Richard III

Now is the winter of our discontent

Made glorious summer by this son of York;

And all the clouds that loured upon our house

In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.

Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths,

Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,

Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.

Grim-visaged war hath smoothed his wrinkled front,

He capers nimbly in a lady’s chamber

To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.

But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks

Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;

Why, I in this weak piping time of peace

Have no delight to pass away the time,

Unless to spy my shadow in the sun

And descant on mine own deformity.

And therefore since I cannot prove a lover

To entertain these fair well-spoken days,

I am determined to prove a villain

And hate the idle pleasures of these days.

(Act 1, scene 1)

This passage, being the first lines of the novel, sets up what is to come. Here the reader sees Richard's plans to conquer the throne by any means he sees fit. A first look at Richard's selfishness is seen here along with his evilness. He need for power is also apparent here along with the reader being told about his deformity. He uses his deformity as an excuse as to why he has no need to be peaceful being that he can never have a lover. Instead of giving sympathy to Richard, it makes him seem more monstrous, because he can so happily toss aside all of the things that the rest of society cherishes such as the peacefulness. At the same time, Richard’s speech makes his true motivations seem all the more mysterious and dark. Thinking back on the play, throughout me reading it, I do not ever remember thinking about Richard's deformity. I completely forgot about it until I chose my passage for the blog. I find it odd that typically a deformity takes away some evil aspect of a person and gives them a little bit of sympathetic light. In the play however, Richard is so extremely evil, that not once did I ever give him and sympathy nor did I ever think of his deformity. It really did truly make him a more ugly person both on the inside and the outside being that he used his deformity as an excuse to be evil and not care about other people.

While reading the play, I never thought of it as a history but rather as a story. Which is good for Shakespeare and shows his great writing talents being that I learned something and did not even realize it. I also give props to Shakespeare being that he made a commentary on the time period in which he lived in. Back in the day, what Richard did was a common thing. Power was what mostly all people wanted. In the end, Shakespeare used histories as a comment on his society; especially the political aspect of society. His histories are also very blunt unlike the comedies. The hero's are clearly hero's while the villain's are the epitome of villain's. He leaves the reader at the end of the novel with a moral story of history being able to repeat itself if one becomes blind to certain things. This blindness is exactly what the character in the play were. They knew how evil Richard was, however whenever they gave him the chance to talk they forgot all about it.

I did not enjoy this play as much as the others. This is only because it is more of a visual play then one you should read. It was hard to grasp everything that was going on without seeing it visually on a stage. An example of this was when you (Mr. Klimas) had me stage the scene where all the people Richard killed came back and haunted him. It was easier to grasp the overwhelmingness of the whole scene versus reading it on paper and making up your own image in your head. History is also not exactly my favorite genre. Comedy and tragedy, I find to me more enjoyable reads.

Macbeth

"Out, damned spot; out, I say. One, two,—why, then ’tis time to do’t. Hell is murky. Fie, my lord, fie, a soldier and afeard? What need we fear who knows it when none can call our power to account? Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?" (Act IV, scene 1)

This scene is spoken by Lady Macbeth after the murder of Duncan. Earlier in the play Macbeth, her husband, believed that his hands were permanently blood stained. She rebutted this by saying that water will clean it off. Now, in the scene, she too sees blood on her hands and goes into madness from the guilt. It was also earlier where her inability to sleep was foreshadowed by the voice her husband heard while killing Duncan. Lady Macbeth's delusion of blood on her hands further the use of blood within the novel as a symbol of guilt. Her words are completely hollow at this point. Blood represents a permanent stain that symbolizes the guilt with both Lady Macbeth and Macbeth's conscious that will be with them till death.

This is your typical, perfectly labeled, tragic story. Both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth die. They both greatly suffer before their death from the guilt. They both are different people when in front of someone versus just talking among themselves. And they are both not truly happy. All of these components are what make up the label for the novel to be tragic. It is very hard for the reader to miss all the tragedy being that Shakespeare writes it on the pages. Unlike his comedy, which is underlying, tragedy forces the reader to stop and think about what is being said.

Even though I find Shakespeare's comedies more enjoyable, the novel of Macbeth was not a bad one. I had read it in fifth grade, along with seeing parts of the movie. It was nice to see what I failed to understand as a fifth grader to come to life as a senior in high school. An example of this for me was the "out spot" scene. That one always baffled me when I was younger. I just couldn't grasp the concept of why this woman was yelling at her hands for a spot to come out that wasn't even there. I never really put thought into any of this again until this year when we read the play. And now with a complete understanding in the play and its symbolism's, I can enjoy it more than I did back in the day.