Richard the Third Parody

DESCRIPTION: "Now is the winter of our discontent: The bank am bust, I ain't got a cent." The singer admits to being a hunchback and poor. He wants to be king, and court Lady Anne. He will fight for her as a gentleman. If he can't get a horse, give him a donkey
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1868 (Rootle-Tum-Tootle-Tum-Tay-Songster)
KEYWORDS: derivative royalty humorous recitation animal
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Rootle-Tum-Tootle-Tum-Tay-Songster, pp. 49-51, "Richard the Third" (1 text, tunes referenced)
Roud #36046
NOTES [164 words]: This is a genre conundrum: what do you call something that is a parody of a parody of history? It is a sort of gutter re-telling of Shakespeare's "Richard III," with many allusions to that work but none to actual history. I suppose I could refer you to the notes on "The Children in the Wood (The Babes in the Woods)" [Laws Q34] for some of the actual truth, but in this case, it's hardly worth the bother. I'm honestly not sure why Steve Roud gave this a number -- there are a couple of traditional collections of #36046, but it appears to me that #36046 is actually two pieces, and this one is the one that is not traditional.
Incidentally, I have been unable to find out anything about the source of this song. Every attempt to search gets overwhelmed in quotations from Shakespeare's "Richard III." Rootle-Tum-Tootle-Tum-Tay-Songster says its version is "As delivered by Sam Sharpley," but that doesn't mean he wrote it, though he may well have changed the recitation portions. - RBW
Last updated in version 7.1
File: RTTS049

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