Twenty-nine facts about Richard III
"we all demand reparation for early wounds to our narcissism"
As usual, this is all taken from the Cambridge and Arden editions. If you want to join the book club meeting about Richard III, this Sunday at 19.00 UK time, become a paid subscriber.
The Arden editor writes: “Uniquely for Shakespeare, Richard III begins with the protagonist’s soliloquy about his discontent.”
Richard III is an early play. It can’t have been written before 1587, as it relies on the edition of Holinshed from that year. Sir James Blunt may be a compliment to a man who was knighted in 1598. There are echoes of Marlowe (“despair and die”), which suggests a date of 1592.
Richard III has always been popular. There were six quartos before 1623 (the year of the Folio) and two after.
There is no sub-plot. It is a classic Freytag’s pyramid.
Richard’s speech at V.iii—Give me another horse/ Bind up my wounds—has been seen as the beginning of modern tragedy. It is personality, not fate, that kills Richard.
The Cambridge editor writes: “By electing to remain himself, Richard insists on free will in the face of determinism… Richard assumes he predestined identity as his own choice.” (The whole play can be compared to Coriolanus, which I will be doing later on.)
Like Richard, Macbeth is a villain in the role of king and hero. Richard says, “I am in / So far in blood that sin will pluck on sin.”1 Macbeth says, “I am in blood / Stepped so far, that I should wade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o’er.”2 Some people see similarities between the witches of Macbeth and the women of Richard III.
Stories of Richard’s villainy originated in his own time. An Italian priest wrote about him as a usurper in 1483. This isn’t Tudor propaganda (it comes two years before the Battle of Bosworth). We don’t really know enough to say what was propaganda and what was not.
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