Tuesday, September 25, 2018
Richard III: Conversation (Act I, Scenes III & IV)
Because I was away from the play for four days (the tome was too heavy to take camping), I'm undoubtedly behind the rest of you A-plus students. I did manage to finish the reading assignment yesterday afternoon, but I have not yet found space to begin inventing a response. I hope eventually to add my imagined speech to the comments, but I'm going to ask you to start by leaving yours. Maybe, after sharing your lines or sentences, you could add a few words about why or how this character came to you. Did specific words or images trigger the idea? Were you intrigued by the idea of the silent entourage (servants, tutors, fools) that might accompany a royal household? Did you want a clash of voices or eras? Did you hear parallels with other literary works?
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Queen Margaret’s Lady’s Maid Speaks
(Richard III, 1.3, after Q. Margaret’s exit)
Madame soon plays the harpy, too much aggriev’d,
Your litany of wrongs is not by most believed.
Though not without some cause. But you and I know, lady,
Pointy truth is often blent with prickled mischief shady.
Too often shrewish, my lady’s message, loud and shrill
is not fairly heard. They paint you (as they often will)
a fishwife--rough chapp’d, red-faced, a blowsy scold:
Your harsher words, unvarnished, seem too bold.
Enough! If you would speak fair, then fairly heard you’d be!
This clanging clamour does not suit you: such as we
Cannot hope to make our suitors listen to cold reason.
A honeyed sauce is better than much pepper in its season.
New-widowed Lady Anne and randy Gloucester—mark them well:
Before too long, one, or both, are hot-riding straight to hell.
*This "silent" and invented character came to me because there are (so far) three very outspoken women in the play, and none of them have (as yet) a check on them. Yes, the men --especially Gloucester--tell these ladies to hush, but they persist. I like women who are outspoken and who persist, but it seems unrealistic that there's no other women who attempt to temper their temper! So, I was thinking about Juliet's Nurse, and the lady's maid to Catherine in HV...most lead females have a Duenna or maid or some other female who represents the "acceptable" views and that act as a type of foil. That said, I was also thinking about the national outrage playing out in the media, reflecting on women who didn't speak up/speak out until now, and for the very reasons they are encountering now: they are not taken seriously or believed. It frustrates me, and I see that Q. Margaret is frustrated, as is Elizabeth and Lady Anne!
*edit: as ARE Elizabeth and Lady Anne.
Ugh. I need more coffee.
This is delightful, Carlene, just wonderful. I love line 4. The phrase "hot-riding" at the end of the couplet is a fun combination, too. An improvement upon the play.
The So-Called “Grim Ferryman Which Poets Write Of” Responds to Clarence
I have a name, you know. They’re saying these days that dreams,
the kind where they get you, the kind that hollow out
your noodle, that it’s the obvious putting on a flicker show.
Like you shouldn’t have had that meal or said no to that date,
I dunno man just less about what you were saying
-- “perpetrated” darkness or whatever. Anyway, I was writing
to say that length of dreams isn’t really my thing. I’m a sailor
okay This isn’t hobby time for me I got mine. Maybe your life
Is your life and that’s all you’re ever gonna be about it.
Consider maybe nobody meets you at the shore.
Consider maybe there is no shore.
One thing an old water taxi knows
-- we’ve been in business since
The first hunger pang.
I was interested by the canon in dialogue here (characters being aware of common poetic motifs,) and also the idea of the ruling class being in fear or awe of mythological figures representing life and death that typically hold the jobs of commoners: carpenters and ferrymen, each with their own respective kingdoms.
A Rat Considers a Mysteriously Full Butt of Malmsey
Bumble bumble bumble and now these murtherers yacketing over who’s a better man, but what is making this wine scent the air so delightfully? Ten minutes of bloody Clarence marinating can’t account for the fragrance, unless he had a saint’s finger in his clutch. Oak is tough on the teeth, or I’d have him out on the flagstones by dawn. Alas, then, I must survive on odor, and the lees in his flagon. Still, my fleas and slick tail salute his soul, poor sod. He was not an excellent pirate, but he obeyed his brothers. And every litter needs its foot soldiers.
***
In a play full of lurkers and dissemblers, a rat seemed like a natural fit. And that butt of malmsey is the stuff of nightmares
.
OMG I'm loving this whole thing. Really, Dawn..."every litter needs its foot soldiers"--that is the stuff of memory!
...And Nat..."consider maybe nobody meets you at the shore"--that is the darkness at the bottom of the well. So terrifyingly alone.
still working on something that may or may not happen as I envisioned it
enjoying what I've read from everyone
[Previous deleted comment was just an accidental double post. I am not censoring your imaginations.]
Glad that you did delete it I couldn't figure out what to do!! :-)
"So full of dismal terror was the time"
Calm thyself good soul, tis but a dream
and awakened, thee is still alive.
Yet heed, for dreams are stuff of portent.
Take care to guard thy tongue, guard thy
body, guard thy space. For all is not
as it should be. Leary of all creatures
shouldest thou be. For evil times are
these and much have your mark upon them.
Yet, a future may yet be thine if
care and fortune rest with thee.
I thought of this inner voice as the premonition voice that nags and can be a warning or an affirmation.
Then here, unexpectedly, is Augustine’s pear tree, come down the centuries to be plucked by you, its fruit the blade of your knife slid in we do not know how far except that it was far enough. It is the same wanton sinful act Augustine said the destruction of the pears was. This we know from your hesitation and being on the verge of not, before something changed, and so your final, terrible command, the last Clarence would ever hear, words perhaps whispered in his ear, “Look behind you, my lord.” And so he will ever be returning to you, the dead, a night ghost come by day, bones perhaps polished in a butt of malmsey, still turning for you that final turn, and weighing whatever is the weight of unatonable sin.
Meant to be a pastiche of (and brazenly borrowing directly from) W. G. Sebald's narrator in The Emigrants.
Carlene -- I think one could write an entire play entirely comprised of the whispers in the halls from those attending to the court. I was also struck by the language of Q. Margaret and Anne; Their conversations with Richard, Gloucester are full of the kind of bare-fisted declarations that read like a rap battle-- and Richard isn't the one dropping mics.
Dawn -- "Clarence marinating can’t account for the fragrance, unless he had a saint’s finger in his clutch." I was discussing introduction to tragedy with my World Literature class, and we were talking about how the people we're meant to sympathize with are not all that sympathetic because of either A. Lack of redeeming qualities or B. Lack of background information for us to invest and care. I'm wondering what amount of pity and fear was intended to be purged from the audience with Clarence? Does a Clarence amount to a Duncan? What's the exchange rate?
Ruth -- It seems that most of the characters have this sense of "premonition" in their voice. Sometimes I wonder which instances are for the benefit of the audience and/or if most are highly perceptive but are overruled by their own pride or fear.
David -- "The Destruction of the Pears" is a fitting metaphor and subtitle for all of this War of the Roses hubub. RE: "Look behind you..." Yes, if only he had sooner. Home is where the hatred is.
All these responses are amazing. Nate your questioning of whether "premonition" is for the audience or the character makes me want to explore that more throughout this play. I wanted to provide a separate indiviual voice for the allegorical character of Premonition. I wondered what it would look like, how it would walk, what it would wear, how it would make an entrance, also when. Dreams are so often a premonition, warning, or harbinger; however, I wanted a character to provide the slap in the face too.
Characters we like and intensely dislike are so intriguing in literature as in life.
Clearly, I do not need to facilitate this conversation. You all are amazing!
David--you closet Jesuit, you. LOL
Nate, your insights amuse and intrigue me.
Dawn, enjoy the chance to just hang out and post!!
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