The Common Reader
Shakespeare
Richard III: a close reading
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Richard III: a close reading

And an introductory mini-podcast

The short podcast recording is an overview of what I said about Richard III at the recent book club meeting. I discuss some of the main techniques in the play, some of the essential elements that make it so entertaining, and give a little context for it as part of Shakespeare’s career and development. I will experiment with recording more of these for paid subscribers who cannot come to the zoom meetings (and may record the meetings to post here). If you have questions about Richard III, put them in the comments.


I have been meaning to start a close-reading series for a while. There are some debates about what close-reading is and whether it is good. I have mixed views on both topics! But I often find that readers can be led into a false impression of the meaning of a piece of literature, or are missing many of its enjoyable pleasures, by not reading closely enough.

Literature often works by creating an overall impression through the arrangement of tropes, figures, images, words, ironies, and so on, and it is by paying attention to these things, and their patterns, that we can test our ideas about a piece of writing. If you ever wonder how do they do it?, close reading can provide some sort of answer.

I was taught to produce commentaries at university, rather than close readings, and perhaps that is the best word for what I am up to here. Maybe I’ll write separately on this idea.

I have previously written or recorded commentaries or close readings of ‘The Whitsun Weddings’, ‘An Arundel Tomb’, ‘Fire and Ice’, ‘You’re’, Housman and Dickinson, and ‘Those Winter Sundays’.

What matters for now is that we start to read Shakespeare by looking at some of the fine-workings, or the mechanisms, of his writing. We are interested in what effects he creates and how he creates them.

The text is the opening speech from Richard III. Read it, think about it, and under the paywall I will give my own commentary, to draw out some of the essential elements.

Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lour'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 changed to merry meetings,
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
Grim-visaged war hath smooth'd his wrinkled front;
And now, instead 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.
But I, that am not shaped 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 wanton ambling nymph;
I, that am curtail'd of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deformed, unfinish'd, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them;
Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time,
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun
And descant on mine own deformity:
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.
Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,
By drunken prophecies, libels and dreams,
To set my brother Clarence and the king
In deadly hate the one against the other:
And if King Edward be as true and just
As 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: here
Clarence comes.

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