your tears are all the pay I'll ever need
Day #5: Your favorite villain
After two days of difficult choices, here is another easy one! Shakespeare may have written a few characters even scarier -- Iago, for instance -- but none of his villains are quite so purely entertaining as Richard III.
Now, I know it's basically impossible to talk about Richard III without being told that DESPITE WHAT EVERYONE THINKS, he was Actually A Very Nice Man Who Was Not At All Deformed, Thank You Very Much Thomas More, You Heretic-Flogging Bastard, even though people who genuinely think otherwise are quite rare nowadays, so in the interests of Not Having That Discussion, a few ground rules:
1. Richard III did not do all the things he does in the play, but he was probably a dick anyway, because they all were.
2. More's Richard III is much more complex than people think.
3. Shakespeare's Richard III is not about making the Tudors look good or the Yorkists look bad. It's 1593; that's done and dusted. The bigger concern is what happens next.
Anyway! Richard III! The thing that is so much fun about Richard III is that, in addition to bravura performances like seducing Lady Anne over the bleeding corpse of her father-in-law, whom, let us not forget, he killed, along with Anne's husband, and like getting the entire council to pretend to think that his withered arm is the result of witchcraft, he just enjoys it so damn much, and it's completely contagious. Like in the "in this humour wooed" speech, when he says this?
What! I, that kill'd her husband and his father,
To take her in her heart's extremest hate,
With curses in her mouth, tears in her eyes,
The bleeding witness of her hatred by;
Having God, her conscience, and these bars against me,
And I nothing to back my suit at all,
But the plain devil and dissembling looks,
And yet to win her, all the world to nothing!
Ha!
And that little "ha" at the end -- it's like "I can't hear you over the sound of how awesome I am," in one little syllable. You want to watch out when Richard III breaks out the interjections. When he says "tut," someone's going to die.
So Richard III seduces us probably even more effectively than Lady Anne, because we think we're in on the joke. And yet. One of the greatest stage productions I've ever seen was the 2001 RSC production, which is the one that got revived for the 2007-08 Histories that some of you lucky bastards on the flist got to see (NB I HATE YOU ALL), and during the scene when Richard maneuvers the citizens into proclaiming him king, they turned up the house lights and we all exclaimed "Long live Richard, England's royal king!" with gusto and then spent intermission examining our consciences. This was on tour in Ann Arbor; later the actors from the company who came to speak to my Shakespeare class said that the UK audiences never responded (no wonder Buckingham had looked so gleeful when we did). They chalked this up to British reserve, but then added, "Of course, you did elect George Bush..."
I saw a production a while back which one-upped them, actually, by not only doing that to end the first half, but also ending the play by leading the audience in a chant of "Long live Richmond," &c. It was pretty effective. Also Richmond looked a lot like Simon Tam.
Day #1: Your favorite play
Day #2: Your favorite character
>Day #3: Your favorite hero
Day #4: Your favorite heroine
Day #5: Your favorite villain
Day #6: Your favorite villainess
Day #7: Your favorite clown
Day #8: Your favorite comedy
Day #9: Your favorite tragedy
Day #10: Your favorite history
Day #11: Your least favorite play
Day #12: Your favorite scene
Day #13: Your favorite romantic scene
Day #14: Your favorite fight scene
Day #15: The first play you read
Day #16: Your first play you saw
Day #17: Your favorite speech
Day #18: Your favorite dialogue
Day #19: Your favorite movie version of a play
Day #20: Your favorite movie adaptation of a play
Day #21: An overrated play
Day #22: An underrated play
Day #23: A role you've never played but would love to play
Day #24: An actor or actress you would love to see in a particular role
Day #25: Sooner or later, everyone has to choose: Hal or Falstaff?
Day #26: Your favorite couple
Day #27: Your favorite couplet
Day #28: Your favorite joke
Day #29: Your favorite sonnet
Day #30: Your favorite single line
After two days of difficult choices, here is another easy one! Shakespeare may have written a few characters even scarier -- Iago, for instance -- but none of his villains are quite so purely entertaining as Richard III.
Now, I know it's basically impossible to talk about Richard III without being told that DESPITE WHAT EVERYONE THINKS, he was Actually A Very Nice Man Who Was Not At All Deformed, Thank You Very Much Thomas More, You Heretic-Flogging Bastard, even though people who genuinely think otherwise are quite rare nowadays, so in the interests of Not Having That Discussion, a few ground rules:
1. Richard III did not do all the things he does in the play, but he was probably a dick anyway, because they all were.
2. More's Richard III is much more complex than people think.
3. Shakespeare's Richard III is not about making the Tudors look good or the Yorkists look bad. It's 1593; that's done and dusted. The bigger concern is what happens next.
Anyway! Richard III! The thing that is so much fun about Richard III is that, in addition to bravura performances like seducing Lady Anne over the bleeding corpse of her father-in-law, whom, let us not forget, he killed, along with Anne's husband, and like getting the entire council to pretend to think that his withered arm is the result of witchcraft, he just enjoys it so damn much, and it's completely contagious. Like in the "in this humour wooed" speech, when he says this?
What! I, that kill'd her husband and his father,
To take her in her heart's extremest hate,
With curses in her mouth, tears in her eyes,
The bleeding witness of her hatred by;
Having God, her conscience, and these bars against me,
And I nothing to back my suit at all,
But the plain devil and dissembling looks,
And yet to win her, all the world to nothing!
Ha!
And that little "ha" at the end -- it's like "I can't hear you over the sound of how awesome I am," in one little syllable. You want to watch out when Richard III breaks out the interjections. When he says "tut," someone's going to die.
So Richard III seduces us probably even more effectively than Lady Anne, because we think we're in on the joke. And yet. One of the greatest stage productions I've ever seen was the 2001 RSC production, which is the one that got revived for the 2007-08 Histories that some of you lucky bastards on the flist got to see (NB I HATE YOU ALL), and during the scene when Richard maneuvers the citizens into proclaiming him king, they turned up the house lights and we all exclaimed "Long live Richard, England's royal king!" with gusto and then spent intermission examining our consciences. This was on tour in Ann Arbor; later the actors from the company who came to speak to my Shakespeare class said that the UK audiences never responded (no wonder Buckingham had looked so gleeful when we did). They chalked this up to British reserve, but then added, "Of course, you did elect George Bush..."
I saw a production a while back which one-upped them, actually, by not only doing that to end the first half, but also ending the play by leading the audience in a chant of "Long live Richmond," &c. It was pretty effective. Also Richmond looked a lot like Simon Tam.
Day #1: Your favorite play
Day #2: Your favorite character
>Day #3: Your favorite hero
Day #4: Your favorite heroine
Day #5: Your favorite villain
Day #6: Your favorite villainess
Day #7: Your favorite clown
Day #8: Your favorite comedy
Day #9: Your favorite tragedy
Day #10: Your favorite history
Day #11: Your least favorite play
Day #12: Your favorite scene
Day #13: Your favorite romantic scene
Day #14: Your favorite fight scene
Day #15: The first play you read
Day #16: Your first play you saw
Day #17: Your favorite speech
Day #18: Your favorite dialogue
Day #19: Your favorite movie version of a play
Day #20: Your favorite movie adaptation of a play
Day #21: An overrated play
Day #22: An underrated play
Day #23: A role you've never played but would love to play
Day #24: An actor or actress you would love to see in a particular role
Day #25: Sooner or later, everyone has to choose: Hal or Falstaff?
Day #26: Your favorite couple
Day #27: Your favorite couplet
Day #28: Your favorite joke
Day #29: Your favorite sonnet
Day #30: Your favorite single line