcome, which obstacle was that two of the sons of his predecessor King Edward IV were still alive: Prince Edward V (age 12) and Prince Richard, Duke of York (age 9). Since the heir to the throne was a mere lad, his uncle Richard temporarily assumed the role of Lord Protector. Soon after their father the king died on this day, this Protector would escort Prince Edward V to the royal accommodations at the Tower where he would be told he was to await his coronation as King of England. On June 13, 1483, while this coronation was being prepared by many Lords including his trusted friend William, Lord Hastings, this Protector would rush in and amongst cries of treason have William, Lord Hastings taken to the courtyard and

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instantly beheaded. Three days later this Protector would persuade the Queen to send Prince Richard, Duke of York to stay with his brother Prince Edward V in the Tower, and for awhile the two lads would be observed at play in the gardens within the wall. The final days of the princes would be described by Sir Thomas More, his account being of two assassins despatched to the Garden Tower by Sir James Tyrell, a friend of their Protector’s, to smother the lads in their beds. Their bodies would be buried in the precincts and in 1674, while workmen would demolish a stone staircase on the south side of the White Tower, two childsize skeletons would be discovered in a chest.

King Charles II would order that the skeletons be interred in Innocents’ Corner in Westminster Abbey. Garden Tower, where the princes had played, has come to be known as Bloody Tower. LONDON

Well, but the entirety of the above may be a historical lie. In fact it can be made to seem that Richard’s primary agenda as Lord Protector would be to protect the lad from the House of Lancaster family of his own mother, Queen Mother Elizabeth Woodville, for the Queen Mother and her daughters had taken sanctuary with and allied themselves with William, 1st Baron Hastings in opposition to him.

As 12-year-old King Edward V journeyed from Ludlow to LondonLONDON , Lord Protector Richard Plantagenet of the House of York met and escorted him to the royal residence in the Tower of London. He would be joined there by his 9-year-old brother Richard of Shrewsbury. Arrangements would be made for his coronation to take place on June 22, 1483, but by that date his father King Edward IV’s marriage to his mother Queen Consort Elizabeth Woodville would have been declared to have been invalid, rendering their offspring illegitimate, and ineligible for the throne of England.

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June 13, Wednesday: While the coronation of Prince Edward V as King of England was being prepared by many Lords including his trusted friend William, 1st Baron Hastings, his uncle the Lord Protector Richard, Duke of Gloucester (Richard Plantagenet of the House of York), rushed in or the preparations at the Tower of London and amongst cries of treason had Lord Hastings taken out to the courtyard — and immediately beheaded. HEADCHOPPING

June 16, Saturday: Lord Protector Richard, Duke of Gloucester, persuaded the Queen Mother to send Prince Richard, Duke of York, to stay with his brother Prince Edward V at the royal residence in the Tower of London — and for awhile the young brothers would be observed safely at play in the gardens within the wall.

June 22, Friday: This was the day on which it had been planned for the coronation of the elder of King Edward IV’s sons as King Edward V. Outside Old St. Paul’s Cathedral in LondonLONDON , however, a sermon was preached in which all the previous king’s children by Queen Consort Elizabeth Woodville were denounced as bastards — plus, the dead king’s brother Richard Plantagenet of the House of York was proclaimed as England’s rightful monarch. An assembly of the citizens of London both noble and common would immediately be called, that would acclaim a petition that Richard seat himself on the throne of England.

June 25, Monday: In LondonLONDON , an assembly of lords and commoners created an “Act of Parliament” to be known as Titulus Regius, according to which King Edward IV’s marriage to Queen Consort Elizabeth Woodville had been invalid due to its violation of a “precontract” of marriage with Lady Eleanor Butler, that the offspring of the invalid marriage were therefore illegitimate, and that their 12-year-old son Edward was therefore ineligible for the throne of England (this document explains that Elizabeth Woodville had used witchcraft to induce the monarch to wed her).

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June 26, Wednesday: The final days of Prince Richard, Duke of York and his brother Prince Edward V at the Tower of London would be described by Sir Thomas More, his account being of two assassins despatched to the Garden Tower by Sir James Tyrell –a friend of Richard, Duke of Gloucester, the Lord Protector (Richard Plantagenet of the House of York) – to smother the lads in their beds. (Their bodies apparently were concealed in the precincts, since in 1674, while workmen were demolishing a stone staircase on the south side of the White Tower, a chest would be discovered and two childsize skeletons would be removed from the chest.

King Charles II would order that the skeletons be interred in Innocents’ Corner in Westminster Abbey. Garden Tower, where the princes had played, would come to be known as Bloody Tower.)

On this day, therefore, Richard, Duke of Gloucester was able to claim the throne as King Richard III of England.

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Well, but — the above account by Sir Thomas More may very well be a lie, and a damned self-serving one.

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July 6, Friday: On this day in LondonLONDON Richard, Duke of Gloucester (Richard Plantagenet) and his wife Anne were formally coronated as King Richard III and Queen Anne (respectively) of England.

August: Princes Edward and Richard were last seen in LondonLONDON (this would give rise to the legend of the Princes in the Tower, as duly reported to you above by Sir Thomas More — a putative crime for the occurrence of which there really is not compelling physical evidence which, if it did happen, was we should duly note in no way unusual among the various royalty candidates in the England of that period).

October: There was an initial unsuccessful rebellion against King Richard III, the deformed monarch of England.

1484

King Richard III of England would have a couple of years of leadership during which to reform law, trade, and tax collection (he for instance created a system of bail bonds).

December 4, Thursday: Sir George Browne and Sir Robert Clifford, who had been consigned to the Tower of London for favoring the cause of Henry Tudor, 2d Earl of Richmond, were beheaded on Tower Hill. HEADCHOPPING

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1485

August: Perception is everything, or nine tenths of everything. A deformity is an indication of weakness, and therefore a signal of opportunity. At this point there began a 2d major rebellion against the deformed monarch King Richard III of England.

August 22, Saturday: There had been another rebellion against the deformed monarch Richard III. On Bosworth Field in Leicestershire, England in what we now consider to have been the last medieval sort of battle engagement, Henry Tudor of the House of Lancaster defeated, with a smaller army, the forces of the House of York, by killing Richard on the field when on his white horse Richard attempted to lead a cavalry charge that would dispose once and for all of the main personage of his opposition. He had arrived within swords-length of Henry Tudor when his horse got onto a piece of marshy ground and he was surrounded, and then he was dispatched by a blow to the head with a halberd wielded by a Welshman. The blow took away the back portion of his skull. The royal corpse would be stripped of its armor, repeatedly desecrated, thrown over a horse with an arrow in the back and a dagger handle protruding up from between the ass cheeks, and then dumped without casket into a grave at Greyfriars in Leicester — a grave so short that even with the corpse’s feet hacked off, its chin was forced onto its chest with what remained of the skull wedged against the dirt.

Since the first blow with the halberd had carried away the back portion of the skull, it would appear that the other head wounds would have been superfluous or symbolic, and if they were symbolic, what they would have symbolized was that this was not the head that should have been wearing England’s crown. However, since there never was any issue as to Richard’s Plantagenet lineage or entitlement, it could be suspected that the reason why this was not the head that should have been wearing England’s crown was merely that this was the head atop a deformed spine. “Only the upright shall rise above us.”

The arrow positioned in the back of the corpse was distinctly symbolic. Normally a wound in the back would indicate that one had been killed while attempting to flee, which would be taken as an indication of contemptible cowardice. “Return with your shield or upon it,” the Spartan mother instructed.

Anal penetration of the corpse by dagger would also have been distinctly symbolic. The corpse would be depicted as performing the role of the willing passive partner (the “female” if you will) in an act of copulation, or as performing the role of the powerless victim of an act of homosexual rape. The message to be read in this final desecration of the corpse, clearly, was “Here was a man of contemptible weakness.” We were righteous because we were able to kill him and he unrighteous because he was unable to prevent us from killing him, QED. Now that he is dead we can proceed to tell lies about him. (The lies that we will have our poets and historians and playwrights tell will portray him, of course, as the culprit rather than as our victim in order to portray us, of course, as defenders of the realm rather than as regicides.)

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This nastiness ended the War of the Roses by destroying the dynasty (the sole surviving male Plantagenet would be executed in 1499 by the winner, Henry Tudor, as King Henry VII) and kick-starting the following dynasty — which as we all understand would be Tudor and vastly less nasty.

Per William Shakespeare’s RICHARD III: CATESBY: Rescue, my Lord of Norfolk, rescue, rescue! The king enacts more wonders than a man, Daring an opposite to every danger: His horse is slain, and all on foot he fights, Seeking for Richmond in the throat of death. Rescue, fair lord, or else the day is lost!

RICHARD: A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!

CATESBY: Withdraw, my lord; I’ll help you to a horse.

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Henry Thoreau would reference the soliloquy with which Shakespeare began RICHARD III, “Now is the winter of our discontent, made glorious summer by this sun of York,” in WALDEN; OR, LIFE IN THE WOODS and elsewhere in his writings:

KING RICHARD III WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE :

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John Byron, who would be the ancestor of George Gordon, Lord Byron, served in the victorious army of Henry Tudor of the House of Lancaster, who would become King Henry VII of England and Wales:

Chronological observations of America to the year of Christ 1673.

Henry the Seventh began to Raign.

From the year of World BY John Josselyn Gent.

1495

Perkin Warbeck removed himself to the court of James IV of Scotland. Sir William Stanley, Lord Chamberlain of England, was executed for his complicity in the Warbeck business.

Henry Tudor of the House of Lancaster, who had become King Henry VII of England, paid £50 for a marble and alabaster monument in the garden of Greyfriars in Leicester, in memory of King Richard III.

The Imperial Diet at Worms was set up with an Imperial Chamber and Court of Appeal. A common penny was imposed as a tax to support this administration.

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1499

November 21, Tuesday: The last male Plantagenet, Edward, 17th Earl of Warwick, admitted while under trial for treason that after 14 years of imprisonment (he had been held in the Tower of London since the age of 10) he had plotted to escape from prison with and ally himself with a fellow prisoner — the pretender Perkin Warbeck.

November 23, Thursday: A conspiracy to help Perkin Warbeck, who had pretended to the throne of Henry VII by attempting to pass himself off as Richard IV, the younger of the two Princes in the Tower, escape from the Tower of London, had been discovered. On this day he was hanged for his treason on the Tyburn gallows outside London.

November 28, Tuesday: Edward, 17th Earl of Warwick, who had been held since the age of 10 in the Tower of London, was beheaded at the age of 24 at the order of King Henry VII after admitting that he had plotted to escape with and ally himself with a fellow prisoner, the pretender Perkin Warbeck (Edward had been the final male in the name-line of Plantagenet descent). HEADCHOPPING

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1591

Robert Greene’s A NOTEABLE DISCOVERY OF COOSNAGE. DISCOVERY OF COOSNAGE

Also, his GREENE’S FAREWELL TO FOLLY / SENT TO COURTIERS AND SCHOLARS AS A PRECEDENT TO WARN THEM FROM THE VAIN DELIGHTS THAT DRAWS YOUTH ON TO REPENTANCE / SERO SED SERIO / ROBERT GREENE VTRIUSQUE ACADEMIAE IN ARTIBUS MAGISTER (Imprinted at London By Thomas Scarlet for T. Gubbin and T. Newman). FAREWELL TO FOLLY

The English Parliament ordered London theaters closed on Thursdays. The reason was that they were distracting the public from “the game of bear-baiting and like pastimes which are maintained for her Majesty’s pleasure.” (The British only banned animal baiting in 1835 and cock-fighting in 1849. Even then, the chief opposition was on religious rather than humanitarian grounds, as the slaughtered animals were eaten afterwards.) Professional fencers and wrestlers were particularly hard hit by such bans, as they greatly reduced

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their access to paying audiences.

William Shakespeare created one of his initial historical plays, RICHARD III, rendering onstage the conflict of August 22, 1485 on Bosworth Field in Leicestershire that had pitted the red roses against the white ones, brought the Plantagenets to their terminus, and begun the regime of the Tudors. He buys 100% the standard line, that Richard’s subjects had attacked and killed him and desecrated his corpse because he was immensely evil and unhappy rather than because they perceived such a spinal deformity to indicate weakness and vulnerability: CATESBY: Rescue, my Lord of Norfolk, rescue, rescue! The king enacts more wonders than a man, Daring an opposite to every danger: His horse is slain, and all on foot he fights, Seeking for Richmond in the throat of death. Rescue, fair lord, or else the day is lost! RICHARD: A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse! CATESBY: Withdraw, my lord; I’ll help you to a horse.

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WATCH THE TRAILER!

1833

THE DRAMATIC WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE, ACCURATELY PRINTED FROM THE TEXT OF THE CORRECTED COPY LEFT BY THE LATE GEORGE STEEVENS, ESQ. WITH A GLOSSARY, AND NOTES, AND A SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF SHAKSPEARE (Hartford, Connecticut: Andrus & Judd). This 2-volume set would be in the personal library of David Henry Thoreau.1

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, I WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, II Thoreau would on April 21, 1835 supplement (or anticipate) his own personal set of the plays by obtaining from Harvard Library three volumes of a 15-volume London 1793 4th edition of Dr. Samuel Johnson’s THE PLAYS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. WITH THE CORRECTIONS AND ILLUSTRATIONS OF VARIOUS COMMENTATORS. TO WHICH ARE ADDED, NOTES BY SAMUEL JOHNSON AND GEORGE STEEVENS. THE 4TH ED. REV. AND AUGM. (WITH A GLOSSARIAL INDEX) BY THE EDITOR OF DODSLEY’S COLLECTION OF OLD PLAYS (T. Longman, B. Law and son, [etc.]). WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, I WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, III WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, IV

From these volumes Thoreau would use a snippet from Anthony and Cleopatra in REFORM PAPERS on page 12, snippets from As You Like It in A WEEK on pages 68, 248, and 341 and in CAPE COD on page 186, snippets from Hamlet Prince of Denmark in A WEEK on page 63 and in REFORM PAPERS on page 66, snippets from

1. You will observe that the closest Google Books has gotten to this 1833 edition is the 1837/1838 edition by the same Hartford, Connecticut publishing house.

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Julius Caesar in A WEEK on pages 41, 124, and 287, in EXTENDED ESSAYS AND MISCELLANIES on pages 70 and 72, in WALDEN on page 67, and in the JOURNAL for 1842-1844, a snippet from King John in REFORM PAPERS on page 66, a snippet from I Henry IV or Henry V in EXCURSIONS on page 5, a snippet from King Lear in A WEEK on page 282, snippets from Macbeth in EXCURSIONS on page 119 and in the JOURNAL for July 7, 1840, a snippet from The Merchant of Venice in the JOURNAL for September 1, 1843, a snippet from A Midsummer Night’s Dream in EXTENDED ESSAYS AND MISCELLANIES on page 74, snippets from Richard III in WALDEN on page 41, in EXCURSIONS on page 125, and in the JOURNAL for January 2, 1841, a snippet from The Tempest in CAPE COD on page 266, a snippet from Twelfth Night in the JOURNAL on January 3, 1843, a snippet from “Venus and Adonis” in the JOURNAL for June 19, 1843, and a snippet from “Sonnet 33” in AWEEK on pages 189-190.

KING RICHARD III WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

1841

January 2: The Chartists of England issued yet another broadside to the general public explaining the nature of their demands, and giving expression to the reasons and arguments behind them. THE CHARTISTS

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January 2, Sunday: My virtue loves to take an airing of a winter’s morning — it scents itself, and snuffs its own fragrance in the bracing atmosphere of the fields — more than in the sluggishness of the parlor. ... I stopped short in the path today to admire how the trees grow up without forethought regardless of the time and circumstances. They do not wait as men do — Now is the golden age of the sapling– Earth, air, sun, and rain, are occasion enough– They were no better in primeval centuries. The “winter of their discontent” never comes– Witness the buds of the native poplar, standing gaily out to the frost, on the sides of its bare switches– They express a naked confidence. ... I saw a fox run across the pond today on the snow with the carelessness of freedom. As at intervals I traced his course in the sunshine as he trotted along the ridge of a hill on the crust, it seemed as if the sun never shone so proudly, sheer down on the hill side, and the winds and woods were hushed in sympathy. I gave up to him sun and earth, as to their true proprietor. He did not go in the sunshine, but the sunshine seemed to follow him. There was a visible sympathy between him and it.

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1931

October 4, Sunday: The city of Duluth, Minnesota tried something new. The Duluth Superior Transit Company had the overhanging wires of the old trolley line in place above the railroad tracks embedded in the street — so they equipped new rubber-tired busses with electric motors. These busses could be steered up to 14 feet away from the overhead wires without the slider slipping off. Said busses would run along Superior Street between 45th and 61st Avenues East.

Chester Gould’s comic strip “Dick Tracy” began to appear in America’s newspapers.

The villains from whom handsome, square-jawed Plainclothes Tracy saved us were typically deformed but physically fit males, driven to evil by their deformity and society’s reaction against it. The cartoonist gave them names such as Flattop Jones, The Mole, The Brow, The Claw, Cueball, pockmarked Skelton Knaggs, Pruneface, Splitface, Flyface, Gruesome (played by Boris Carloff), Braces, Coffyhead, Pinhead, Hammerhead, Doc Hump, B.B. Eyes, Putty-Puss, One-Eyed Jack, Pucker Puss, Shaky, “Ugly” Christine, Acres O’Reilly (a woman more than six feet tall), Rhodent, etc.

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This popular cartoonist was carrying on where William Shakespeare left off, but of course he would never identify any of these deformed but physically fit male villains as King Richard III of England. He would be carrying on this vendetta against physical deformity throughout the entire period of my childhood, both before I became physically deformed due to Pott’s Disease of the spine, and after this ordeal had begun for me. I could read the comics about deformed people and our nasty reaction to them, every time I picked up an American newspaper. I would be told over and over again with great officiousness that I was deformed and that therefore I was evil and that Dick Tracy needed to do something about me. This was the American way. ASSLEY

Then there was Dr. Will Carver, a plastic surgeon who thoughtfully reworked the appearance of criminals.

“Ugly” Christine

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(Tracy eventually would succumb to lead poisoning, having been shot in the left shoulder 47 times.)

1951

September 30, Sunday: Red Skelton brought his radio show to TV. He would be able to perform his various characters, such as Clem Kadiddlehopper, visually as well as aurally. For the first time he could perform sight gags for the benefit of the mass audience.

One of the sight gags he would do on TV over and over and over was as follows. He would have stuffed towels or something down the back of his pants and would then perform facing the camera so that we could not perceive this. He would be chewing on a stem of grass to represent that he was a hayseed. He would do things that were amusing but the studio audience would not be amused. He would become more and more baffled at the way his gags were not coming across. Then there would be a little tinkle-bell and simultaneously he would do a little hop, a “kadiddlehop,” turning sidewise as he hopped. For the first time the TV audience would be able to perceive that he had what could be taken as a lordotic curvature in his spine, a protruding butt. The towels he had stuffed under his pants would make his butt stick way out the way mine did, and this would suddenly explain for the benefit of the remote viewers, why nobody was considering him at all funny. He would then make a doofus face at the camera and that little skit would be over. Over, for that particular show — as I mentioned, he would perform this again and again and again in the course of his career. It became a standard expected thing, a “signature” piece on his TV program. People would wait for it, knowing it was coming. –It was like that rubber duck dropping from the ceiling as part of the Groucho Marx show.

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Red was mocking, of course, deformed people such as myself — rustic lads who had become the victims of bovine tuberculosis (Pott’s Disease) back in those days before dairies and routine pasteurization of the milk supply, rustic lads who had acquired lordotic spines similar to my own. He was pointing out that we were not to be taken at all seriously. He was pointing out that we amounted to mere figures of fun. We weren’t whole human beings. Our feelings didn’t count, our lives didn’t count, except as people to be mocked.

My Uncle Paul and Aunt Mary Modesitt were the only ones in our extended family who owned a TV set. Relatives would drive for many miles on a summer night, to visit the Modesitts on their farm outside of Clay City, Indiana and spend the evening crammed into their livingroom around the black-and-white, snowy TV. The children lay about on the floor because the adults had the chairs, including chairs brought in from the kitchen. There could easily be a dozen relatives in the room. When Red would do this expected kadiddlehop- and-tinkling-bell-and-doofus-look thingie, everyone would roar with laughter. I would of course laugh as well.

(I’ve tried and tried to find a YouTube representation of this Skelton skit, but without any success. All I have to go on is my vivid memories, memories which I do not doubt, memories of the hot shame I felt. My present hypothesis would be that all record of this kadiddlehop-and-tinkling-bell-and-doofus-look thingie has been very totally purged, because in this day and age it has come to be considered for some reason not PC and not OK, to mock the deformed in such manner. It is no longer as good clean fun as it had been in the era of, for instance, the Shakespeare of “Richard III.” It has become an embarrassment, better forgotten.) ASSLEY

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February 4, Monday: Officials of the University of Leicester confirmed that a skeleton that had been recovered from beneath a parking lot used by the city council was that of King Richard III of England.

Here’s a poser for you: Was Richard wicked because he was deformed, with his left shoulder drooping, or deformed because wicked?

If that poser’s too much for you to wrap your pointy head around, here’s another: Was this fellow offed because he was an especially wicked monarch, despite being entitled by his Plantagenet lineage to the throne, or was this monarch’s killing by his English subjects sanctioned, after they had killed him for being deformed, by means of a smear campaign perpetrated by bought-and-paid-for historians — a smear campaign calculated to make this monarch appear after the fact to have been especially wicked, and therefore deserving of the disloyalty that had brought him to his forgotten grave?

I need here to invoke the razor of Occam. We can take it as a given that all over this planet (not merely in the Celestial Kingdom), where monarchs rule, they rule precisely because their minions expect them to produce good fortune — that Mandate-of-Heaven stuff. The monarch’s not merely to be plucky, but lucky as well. Such prominent leaders are winners, they’re achievers. They got the mojo. But, we can also take it as a given that no deformed person is ever lucky and powerful. A deformed man don’t got the mojo. Were such an individual lucky and powerful he or she wouldn’t be deformed, get it? –or if deformed they’d somehow get over it. To be a fit ruler a ruler must be fit. Taking these two above thingies for granted –#1, a monarch is favored, and #2, a deformed person is unfavored– it is a matter of course that a people afflicted with a monarch who appears a monster will naturally attempt to rid themselves of that monstrosity. Deformity for one is opportunity for another. Some subject will perceive the deformity as a sign of weakness, and strike at that weakness, seeking to replace the deformed monarch on the throne of power. In such a circumstance we do not need a secondary hypothesis based upon little or no real evidence, that the physical monster happened to constitute in addition a moral monstrosity. In the absence of hard evidence, the razor of Occam dispenses with the supplementary

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THE PEOPLEhypothesis OF as anW entirelyALDEN unnecessary: complication. Since the deformity itself accountsKING for everythingRICHARD that III happened, there literally is nothing that remains to be explained by means of any additional suppositions.

However, the rule of Primary Process is that after a wrong is done, the perpetrator of that wrong will naturally attempt to limn the wronged person as having been wicked, in order to wrap himself or herself in the robes of righteousness in the perpetration of that wrong. We see this in human history, over and over and over, on the realpolitik scale as well as among private individuals. And, that is what we see here with generation after generation of bought-and-paid-for British historians (and playwrights such as William Shakespeare) vying to condemn this deformed and slaughtered monarch with their presumptuous “He could only have been an exceedingly wicked man.”

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PROJECTION, RETROJECTION, INTENSIFICATION, REPLACEMENT,

AND INVERSION

“A cultivated person’s first duty is to be always prepared to rewrite the encyclopedia.” — Umberto Eco, SERENDIPITY, London: Weidenfield & Nicholson, 1999, page 21

This Kouroo project makes use of five peculiar concepts, PROJECTION, RETROJECTION, INTENSIFICATION, REPLACEMENT, and INVERSION, which require careful explanation:

• PROJECTION is the condemnation of one’s own faults, but viewed as if they were in others, resituated in such manner as to avoid the awareness that these faults actually are in oneself. One gets to punish one’s own faults, but it is others who must bear the punishment. One gets to abuse others, but the fault is theirs in being thus abused.

• RETROJECTION is the invention of the sort of motives and of the sort of beliefs that would legitimate one’s illegitimate conduct or mode of life. One gets to do wicked things out of what seem the very best of motives.

• INTENSIFICATION is the snowballing technique of attack, by which one minor and relatively unproblematic characteristic of another person’s life becomes transformed, in a series of stages, into some other, putative, entirely unacceptable and contemptible trait for which that person merits endless punishment.

• REPLACEMENT is a toying as-if technique by which one reacts to a thing warranting decent treatment in the guise of some other thing not warranting that consideration, one worthy person as if s/he were another unworthy person, etc.

• INVERSION is the defensive/offensive ploy that, when person or group A has done something bad X to person or group B, pretends that it had been B, the actual victim, who had done that bad thing X to A, the actual perpetrator. This tactic of inversion keeps abuse fresh and up to date, because B, the helpless victimized person or group, thus gets victimized again and again by being forced into the social role of culprit.

These five illicit coping mechanisms are illustrated in the following historical manner in this Kouroo database: • PROJECTION — The best-understood example of Sigmund Freud’s analysis of projection is antisemitism. “Jew” is the name and the picture of all those things we cannot admit about ourselves; it is thus a symptom of our fears and anxieties. If we desired to create for ourselves some sort of private club of self-privileging exclusivists, in order by means of such a conspiracy to take advantage

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of others, the first thing we would need to do, in order to legitimate our conduct, would be to spread the word about those Jews who allegedly already have set up their private religion and their private culture and ethnic group as a conspiratorial club of self-privileging exclusivists, in order to be able to take advantage of non-Jews. To refuse to do the same, to refuse to play their game, would be to allow this self-privileging: P RO JEC TION

The payoff of this being so great, it is clear that projection will occur whenever it is not interdicted.

• RETROJECTION — If a boy has acquired, as the result of a childhood disease, a twisted spine, and therefore has disgustingly protruding buttocks and a disgustingly protruding tailbone, then he is going to be abused relentlessly by people who do not want to be seen with and do not want to be associated with such deformity. As a boy such a deformed individual will be forever getting beaten up by normal boys, and as an man such a deformed individual will be forever being socially avoided and economically abused, so that for instance no matter what his career performance might be, the appropriate raises and promotions will never be forthcoming, and so that he will ever be the first to be laid off or dispensed with at each downturn in the national economy. Such discriminatory behavior and abuse would cause guilt on the part of the perpetrators, the victimizers — if the victimizers were to be aware of this as the reason for their selection of target. If, however, the victimizers can formulate some fault which they can project upon the deformed person (if for instance they can fantasize that he is a Deadbeat Dad) then by virtue of such a retrojection they will be not only legitimated in their selection of target, but also, it will seem to be their duty to determinedly persecute him.

RETROJECTION

The payoff of this being so great, it is clear that retrojection will occur whenever it is not interdicted. • INTENSIFICATION — The snowball rolled downhill ends up, at the bottom of the hill, as an avalanche. One thing led to another. The abuses got better and better. The chosen target becomes more and more contemptible. We have all seen the positive side of this phenomenon, when the academic who has won a couple of fellowships becomes worthy, merely by virtue of having those awards of his or her curriculum vitae rather than by virtue of any accomplishments achieved through the proper use of such award moneys, worthy of receiving further awards and distinctions. The cv builds over the years, meritorious recognition being piled upon meritorious recognition. Well, intensification also has its negative side. For instance, a person lacking in power might not be punishable for simple inability to properly perform an obligation, as being outside his or her real capability, but then, if a judge subsequently ordered one to perform that obligation, one might very well find oneself being punished, not for this inability but for contempt of the court — what had been an unpunishable inability had subtly been translated, through this process of intensification, into a punishable offense.

What is Intensification ?

The payoff of this being so great, it is clear that intensification will occur whenever it is not interdicted.

• REPLACEMENT — What are Jews? They are vermin, fit only to be eradicated without mercy! Go get the rat poison! — What are blacks? They are apes, capable only of mimicry and tomfoolery,

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and need to be kept in cages! Break out the leg irons! — What are women? They are holes needing to be plugged! Let’s plug this one! — What are queers? They are child molesters! Let’s make sure this one doesn’t have the equipment to use on our kids! — Who is this guy? He is the worst Deadbeat Dad in the history of Santa Clara County (ignore these four indignant children clustered around him attempting to protect him, ignore that protesting ex-wife over there, ignore those Quakers doing a silent-worship sit-in on his behalf), treat him as a Deadbeat Dad deserves to be treated! Put him in a cell and throw away the key! Replacement is a sort of play-acting, a sort of scapegoating, in which a behavioral switching takes place, and behaviors which would be evoked by one stimulus are instead solicited in regard to another stimulus, which may in fact possess only the remotest and most superficial of similarities.

What is Replacement ?

The payoff of this being so great, it is clear that replacement will occur whenever it is not interdicted.

• INVERSION — This is not a separate entity but is, rather, a particularly convoluted and effective strategy of projection. Some Christian soldiers during the war known as “King Phillip’s War” once set loose their trained Indian-killing mastiffs on an innocuous native woman they came across in the road. We know this happened because their commander included a mention of said incident in an unashamed letter to the governor of the Massachusetts Bay colony. Later a white historian acknowledged that, while indeed on the record an Indian woman had been torn to pieces by mastiffs, these must have been Indian dogs and it must have been the Indians who had set them loose to rend her. For it was after all the Indians who were the American savages, it was the Indians who had to be brought under control here in order for we decent white people to bring into existence our decent

nation under God! What is Inversion ?

The payoff of this being so great, it is clear that inversion will occur whenever it is not interdicted. It has happened, for instance, in the case of King Richard III of England, the deformed king who was chopped down and then his body mutilated by his subjects, who proceeded to create a cultural record that he must have been an evil monarch (despite their admission that it was he who had originated the idea of the bail bond), who must have deserved to have them do this to him. The very best cure for guilt is ever for the perpetrator to construe his victim as having been the perpetrator.

Here is John Adams on inversion, as of 1767:

If the Prince is remarkable for his Gluttony Drunkeness and Lust, they commended his Temperance, and Chastity, if notorious for Falshood and Deceit, they admired his noble Simplicity and Sacred regard to Probity and Truth, if he was malicious, cruel, and revengeful they extolled his Clemency, Moderation and Condescention, and if he was infamous for Sordid Avarice and unfeeling Rapacity, they celebrated his Generosity, Humanity, Magnificence and Liberality.

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COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others, such as extensive quotations and reproductions of images, this “read-only” computer file contains a great deal of special work product of Austin Meredith, copyright 2013. Access to these interim materials will eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap through hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems— allows for an utter alteration of the context within which one is experiencing a specific content already being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin Meredith — and therefore freely available for use by all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any material from such files, must be obtained in advance in writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Please contact the project at .

“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.” – Remark by character “Garin Stevens” in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST

Prepared: February 10, 2013

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ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT

GENERATION HOTLINE

This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by a human. Such is not the case. Instead, upon someone’s request we have pulled it out of the hat of a pirate that has grown out of the shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (depicted above). What these chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of data modules which we term the Kouroo Contexture. This is data mining. To respond to such a request for information, we merely push a button. 33 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Commonly, the first output of the program has obvious deficiencies and so we need to go back into the data modules stored in the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then we need to punch that button again and do a recompile of the chronology — but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary “writerly” process which you know and love. As the contents of this originating contexture improve, and as the programming improves, and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whatever has been needed in the creation of this facility, the entire operation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.

First come first serve. There is no charge. Place your requests with . Arrgh.