And, if
King Edward be as true and just
As I am
subtle, false, and treacherous,
This day
should Clarence be closely mew’d up,
About a
prophecy, which says that G
Of
Edward’s heirs the murderer should be.
-Duke of Gloucester
King Richard III Act I, scene i Line 39
And we’re back once more to Richard III. Let’s talk about
these history plays for a minute. I think I covered some of this in a previous
post, so hopefully I’m not repeating myself too much.
Will did a bunch of history plays covering the kings from
Edward III in 1327 to Richard III in 1483. The only two kings in this period of
time that don’t have their own plays are Richard III’s immediate predecessors
Edwards IV and V, but he deals with these guys to some degree in his Henry VI Part
III and in Richard III. So he pretty much covers that whole period of 150 years
or so. His other two history plays, King John and Henry VIII are a bit
disconnected; the former taking place much earlier and the latter a bit later.
So the point I’m trying to make is that all these other plays, including
today’s play Richard III are one continuous story, historically speaking. Not
that Will is an accurate portrayer of history. If I’ve learned one thing from
reading Shakespeare’s Kings it’s that
Will is plays pretty loose with the facts when it comes to his version of
history. He’s more concerned with a good story and good drama for the stage. As
well he should be. But the problem with this is that it makes it a little
harder to tell what’s going on and keep track of all the players (and there’s a
lot of players in these nine plays!) in these plays because many times when
reading Will’s plays the easiest reference is the history of these kings.
Unfortunately though, that history doesn’t always jive with the tale that Will
is spinning.
Now what we have today is from the opening speech of Richard
III in the play King Richard the Third.
At this point Edward IV is still the king and Richard III is Richard, Duke of
Gloucester. And speaking of identifying the good guys from the bad guys (see
yesterday’s post), I think it’s pretty clear for today’s Totally Random line
that Richard, by his own admission, is not one of the good guys. The Duke of Clarence
that he’s referring to is his brother, the ‘mew’d up’ means ‘locked up’, and
the prophecy he refers to is some prophecy (I’m not sure about the back story
on the prophecy) that Edward had received that said that the murderers of
Edward’s heirs would be some guy whose name began with a ‘G’. To clarify, the
Duke of Clarence’s first name is George. And apparently it’s Richard who’s told
Edward to be wary of old Clarence AKA George.
Okay, got all that? Exactly, it really is a boatload of
info. I started putting together a chart that I could reference to keep all
these guys straight. But one thing is pretty clear: Richard III = Rat Fink. At
least we know that. We pretty much know that we’re dealing with the bad guy
today.
If you’re interested, here’s the link to an article my
daughter sent me today. It’s written by Stephen Greenblatt, so we know it’s
legit. He’s applying the lessons of Will’s King Richard the Third to the current
U.S. election. It’s pretty interesting, relatively short, and easy
reading. And he's pretty much of the same opinion as me regarding Richard III: Rat Fink.
How about this guy. He's a bad guy, isn't he?
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