Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader may, or may not, begin a selection he is calling “Friday Villainy.” In this feature he will highlight some particularly villainous quotation, poem, photo, prose, or poetry that strikes his fancy. This week, an exerpt from Shakespeare’s Richard III. Here is Richard, Duke of Gloucester’s soliloquy after pitching a little woo in the direction of Lady Anne, wife of the recently deceased-at-the-hands-of-Richard Edward, Prince of Wales.
Was ever woman in this humour woo’d?
Was ever woman in this humour won?
I’ll have her; but I will not keep her long.
What! I, that kill’d her husband and his father,
To take her in her heart’s extremest hate,
With curses in her mouth, tears in her eyes,
The bleeding witness of her hatred by;
Having God, her conscience, and these bars
against me,
And I nothing to back my suit at all,
But the plain devil and dissembling looks,
And yet to win her, all the world to nothing!
Ha!
Hath she forgot already that brave prince,
Edward, her lord, whom I, some three months since,
Stabb’d in my angry mood at Tewksbury?
A sweeter and a lovelier gentleman,
Framed in the prodigality of nature,
Young, valiant, wise, and, no doubt, right royal,
The spacious world cannot again afford
And will she yet debase her eyes on me,
That cropp’d the golden prime of this sweet prince,
And made her widow to a woful bed?
On me, whose all not equals Edward’s moiety?
On me, that halt and am unshapen thus?
My dukedom to a beggarly denier,
I do mistake my person all this while:
Upon my life, she finds, although I cannot,
Myself to be a marvellous proper man.
I’ll be at charges for a looking-glass,
And entertain some score or two of tailors,
To study fashions to adorn my body:
Since I am crept in favour with myself,
Will maintain it with some little cost.
But first I’ll turn yon fellow in his grave;
And then return lamenting to my love.
Shine out, fair sun, till I have bought a glass,
That I may see my shadow as I pass.
If you are like your Maximum Leader you may prefer to see Shakespeare as opposed to just reading him. Your Maximum Leader will commend for your viewing pleasure Ian McKellan’s Richard III. While this is a wonderful and innovative production, for the sake of running time about 40 minutes of the play is cut out. Still worth your time though.
Carry on.
