Richard Iii Play Quotes

And thus I clothe my naked villainy With odd old ends stol'n out of holy writ; And seem a saint, when most I play the devil.

But then I sigh, with a piece of Scripture Tell them that God bids us to do evil for good; And thus I clothe my naked villany With odd old ends stolen out of Holy Writ; And seem a saint, when most I play the devil.

Thus I clothe my naked villainy with old odd ends, stolen forth of holy writ, and seem a saint when most I play the devil.

I don't like using the word evil because it sounds as if that's all there is to be said about the person. I don't think Richard III is evil, I don't think it's helpful to say that...Iago he's not evil. Iago didn't get the job, he thinks his wife's been unfaithful to him, he doesn't like black people, he's extremely talented and very unfulfilled and he's a wonderful liar, and he's a mischeif maker and he does some dreadful, dreadful things. But that's already interesting, isn't it? Ooh, who is this guy? But if you just say "ah oh he's evil" how can you play that? I don't know how you play an evil person.

Now that Gansey had had more than a second to think about it, he considered all the ways such a thing might have played out. He imagined Adam, ever the scientist. Ronan, ferocious and loyal and fragile. "Don't break him, Adam." Adam continued peering out the window. The only tell to the furious working of his mind was the slow twisting together of his fingers. "I'm not an idiot, Gansey." "I'm serious." Now Gansey's imagination had run ahead to imagine a future where Ronan might have to exist without him, without Declan, without Matthew, and with a freshly broken heart. "He's not as tough as he seems.

It was this: Koh demonstrating how to make a toga of a bedsheet and sending Blue and Gansey into a cluttered bedroom to change. It was Gansey politely turning his back as she undressed and then Blue turning hers--maybe turning hers. It was Blue's shoulder and her collarbone and her legs and her throat and her laugh her laugh her laugh. He couldn't stop looking at her, and here, it didn't matter, because no one here cared that they were together. Here, he could play his fingers over her fingers as they stood close, she could lean her cheek on his bare shoulder, he could hook his ankle playfully in hers, she could catch herself with an arm around his waist. Here he was unbelievably greedy for that laugh.

It was this: Gansey starting down the stairs to the kitchen, Blue starting up, meeting in the middle. It was Gansey stepping aside to let her pass, but changing his mind. He caught her arm and then the rest of her. She was warm, alive, vibrant beneath the thin cotton; he was warm, alive vibrant beneath his. Blue slid her hand over his bare shoulder and then onto his chest, her palm spread out flat on his breastbone, her fingers pressed curiously into his skin. "I thought you would be hairier," she whispered. "Sorry to disappoint. The legs have a bit more going on." "Mine too." It was this: laughing senselessly into each other's skin, playing, until it was abruptly no longer play, and Gansey stopped himself with his mouth perilously close to hers, and Blue stopped herself with her belly pressed close to his. It was this: Gansey saying, "I like you an awful lot, Blue Sargent." It was this: Blue's smile--crooked, wry, ridiculous, flustered. There was a lot of happiness tucked into the corner of that smile, and even though her face was several inches from Gansey, some of it still spilled out and got on him. She put her finger on his cheek where he knew his own smile was dimpling it, and then they took each other's hands, and they climbed back up together. It was this: this moment and no other moment, and for the first time that Gansey could remember, he knew what it would feel like to be present in his own life.

To take a modern example, let us say that Othello, Iago, Hamlet, Lear, Richard III, existed merely in the mind of Shakespeare, at the time of their conception or creation. And yet, Shakespeare also existed within each of these characters, giving them their vitality, spirit, and action. Whose is the "spirit" of the characters that we know as Micawber, Oliver Twist, Uriah Heep — is it Dickens, or have each of these characters a personal spirit, independent of their creator? Have the Venus of Medici, the Sistine Madonna, the Appollo Belvidere, spirits and reality of their own, or do they represent the spiritual and mental power of their creators? The Law of Paradox explains that both propositions are true, viewed from the proper viewpoints. Micawber is both Micawber, and yet Dickens. And, again, while Micawber may be said to be Dickens, yet Dickens is not identical with Micawber. Man, like Micawber, may exclaim: "The Spirit of my Creator is inherent within me — and yet I am not HE!" How different this from the shocking half-truth so vociferously announced by certain of the half-wise, who fill the air with their raucous cries of: "I Am God!" Imagine poor Micawber, or the sneaky Uriah Heep, crying: "I Am Dickens"; or some of the lowly clods in one of Shakespeare’s plays, grandiloquently announcing that: "I Am Shakespeare!" THE ALL is in the earth-worm, and yet the earth-worm is far from being THE ALL And still the wonder remains, that though the earth-worm exists merely as a lowly thing, created and having its being solely within the Mind of THE ALL — yet THE ALL is immanent in the earth-worm, and in the particles that go to make up the earth-worm. Can there be any greater mystery than this of "All in THE ALL; and THE ALL in All?

They all looked up sharply as the door to the back opened. Blue and Maura stepped into the waiting room as a nurse began to shuffle behind the counter. All attention immediately shifted to Blue. She had two visible stitches in her right eyebrow, pinning together the cleaned-up edges of a gouge that continued down her cheek. Faint scratches on either side of the deepest wound told the story of fingers clawing into her skin. Her right eye was squinted mostly shut, but at least it was still there. Adam could tell she was hurting. He knew he cared about her because his stomach was tingling uncomfortably just looking at her wound, the suggestion of violence scratching through him like fingers on a chalkboard. Noah had done that. Adam curled his own hand into a fist, remembering what it had felt like for it to move on its own accord. Gansey was right: Any of them could have died tonight. It was time to stop playing around. For a strange second, none of them spoke. Finally, Ronan said, "Jesus God, Sargent. Do you have stitches on your face? Bad. Ass. Put it here, you asshole." With some relief, Blue lifted her fist and bumped it against his.

The next step in imaginative emasculation is obvious: only elderly actors can play King Lear, only hunchbacks can sing Rigoletto or play King Richard III, only fat people can play or sing Falstaff, since using stage makeup and body suits to transform non-old, non-handicapped, and non-fat actors into those roles represents ageism, fat-shaming, and ableism.

You may recall – perhaps you’ve experienced this in the theatre – the bewilderingly oblique way Shakespeare tends to begin his plays, via marginal characters whom we struggle to place as they recount or anticipate some major narrative event in a conversation that begins in the middle, leaving us flailing (beginning Shakespeare’s plays at their beginning is not always the easiest place to start). Not so in Richard III. The opening stage direction in the first printed edition is ‘Enter Richard, Duke of Gloucester, solus’ – meaning alone – making it absolutely clear that not only does he open the play, he does so, uniquely, in soliloquy. He begins, that’s to say, by addressing the audience. From the outset, we are his creatures.

Even though – perhaps because – we are in no doubt about his ruthless self-interest, Richard establishes an immediate alliance from the outset. This intimacy with the audience will be carefully managed through a stream of asides and sardonic remarks, where only we know his true meaning, keeping us from forming any real attachment to any other character. The very title of the play seems to have succumbed to his charms and to endorse his ambitions. Richard, Duke of Gloucester, doesn’t actually become King Richard III until Act 4, but his play has no doubt he will get there: from the opening he is the king-in-waiting.

Certain it is that the boys disappeared. Whatever happened to them, Richard’s fatal mistake lay in failing to realize that their disappearance would be used by the Morton-Beaufort-Tudor axis as an opportunity to manoeuvre the unlikely Henry Tudor to centre stage as a challenger for the throne. Regrettably, Richard appears not to have taken sufficient regard of this threat. Thus he would not have foreseen that removing them from view, even if done for the most benign of reasons, would play right into the hands of his opponents.

Richard III was one of those plays that could repeal the law of diminishing returns; it could be enjoyed over and over again.

How does a figure like Richard III or Macbeth ascend to the throne? Such a disaster, Shakespeare suggested, could not happen without widespread complicity. His plays probe the psychological mechanisms that lead a nation to abandon its ideals and even its self-interest. Why would anyone, he asked himself, be drawn to a leader manifestly unsuited to govern, someone dangerously impulsive or viciously conniving or indifferent to the truth? Why, in some circumstances, does evidence of mendacity, crudeness, or cruelty serve not as a fatal disadvantage but as an allure, attracting ardent followers?

The Hamartia of Esteem by Stewart Stafford A clash of Roses has seared these temples grey, The brash cur pack supplanting divinity's place, Nightshade words aimed at codpiece not the face, Inquisition's gauntlet strikes this judgement day. A death warrant marked by slander's inked stain? Scarred by a caricatured actor's grasping fear? In a groundless play for a groundling's sneer? Mannequin tyrant in a jailer playwright's disdain? Time shall be your confessor and guide, A guest casting stones at yourself in haste, Purifying my beloved's fair hand, debased, Redeem her undoing at a vengeful rabble's side. © 2025, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.

Steerpike is Peake's greatest creation and, ultimately, in Gormenghast he confronts that fresh embodiment of the Groan tradition, the new Lord Titus, who has come into the title prematurely as a result of Steerpike's own machinations. Steerpike has something of the knowing, reckless villainy of Richard III, something of the cold, envying evil of Pinkie in Brighton Rock, and yet we frequently find ourselves feeling sympathy with his ambitions and his conflicts. We share his frustrations, his anger, his schemes, his secrets, his knowledge of all the illusions, hypocrisies and deceits required to maintain Groan power in that seemingly limitless castle, that model of the mind, whose Gothic outlines bear only superficial resemblance to Walpole's or Radcliffe's. [...] We follow Steerpike, who uses all the quick cunning and subtle understanding, all the knowing play-acting of a Lovelace, in his rise from kitchen boy to secret power of Gormenghast. His motives are credible. Again, from the first pages, Peake has led us to understand how an intelligent youth, destined for a life of humiliation and grinding servitude, is consumed with anger at the monumental injustices upon which his misfortune and the continuing fortunes of the Groans is based. If Tolkien's hobbits display a middle-class fear of the Mob, Steerpike might be said to represent the vengeful Mob itself, all hope of justice lost, turning its ruthless fury upon those who, in their unearned, unadmitted power - no matter how innocent they seem to themselves - enjoy careless privilege. And, like the Mob, Steerpike is by no means fussy about his methods - and by no means invulnerable. Eventually common sentiment becomes both his doom and and his redemption. At the close of Gormenghast Titus begins to come into his own. Like Steerpike, he struggles against the weight of ritual and convention which imprisons him, but he struggles only to be free, not to control. He understands the price of such power and wants none of it.