A short review, Shakespeare's Richard III
We watched a fine production of Shakespeare's Richard III recently, not the Olivier version which we had seen before. We had a Royal Shakespeare Company filmed version, staged for Theater, which was very good and not overly melodramatic like Olivier's. It was the complete version, nothing abridged, so it took two sittings.
We recommend it, because it is a Strategic Study of sorts, a Master class, on how the corruption of leadership, combined with a lethargic and backward citizenry can lead a Nation's collapse into Dictatorship and War. Ultimately, Richard sows the seeds of his own downfall, through his own megalomania, paranoia, rage, and growing insatiable thirst for Blood to keep the Crown which he has schemed and murdered to obtain.
We recommend it, because it is a Strategic Study of sorts, a Master class, on how the corruption of leadership, combined with a lethargic and backward citizenry can lead a Nation's collapse into Dictatorship and War. Ultimately, Richard sows the seeds of his own downfall, through his own megalomania, paranoia, rage, and growing insatiable thirst for Blood to keep the Crown which he has schemed and murdered to obtain.
In the end, he self destructs by turning against himself those closest to him, those who enabled him and put him on the throne, because he began to question their loyalty. The collapse and defections of his own inner circle created the opening for a resistance force to assemble, and overthrow him.
I should interject that Shakespeare did take some liberties with the historical Richard, for purposes of dramatic effect, and to strengthen the punch of the polemics he was making for educational purposes. Shakespeare's Richard was dissimilar from real life Richard, though he was still a disreputable character.
You will see in the course of the play the similarities with our current self appointed "King". Especially the Malignant personality disorder, which enables him to put on a false persona, to manipulate, seduce, and deceive, to cover his actual self serving intentions to use or destroy people to gain illegitimate power.
(Spoiler Alert!!) Watch the balcony scene in which Richard, holding a Bible, tells the People assembled that he doesn't want the Crown, so he can live a humble spiritual life as befitting a deeply religious Christian. (After he has committed multiple murders and seduced the widow of one that he had killed!) Then he calls them all back and "grudgingly" accepts the Crown. Doesn't it remind us of Trump's obscene pandering to his Evangelical base, and the coterie of "Christian" Vampires that advise his White House political team? Richard's gift is his ability to use sincere words and contrived emotions to mask his true self, which follows from his early metaphorical decision to have a Tailor make up a custom fitted wardrobe to hide his Hunchback, withered Arm and club foot. He revels in his own vanity, his belief that he will always outsmart everyone, because he knows how to fool people with false appearance, sincerity, and emotion.
His downfall, failure as it were, was his inability to foresee a crisis which would strip away the illusions, fakery and demagoguery, and bare him as the ignoble "foul Toad" he truly was. He could not lie or dissemble his way through political or social crisis so powerful, that it forced the people to confront their own foolish willingness to be seduced, made passive, or fearful, because the failure of the State as a whole put their entire Posterity in jeopardy.
The beauty of Shakespeare's Plays of course was in the development of the language, the high level of philosophy and statecraft throughout, and that it was accessible to the public at large to lift their sensibilities from the drudgery of daily life. Most enjoyable is the thought of the then Queen, Elizabeth R, sitting front row center at the main Theater, Stratford on Avon, watching these plays performed. Much of what Shakespeare was doing had the intent to educate and change her. England was emerging from a Civil conflict as a great power, but with an uncertain future, due to the fact the Queen had not produced an heir. He was trying to show her how to address the coming succession crisis, by showing her through these plays where people and their leaders go wrong, and how they can choose the best path. The foibles and flaws, pettiness and shortsightedness of the characters in the plays, were also the Queens own. He could show her this part of herself on stage, without losing his head, and making her laugh at herself in the process. And, he gave the same gift to the rest of the People assembled in the audience as well. In that sense, you could say that Shakespeare (who DiD exist, and WAS himself, no one else) is the Founding Father of everything that has been good about Modern England.
The English poet, Percy B. Shelley once said that "Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the World". What he meant by that, is that in times of profound crisis, revolutionary times, people will reject the archaic elements of "the old normal", in search of profound and higher ideas. What Shelley called "profound and impassioned conceptions respecting man and nature". That is the beauty of going back to Shakespeare. That is the upside of the crisis we have now, that it can force us to rediscover those things we once knew and valued, to confront our own flaws and foibles, learn from our errors and build something new. That would be the hope, in any event.,
