"A king rules over willing subjects," wrote the influential sixteenth-century Scottish scholar George Buchanan, "a tyrant over unwilling." The institutions of a free society are designed to ward off those who would govern, as Buchanan put it, "Not for their country but for themselves, who take account not of the public interest but of their own pleasure." Under what circumstances, Shakespeare asked himself, do such cherished institutions, seemingly deep-rooted and impregnable, suddenly prove fragile? Why do large numbers of people knowingly accept being lied to? How does a figure like Richard III ascend to the throne?
Shakespeare's Richard III brilliantly develops the personality features of the aspiring tyrant already sketched in the Henry VI trilogy: the limitless self-regard, the lawbreaking, the pleasure in inflicting pain, the compulsive desire to dominate.
The ambiguity seems built into Shakespeare's conception of Richard.
Lady Anne has every reason to hate Richard, who has, as Shakespeare stages it, killed both her young husband and his father, King Henry VI. When the murderer woos her - quite literally - over Henry VI's dead body, Anne curses him, spitting in his face in a visceral expression of loathing and disgust.
Upon a time when Burbage played Richard III there was a citizen grew so far in liking with him, that before she went from the play she appointed him to come that night unto her by the name of Richard III. Shakespeare, overhearing their conclusion, went before, was entertained and at his game ere Burbage came.
The message being brought that Richard III was at the door, Shakespeare caused return to be made that William the Conqueror was before Richard III. Like most stories about celebrities, this one probably says more about those who circulated it than about those it describes.
From the start, the play seems to have aroused intense interest: first performed in 1592 or 1593, Richard III was published in quarto no fewer than five times during Shakespeare's lifetime.
https://longreads.com/2018/07/18/the-tyrant-and-his-enablers/
Shakespeare's Richard III brilliantly develops the personality features of the aspiring tyrant already sketched in the Henry VI trilogy: the limitless self-regard, the lawbreaking, the pleasure in inflicting pain, the compulsive desire to dominate.
The ambiguity seems built into Shakespeare's conception of Richard.
Lady Anne has every reason to hate Richard, who has, as Shakespeare stages it, killed both her young husband and his father, King Henry VI. When the murderer woos her - quite literally - over Henry VI's dead body, Anne curses him, spitting in his face in a visceral expression of loathing and disgust.
Upon a time when Burbage played Richard III there was a citizen grew so far in liking with him, that before she went from the play she appointed him to come that night unto her by the name of Richard III. Shakespeare, overhearing their conclusion, went before, was entertained and at his game ere Burbage came.
The message being brought that Richard III was at the door, Shakespeare caused return to be made that William the Conqueror was before Richard III. Like most stories about celebrities, this one probably says more about those who circulated it than about those it describes.
From the start, the play seems to have aroused intense interest: first performed in 1592 or 1593, Richard III was published in quarto no fewer than five times during Shakespeare's lifetime.
https://longreads.com/2018/07/18/the-tyrant-and-his-enablers/
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