Shame on Shakespeare: England’s King Richard III was no hunchback, bone scan shows
Bone scan shows English king had twisted spine, butwasn't the hideous specimen of literary fame
He may have had a twisted spine, but England's King Richard III was no hunchback, according to a new analysis of his skeleton.
After the bones of the 15th-century king were discovered under a car park in central England in 2012, scientists scanned the remains of his back and created replicas of each bone to reconstruct his spine. They said that while Richard had severe scoliosis, he was far from the limping "hunchbacked toad" with a withered arm depicted in William Shakespeare's play.
"Richard had a very squishy spine but it wouldn't have stuck out that obviously," said Piers Mitchell of the University of Cambridge, one of the study's authors. He said it was technically inaccurate to describe Richard as a hunchback, as his spine was bent sideways, not forward.
"Unless you were pretty close to him, it's unlikely you would have noticed anything very wrong with him," Mitchell said.
He said the king's head and neck were straight, but his right shoulder was higher than his left and his upper body was relatively short compared to his limbs.
"With some padded shoulders or if the height of his trousers was adjusted, a sympathetic tailor could have hidden Richard's twisted back," Mitchell said.
The study also found that Richard's scoliosis - curvature of the spine - developed in adolescence and as a result he was a few centimetres shorter than he otherwise would have been.