The Top 40

Sometimes I forget how awesome Shakespeare is. I looked up the whole soliloquy, here is the end from where your title starts:

For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings;
How some have been deposed; some slain in war,
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed;
Some poisoned by their wives: some sleeping killed;
All murdered: for within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king
Keeps Death his court and there the antic sits,
Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp,
Allowing him a breath, a little scene,
To monarchize, be feared and kill with looks,
Infusing him with self and vain conceit,
As if this flesh which walls about our life,
Were brass impregnable, and humoured thus
Comes at the last and with a little pin
Bores through his castle wall, and farewell king!
Cover your heads and mock not flesh and blood
With solemn reverence: throw away respect,
Tradition, form and ceremonious duty,
For you have but mistook me all this while:
I live with bread like you, feel want,
Taste grief, need friends: subjected thus,
How can you say to me, I am a king?

"The Life and Death of Richard the Second" Act III, Scene II. The coast of Wales. A castle in view.

I think that I am literate, but I have never read nor seen that play. But, like everything Shakespeare wrote it has immortal beauty and breath taking profundity within it.

That's beautiful, Fat Man. Truly.

This immortal beauty is the heritage of generations who have chosen instead to ape the language, attitudes, and morals of ghetto lowlifes.

Elvis Presley, Tom Parker, Mick Jagger....when the roll is called they will have much for which to answer.

Richard III, the last legitimate and Plantagenet King of England, was a good king, whose legislation promoted trade and learning. In what appears to have been a severe clinical depression after the deaths of his wife and young son, Richard failed to respond with his customary vigor to the invasion by the illegitimate Henry Tudor - rather than taking the army to Yorkshire and raising an overwhelming and loyal host, he precipitously rushed to meet Henry in battle, where he was betrayed by disloyal lords and killed. Shakespeare's vicious propaganda has sullied his memory. (I don't blame the Bard, he had the Tudors to serve and fear, after all.) But I entertain significant doubts about the identity of the remains that have been deposited in Leicester. I think that the DNA evidence is not quite what it should be, and whether or not he really was "hunchbacked" is also in doubt.

Rob: compared to the hip hop generation, Presley, Parker, and Jagger were Bach, Beethoven , and Brahms.

FM.

Disgustingly true, but the guys in the '50s and '60s convinced entire generations that being low-class black was "authentic," and being white was something to be ashamed of.

Within 5 years of Elvis Presley, electric guitar and drums was the only thing to be heard of an American musical tradition that had gone from Yankee Doodle to Duke Ellington to Charlie Parker to Thelonious Monk, Scott Joplin to Bix Beiderbecke to Bob Wills to Bill Monroe. And then it hit rocknroll and stopped in its tracks. Dixieland, bebop, bluegrass, swing bands, vocal quartets - all gone. Since the late '60s rock "music" is the sound of every television commercial.

It's not only me, btw. I know a Brazilian musician who once said that anything after WWII was just unspeakable.

"but I have never read nor seen that play. "

Gotcha. I've read the play. Seen the play. And was acting in the play on the day that Kennedy was assassinated.

The show went on.

And was acting in the play on the day that Kennedy was assassinated.

Whew. There's an experience.

Gerard: You are my master.

BTW. What was your role?