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Title: Richard III (The New Folger Library Shakespeare) by Barbara Mowat, Paul Werstine, William Shakespeare ISBN: 0671722840 Publisher: Washington Square Pr Pub. Date: January, 1996 Format: Mass Market Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $3.99 Amazon Price(USD): $3.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.2
Rating: 5
Summary: Evil at it's most chilling!
Comment: Richard III is the most well crafted satanic character in all of Shakespeare's writing. What can get frightening is that you see his evil, and yet you like him. The play is dramatically frightening from one scene to the next. To this day, I never could forget the scene where Hastings is sentenced to death or when Richard is haunted by the 11 ghosts. But the virtuous Henry VII also offers captivating passages (especially his passage that announces the end of the War of the Roses.) It is also interesting to see how carefully Shakespeare had to handle Henry VII, seing his granddaughter Elizabeth was in the audience. To be sure, Richard III is blamed for several things he did not do. The dramatic irony is that whatever he was innocent of, all the circumstancial evidence says he murdered his nephews.(Rumors that he killed them continued to spread like fire. Not only did he start losing England's loyalty, but many of his own followers in a rage abandoned him and joined Henry VII. France began to humiliate Richard by broadcasting official accusations and Richard never so much as denied having done it. If he could have produced the princes, his troubles would have been over.)This one vile deed made it possible for Shakespeare to make Richard this monster from hell and convincingly pile a slew of vile deeds upon him of which he was innocent. But all that aside, women such as Richard's furious mother and the raging former Queen Margaret add to the drama and chills. The gradual unfolding of Margaret's curses adds a charming orginizational bonus to this masterpiece. If you want to enjoy this play all the more, make sure you read "3 Henry VI" first. Richard's demonic nature is heavily prepared in this preceeding play.
Rating: 4
Summary: "Elven marked abortive rooting hog"
Comment: Shakespeare portrays King Richard III as a hunchbacked thoroughly evil man. While based upon the historical Richard III, the play is a dramatization. Although classed as a history, remember that Shakespeare's histories aren't historically accurate biographies. Richard is a power-hungry brother of a king who murders, schemes, marries, and plots to usurp the throne from rightful heirs. Richard gets his due when he meets Henry Tudor on the field of battle and the reign of the Yorkist kings comes to an end. Written under the rule of a Tudor monarch (Elizabeth I), the play paints the brutal Richard in an especially unfavorable light. After all, the rise of the Tudors depended upon the death of Richard III. The treatment of women in the play has been criticized, especially the speed under which Anne accepts Richard III -- with her dead father in law in the scene, no less. The play compresses 14 years or so of real history into 5 acts. It is hard to go wrong with Shakespeare. A good but dark read.
Rating: 4
Summary: The perfect dramatic villain
Comment: "Richard III" is a fun play. It has some great lines like "True hope is swift and flies with swallow's wings/Kings it makes gods and meaner creatures kings" (not said by the title character, though) and of course "A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!", the line that committed many men to the Richard III ward of Monty Python's Hospital for Overacting. But it also showcases the life and times of one of the meanest men ever to hit the stage: Richard, Duke of Gloucester, unlawful heir to the throne of England.
Richard's outward appearance is unfortunate -- he has a crooked back, is unlucky in love, and dogs bark at him -- but it's his inward personality that makes him unpleasant. He's cruel, selfish, manipulative, hot-tempered -- for dramatic purposes, he makes the perfect villain. Nobody seems to like him except his cronies Catesby and Buckingham, and even Buckingham later turns against him; even his own mother despises him after she figures out what a rat he is. On the other hand, he has all the positive qualities of a fighting underdog: Rather than wallow in self-pity over his deformity, he's decisive, fearless, and motivated. Only in the last act, when he realizes that he does indeed have a "coward conscience," does his confidence begin to falter.
Richard tells the audience in the very first scene what kind of guy he is and what he's planning to do, which is ultimately to become King of England, the office held currently by his brother Edward IV. To do this, he must arrange for the deaths of his brother George the Duke of Clarence, King Edward's sons, the Lord Chamberlain, and Buckingham, done by simply dispatching his henchmen. All the while, he is continually informing the audience of his next vicious scheme, winking at us with a you-know-you-love-me-anyway impudence as though we were accomplices in his dirty deeds.
What makes Richard the perfect dramatic villain, though, is not just his wickedness, but the underhanded ways he deflects censure from the people he most wishes to impress. Watch how he plays the innocent lamb to Lady Anne, whose husband and father-in-law he murdered and whom he is trying to marry; how he rationalizes his evil deeds to Queen Elizabeth, whose sons he ordered killed and whose daughter he would like to marry after Anne dies; how he feigns piety and modesty to appear to the English people all the more deserving of the crown. I think this is the mark of Shakespeare's genius -- creating not just a bad guy, but a guy who's so bad he knows exactly how and when to pretend to be good.
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Title: The Life of Henry V (New Folger Library Shakespeare) by William Shakespeare, Barbara A. Mowat, Paul Werstine ISBN: 0671722654 Publisher: Washington Square Pub. Date: May, 1995 List Price(USD): $3.99 Amazon Price(USD): $3.99 |
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Title: The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice (New Folger Library) by William Shakespeare, Barbara A. Mowat, Paul Werstine ISBN: 0671722816 Publisher: Washington Square Pr Pub. Date: July, 1993 List Price(USD): $3.99 Amazon Price(USD): $3.99 |
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Title: Henry IV, Part 1 (New Folger Library Shakespeare) by William Shakespeare, Barbara A. Mowat, Paul Werstine ISBN: 0671722638 Publisher: Washington Square Pr Pub. Date: March, 1994 List Price(USD): $3.99 Amazon Price(USD): $3.99 |
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Title: The Tragedy of King Lear (The New Folger Library Shakespeare) by William Shakespeare, Barbara A. Mowat, Paul Werstine ISBN: 0671722727 Publisher: Washington Square Pr Pub. Date: May, 1993 List Price(USD): $3.99 Amazon Price(USD): $3.99 |
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Title: All's Well That Ends Well (New Folger Library Shakespeare) by William Shakespeare, Barbara A. Mowat, Paul Werstine ISBN: 0671722549 Publisher: Pocket Books Pub. Date: 01 May, 2001 List Price(USD): $3.99 Amazon Price(USD): $3.99 |
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