After all, our federal leadership must be pretty bad to make Richard III look like a better alternative. Richard is conniving, bloody, scheming, and ruthless...but at least he's intelligent and witty. He makes us laugh with him instead of at him. He craves power and the crown for its own sake, but he recognizes that urge within himself and smiles wryly at his own evil. As evil as he is, he's not a narcissist, because he can admit to himself what he is. A narcissist has no sense of self and constantly requires validation from others; Richard requires none of that. Just give him the crown and the throne. (In truth, the real Richard most likely was a fairly pious man who donated money to religious and educational institutions. One wonders what kind of leader he would have made had not Henry Tudor arrived on England's shores. What would history say then?)
I can't tell if it's comforting to read this play and realize once again that jockeying for leadership and power looks much the same now as it ever has. But there are fewer curses today, which seems a shame. So for this entry, brief as it is, I'll leave you with one of the greatest curses in the English language, the old Queen Margaret's maledictions towards those who led to her downfall:
QUEEN MARGARET
What were you snarling all before I came,
Ready to catch each other by the throat,
And turn you all your hatred now on me?
Did York's dread curse prevail so much with heaven?
That Henry's death, my lovely Edward's death,
Their kingdom's loss, my woful banishment,
Could all but answer for that peevish brat?
Can curses pierce the clouds and enter heaven?
Why, then, give way, dull clouds, to my quick curses!
If not by war, by surfeit die your king,
As ours by murder, to make him a king!
Edward thy son, which now is Prince of Wales,
For Edward my son, which was Prince of Wales,
Die in his youth by like untimely violence!
Thyself a queen, for me that was a queen,
Outlive thy glory, like my wretched self!
Long mayst thou live to wail thy children's loss;
And see another, as I see thee now,
Deck'd in thy rights, as thou art stall'd in mine!
Long die thy happy days before thy death;
And, after many lengthen'd hours of grief,
Die neither mother, wife, nor England's queen!
Rivers and Dorset, you were standers by,
And so wast thou, Lord Hastings, when my son
Was stabb'd with bloody daggers: God, I pray him,
That none of you may live your natural age,
But by some unlook'd accident cut off!
RICHARD
Have done thy charm, thou hateful wither'd hag!
QUEEN MARGARET
And leave out thee? stay, dog, for thou shalt hear me.
If heaven have any grievous plague in store
Exceeding those that I can wish upon thee,
O, let them keep it till thy sins be ripe,
And then hurl down their indignation
On thee, the troubler of the poor world's peace!
The worm of conscience still begnaw thy soul!
Thy friends suspect for traitors while thou livest,
And take deep traitors for thy dearest friends!
No sleep close up that deadly eye of thine,
Unless it be whilst some tormenting dream
Affrights thee with a hell of ugly devils!
Thou elvish-mark'd, abortive, rooting hog!
Thou that wast seal'd in thy nativity
The slave of nature and the son of hell!
Thou slander of thy mother's heavy womb!
Thou loathed issue of thy father's loins!
Thou rag of honour! thou detested--
RICHARD
Margaret.
QUEEN MARGARET
Richard! (I.iii.)
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| Seattle Shakespeare Company, Kate Wisniewski as Queen Margaret in an all-female production, 2018. |
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