Richard III

Richard:
And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,To entertain these fair well-spoken days,I am determined to prove a villainAnd hate the idle pleasures of these days.Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,By drunken prophecies, libels and dreams,To set my brother Clarence and the kingIn deadly hate the one against the other:And if King Edward be as true and justAs I am subtle, false and treacherous,This day should Clarence closely be mew'd up,About a prophecy, which says that 'G'Of Edward's heirs the murderer shall be.Dive, thoughts, down to my soul: hereClarence comes.

I chose this passage because I think it was an excellent way to begin the play. In class we had to keep asking ourselves why Shakespeare put certain passages into his books. This long speech that Richard begins by saying is important in developing the character of Richard. He begins by telling the audience of his physical deformity, which is where the beginning of this passage is. “And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,..I am determined to prove a villain”. That basically means that since he cannot be what most people hold in their mind as handsome King material, that he will get his way being the vilian of the story. His words are dark, using words such as “deadly”, “hate” and “treacherous”. These words are all in direct contract to his language when he talks to Clarence. This sudden change of tone makes clear to the audience that Richard is hiding being his mask of deformity.

I enjoyed this book, so basing my opinion on Shakespeare’s history plays from this book alone is a positive one. I find history itself interesting. Reading a play rather than a text book is a diffewrent and in my oppion better way to learn about the past. Learning about Richards’s personality is more interesting than reading in a history book about all of the bad things he had done. The story was brought alive through this play. I also got to see how he got away with everything, his tactics of manipulation which is not something that is as easily understood when written in plain text. It is much like a chapter from Sound and Sense said. The intensity of some stories get better across in a more poetic form rather than in a history book.

I enjoyed this book as much as I possibly could with it getting closer and closer to the end of the year. I thought that the story itself was interesting. However I was getting sick of turning a page and the next 2 characters that were introduced a few pages ago had already been killed off. The dream scene after acting it out in class was almost humorous. The theme that fate or karma will always eventually catch up with a person was evedent in this scene. I thought the book moved at a quicker pace than the others we read. I found the language easier to understand as well, however there were so many characters to keep track of. Although I think this book could also be characterised as a tradegty, it is almost a humorous tradgety with the way it ended.