Shakespeares language

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Richard is unforgettable because his words are unforgettable

Slide 32

Richard’s opening soliloquy

Now is the winter of our discontent

Made glorious summer by this son of York;

And all the clouds that low’r’d upon our house

In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.

Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths,

Our bruised arms hung up for monuments,

Our stern alarums chang’d to merry meetings,

Slide 33

Richard’s opening soliloquy

Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.

Grim-visag’d War hath smooth’d his wrinkled front,

And now, in stead of mounting barbed steeds

To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,

He capers nimbly in a lady’s chamber

To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.

Slide 34

Richard’s opening soliloquy

But I, that am not shap’d for sportive tricks,

Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;

I, that am rudely stamp’d, and want love’s majesty

To strut before a woman ambling nymph;

I, that am curtail’d of this fair proportion,

Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,

Deform’d, unfinish’d, sent before my time

Slide 35

Richard’s opening soliloquy

Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,

And that so lamely and unfashionable

That dogs bark at me as I halt be them--

Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,

Have no delight to pass away the time,

Unless to see my shadow in the sun

And descant on my own deformity.

Slide 36

Richard’s opening soliloquy

And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover

To entertain these fair well-spoken days,

I am determined to prove a villain

And hate the idle pleasures of these days.

(1.1.1-31)

Slide 37

Richard’s opening soliloquy

Rhetorical fireworks - show Richard’s

self-conscious wit

Pleasure in patterns

taste for performance

Sweeping contrasts

war > peace, Lancaster > York, winter > summer

Stichomythia - he brags to his adversaries

tells Queen Elizabeth he will marry his daughter, whose husband he has killed

Slide 38

Richard

An actor

Also a kind of artist/playwright who writes a script to win the crown

Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous (1.1.33)

Creature of great yet perverted imagination

his descendant - Iago in Othello

We admire his wicked creativity and use of words - yet condemn his evil deeds