#MyPlayToday ... Richard III
Had I read the play before? Yes
Had I seen the play before? Yes
I spent possibly the laziest Saturday of recorded time today with Shakespeare's fantastic, malicious bottled spider. My draw of Richard III for today's #MyPlayToday couldn't have come at a greater time; the play is currently (literally, as I type this) riding the wave of Cumberfandom with an adaptation on BBC2.
'Let me put in your minds, if you forget,
what you have been ere now, and what you are;
Withal, what I have been, and what I am.'
R3 1.3.131-4
I have read the play rather recently and my memories of the only production I have seen are still fresh from last year's Edinburgh Festival Fringe (a wonderful production with a devilishly charismatic Richard, almost allowing me to forgive a rather pantomime-halloweenish Margaret). The character of Richard, too, is fresh in my mind having been hooked to the BBC's sword-a-minute adaptation of Henry VI Parts 1, 2, and 3.
What struck me in the face with this play today is the sheer volume of parallelism. Richard III is peopled with echoes, which makes it feel (however begrudgingly I admit to the benefits of playing them in a so called 'Wars of the Roses cycle') like a culmination haunted by its predecessors. Structurally, linguistically, characterlogically; everything is met at some point with its own mirror image. To crack the whip of this poor point, not just within this play. What links Anne of Richard III and Pheobe of As You Like It? As I learnt today, the phrase 'I will/would not by thy executioner'.
'No beast so fierce but knows some touch of pity.'
R3 1.2.71
R3 1.2.71
I haven't yet seen the Hollow Crown adaptation, but reading the play today, I was revelling in the thought of seeing Sophie Okonedo play this Margaret of Anjou. Richard III's Margaret has a new colour washed on her character canvas and emerges structurally as very much a witching 'prophetess' (a name by which she is evoked repeatedly), whose frequent and violent lamentations both threaten and urge the play's teleology. She became a visual motif of misfortune for me, as if she were to jig malevolently across the stage in my mind's eye whenever another character was sentenced to death.
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| This looks like a job for my lovely old complete works |
As for my day, well, it could not have been less Machiavellian. After a mojito-heavy merry meeting last night, I devoted this pyjama clad day to reading and thereby convincing my wonderful house mates that post-dissertation can still look like work. Richard's bloody climb to the throne was not so starkly paralleled in my day, in which the most ambitious climb I undertook was my stairs.
One entirely random thought/question the play inspired of me today:
WHAT is a 'cacodemon'?! (1.3.144)
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