Mojo, The Bard, & Me

 

Today’s Totally Random Line(s)

 

With them, the two brave bears, Warwick and Montague,

That in their chains fetter’d the kingly lion,

And made the forest tremble when they roar'd.

 

King Edward

Henry the Sixth Part III                Act V, Scene iii, Line 10

  

Edward the Fourth is sitting on his throne, the throne that was

Re-purchased with the blood of enemies.
What valiant foemen, like to autumn’s corn,
Have we mow'd down, in tops of all their pride!

And then he goes on to list a bunch of this autumn harvest, ending with Warwick and Montague.

This is the end of the play, with Edward having finally defeated Henry VI. There’s one play left in this series of Will’s history plays that deals with the Wars of the Roses, and that’s Richard the Third.

If nothing else, picking and writing on these random lines for the last six years has taught me a lot of English history. Will did a pretty good job of covering everything from Edward III up through and including Richard III. It’s a pretty interesting period, which is obviously why Will picked it to write on. I wonder if any of the other guys writing plays back then did any history plays?

Of course, there is a bit of a need to sift out the truths and the dramatizations. I read a book early on (I think it was called Shakespeare’s Kings?) that delineated just that, the fact from fiction, out of Will’s history plays. It seems he did a pretty good job overall, but he took a lot of liberties along the way as well, and apparently Richard III may have been one of those liberties. Will paints Richard as pretty much bad to the bone, scheming to make himself king from the very giddyap. He’s Edward IV’s brother, and he shows up later in today’s scene talking to himself about how he’s going to blast Edward’s harvest. In truth, historians say that Richard was a faithful brother to Edward IV. It wasn’t until Edward died suddenly that Richard took it upon himself to take over, eliminating Edward’s two young sons in the process. So yah, he was no angel, but perhaps not quite the devil that Will painted him as.

But a better devil makes a better story, doesn’t it?

A pic of a better devil? I got nothin'.