Now is the winter of our discontent

Dali's tribute to Sir Laurence of Olivier's Richard III

I saw this play my first year of college as a requirement of a fun summer session History of Theatre class at UF. The guy who played Richard was one of the TAs in the class, and was quite remarkable. I enjoyed it much more than I thought I would, and all the essential scenes (the wooing of Anne, the murder of Clarence, the ghosts on the field of battle) stuck out even though, at the time, I had no background information about the play whatsoever.

The first 41 lines of Richard III are possibly the most famous first 41 lines in the history of drama. I wasn't even thinking of that when I stared at the seemingly endless mass of words before me. It wasn't a terribly difficult decision to make--it is a glorious statement of a soliloquy and in a play full of memorable moments ("A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!"), it still stands out as the epitome of a (flawed and twisted) heart unpacked with words.

INTIMIDATION ALERT!

Keep calm and carry on, Caity. Time to break out some technique: tap into the code of the prose, aka, iambic pentameter. By identifying the underlying rhythm of each line, I found the words stuck in my brain like song lyrics, and the task became much easier.

now IS the WINter OF our DISconTENT
made GLORious SUMmer BY this SON of YORK

Now we're cooking with lime.

Following the meter, this modern reader often tripped on syllables ("glorious" is three syllables, no?) that were probably not there 400 years ago. Therefore, something like "glorious" would be crammed into "GLOR-yus" and the difference between "supposed" and "suppos'd" became glaringly obvious after a while. I love English. It's so achingly anal sometimes.

So I tackled this bugger, and though it was a mother of a bastard while I was wrestling with it, it's now one of my favorite ones to recite aloud. Its potential for scene chewing is evident in the words, and for an untrained solo actress like me, it makes the speech that much easier to remember.

Richard III, Act I, Sc. I

Gloucester: 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 wreathes,
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 barbed 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.
Dive, thoughts, down to my soul: here
Clarence comes...