Tuesday, October 24, 2017

The Play a Month Project

Image result for shakespeare richard III amazon

Last month, I re-read "Macbeth."

This month's Shakespeare play is "Richard III."

I'd forgotten the extent to which Shakespeare wastes no time in portraying him as a complete reptile. [Macbeth was a blundering amateur at villainy compared to Richard.] 

You can imagine the buzz on the streets of London after the play opened. They weren't using terms like "psychopath" in those days but they may have had something close.

And, by the way, a gem of a film is Al Pacino's "Looking for Richard."

2 comments:

Dan in Philly said...

An English professor I had once said in class that Shakespeare's Richard III was so compelling it actually made it hard for historians to look at the real one honestly. Such is the nature of the greatest writer who ever lived.

Michael Wade said...

Daniel,

I can believe that. I have heard that there is a revisionist group of historians who argue that Richard did not kill the young princes and that he was not that bad a ruler.

Michael