Sunday, 31 January 2010

Now is the winter of our disco

I have not written anything for a while, but I have been watching more Shakespeare. I have seen The Tempest, and I have seen Henry vi Part 3, and I have seen Richard iii.

Henry vi and Richard iii are about mannys fighting about who should be king. Henry vi is king but Edward iv takes over from him, then his little brother Richard kills lots of mannys to become King Richard iii, but he dies at the end and another manny is king after him. They are long plays but that is what happens in them.

Richard is a good baddy. He is good because he pretends to be a goody but he is really a baddy all the time. He even fools people who know he is a baddy into thinking he is really a goody. But he isn't, he is a baddy. He tells the audience that he is a baddy but not anyone else. He also goes "mew" like a cat. Here is the bit where he goes mew at the start:

"Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;
Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
Grim-visaged war hath smooth'd his wrinkled front;
And now, instead of mounting barded steeds
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,
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;
I, that am rudely stamp'd, and want love's majesty
To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;
I, that am curtail'd of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deformed, unfinish'd, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them;
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.
Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,
By drunken prophecies, libels and dreams,
To set my brother Clarence and the king
In deadly hate the one against the other:
And if King Edward be as true and just
As I am subtle, false and treacherous,
This day should Clarence closely be mew'd up,
About a prophecy, which says that 'G'
Of Edward's heirs the murderer shall be."

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