Every man’s conscience is a thousand swords,
To fight against this guilty homicide.
-Earl of Oxford
King Richard The Third Act V, Scene ii Line 17
First of all - what a great line! Every once in a while we really hit one, don't we!
Now, I believe that the guilty homicide Oxford is talking about is killing King Richard. So apparently Oxford has some misgivings about the killing and he’s expressing this with the image of a thousand swords. That’s a lot of swords. This killing, by the way, has yet to happen so that Oxford is being hesitant about going forward. The rest of the group here, Herbert, Blunt, and Richmond, are quick to convince Oxford that there’s nothing to worry about and that the rest of the country is behind them. And they do, indeed, move forward.
So, irrespective of this scene and what’s going on in it, the image of one’s conscience as a thousand swords is a fabulous one. I can think of plenty of times when I let my mind, my conscience, rule me into an action (or inaction), and it would seem that referring to my conscience in these instances as a thousand swords is a pretty accurate image.
Whilst Oxford was speaking figuratively, here’s a more literal interpretation of the Earl of Oxford feelings: it's a thousand literal swords (well, they’re actually rifles and a few bayonets, not swords, and probably somewhat less than a thousand, but okay). Anyway, WP and I had been discussing this scene and the Earl of Oxford's 'thousand swords' comment as we walked through the Oslo WWII Resistance Museum, when we came upon this display of rifles that had been put together to represent the Resistance.
So I thought, what a perfect opportunity, and I asked WP to emote the feelings that Oxford was expressing, but to combine that feeling with the feeling of the physical threat of a real thousand swords (guns).
No comments:
Post a Comment