‘My kingdom for a horse’: Bestial Sovereignty in Richard III

2020 ◽  
pp. 121-140
Author(s):  
Huw Griffiths
Keyword(s):  
History Plays ◽  
Richard Ii ◽  
Richard Iii ◽  
Divine Sovereignty ◽  
Animal Imagery ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Stability ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Two Bodies

This chapter offers a conclusion to the book, through a movement away from the human body into the ways that animal bodies are also recruited for Shakespeare’s metaphorics of sovereignty. More than any other of Shakespeare’s history plays, Richard III is dominated by animal imagery. One way to understand this is as a form of moral commentary on the “bestial” state that England has been dragged into by the civil war and, particularly, by the evils of that war as concentrated in Richard himself, a concentration particularly in the image of his body as deformed. However, the slipperiness of metaphor does not allow for the stabilization of sovereignty in any one body, including the stability imagined in the metaphysical conceit of the “kings two bodies”. In this chapter, I offer a final countermand to Kantorowicz’s reading of Richard II wherein Richard’s abdication offers up the Christ-like sacrifice of the king as a concentrated image of divine sovereignty. In place of this, I read Richard III backwards from the moment of Richard’s own brief “abdication” at the end of the play: his willingness to exchange his kingdom for a horse, albeit in the face of death. Whilst not ascribing any revolutionary intent to the character of Richard, this moment affords an alternate insight into the translatable locations of sovereignty. Re-read through its figurations, sovereignty is conceived of as never inalienable; it is, rather, always dependent on the bodies of others including, here, the bodies of animals.

Shakespeare’s Tragedy and English History

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Hadfield
Keyword(s):  
History Plays ◽  
English History ◽  
Richard Ii ◽  
Richard Iii ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
The People ◽  
King John

In the history plays of the 1590s Shakespeare covers most of late medieval English history, representing the struggle between the rival claimants to the crown and the people as a tragedy. Shakespeare was influenced by the verse tragedies in A Mirror for Magistrates—as well as by Holinshed’s Chronicles—which presented history as a series of stories from which relevant morals could be drawn. In following A Mirror Shakespeare had one eye on the present, articulating the fear that history might repeat itself and produce yet another tragedy. In his plays Shakespeare represents a series of kings with varying personalities and abilities struggling to rule in trying circumstances, each living out his own tragedy, leaving the audience to work out the relevance and significance of the plays. In this chapter I provide specific readings of Richard II, Richard III and King John.

Telling the Story: Shakespeare's Histories in Performance

1990 ◽  
Vol 6 (23) ◽  
pp. 207-214
Author(s):  
Andrew Jarvis
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
History Plays ◽  
English History ◽  
Richard Ii ◽  
Richard Iii ◽  
Henry V ◽  
Royal Shakespeare Company ◽  
Wars Of The Roses ◽  
Henry Iv ◽  
Henry Vi

The English Shakespeare Company was founded in 1986 by Michael Bogdanov and Michael Pennington with a commitment to take large-scale productions to regional venues. Henry IV, Parts One and Two and Henry V opened at the Plymouth Theatre Royal in November 1986 under the title The Henrys: they were then staged at the Old Vic and toured extensively. In December 1987 Richard II, with a two-part adaptation of the three parts of Henry VI (House of Lancaster and House of York) and Richard III, were added to the previous trilogy to create a complete cycle of history plays – The Wars of the Roses. The cycle was toured in England and abroad before playing at the Old Vic in the spring of 1989. It has since been filmed for television by Portman Productions. The only comparable treatment of the histories in the theatre took place at Stratford in 1964. when Peter Hall and John Barton staged seven plays as a sequence spanning English history from the reign of Richard II to the downfall of Richard III. Andrew Jarvis has been with the English Shakespeare Company since 1986 when he played Gadshill, Douglas, Harcourt, and the Dauphin. He has since played Exton, Hotspur, and Richard III. In 1988 he won the Manchester Evening News Award for Best Actor in a Visiting Production for his portrayal of Richard III. Prior to joining the ESC he had played many roles for the Royal Shakespeare Company. Here, he is interviewed by Stephen Phillips, lecturer in drama at the College of St Mark and St John, Plymouth, who is currently preparing a study of Shakespeare's history cycles in performance in the twentieth century.

Site Experiment for Predicting Hazardous Geological Formations ahead of Tunnel Face

2006 ◽  
Vol 326-328 ◽  
pp. 461-464 ◽  
Author(s):  
C.N. Lin ◽  
Yu Yong Jiao ◽  
Q.S. Liu
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Information ◽  
Test Procedure ◽  
Railway Tunnel ◽  
Tunnel Face ◽  
Drilling Method ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Stability ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Under Construction ◽  
Short Time

In the construction of railways in western part of China, more and more long tunnels have been excavated these years, and several ones are under construction at the moment. Because of the complex geologies like faults, fractured zones, karst cavities as well as water bearing formations, the stability and safety of tunnels have been challenging topics in the construction process. In this regard, the advance knowledge of the location, size, and spatial information of the uncertainties ahead of the face is very important to the contractors. In this paper, by using the Tunneling Seismic Prediction (TSP) technique, site experiments are performed to predict hazardous formations ahead of face in a railway tunnel. Through interpretation of the testing data, the wave velocities and the mechanical parameters of the surrounding rock are obtained, and the faults/fractures are recognized. The study shows that compared to time-consuming core drilling method, the wave reflection based TSP method can predict major uncertain formations in long range ahead of the face in short time. The downtime, as we know, is one of the key factors in speeding the tunnel construction. For the prediction accuracy, the TSP technique is able to provide enough information due to its multiple proof-test procedure.

The Paradoxes of ‘Popularity’ in Shakespeare’s History Plays

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Lake
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
History Plays ◽  
English History ◽  
Richard Ii ◽  
Richard Iii ◽  
Henry V ◽  
The Public ◽  
Henry Vi ◽  
The Public Sphere

This chapter surveys the development of sixteenth-century popularity politics, noting Burghley, Essex, and Bancroft all to have been practitioners of that ‘dark art’. It shows that popularity was a term of opprobrium and distaste to the elite, yet was taken up with equal enthusiasm by Puritanism and Roman Catholic enemies of the Elizabethan regime, contributing to a fitful emergence of the public sphere. Deploying English history in support of their claims, religious partisanship focused certain late medieval reigns: those of Richard II, Henry IV, Henry V, Henry VI, and Richard III—the very reigns that Shakespeare then addressed in his history plays. Shakespeare’s dramas are shown to present the complexities and risks attendant upon popularity politics; and to demonstrate, further, the resistance of popular attitudes to conscription by elites, given the independent intelligence of commoners and their capability for large-scale news gathering.

Shakespeare and the Play Scripts of Private Prayer

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ceri Sullivan
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Change Model ◽  
History Plays ◽  
Richard Ii ◽  
Richard Iii ◽  
Henry V ◽  
Henry Vi ◽  
Agent Of Change ◽  
Private Prayer

Early modern private prayer shows skill in narration and drama. In manuals and sermons on how to pray, collections of model prayers, scholarly treatises about biblical petitions, and popular tracts about life crises prompting calls to God, prayer is valued as a powerful agent of change. Model prayers create stories about people in distinct ranks and jobs, with concrete details about real-life situations. These characters may act in play-lets, or appear in the middle of difficulties, or voice a suite of petitions from all sides of a conflict. Thinking of early modern private prayers as dramatic dialogues rather than as lyric monologues raises the question of whether play-going and praying were mutually reinforcing practices. Could dramatists deploying prayer on stage rely on having audience members who were already expert at making up roles for themselves in prayer, and who expected their petitions to have the power to intervene in major events? Does prayer’s focus on cause and effect structure the historiography of Shakespeare’s history plays: 2 and 3 Henry VI, Richard III, Richard II, Henry V, and Henry VIII?

Speculum Speculorum: Kingship and Selfhood in Shakespeare’s King Richard II

2021 ◽  
Vol 66 (2) ◽  
pp. 111-126
Author(s):  
Georgiana Nicoară
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Christian Tradition ◽  
Richard Ii ◽  
Richard Iii ◽  
Looking Glass ◽  
Two Bodies

"Speculum Speculorum: Kingship and Selfhood in Shakespeare’s King Richard II. Starting from the premise that the concept of the King’s Two Bodies generates the separation between two selves within the nature of a king, I argue that the medieval practice of the speculum principis – the mirror of the perfect prince – plays an important part in the process of fashioning the kingly stance. Given that, in the Christian tradition, the mirror stands on the polarized ground between resemblance to the divine and self-idolatry, the reflection of the self is always deceitful. Two Shakespearean plays will serve for the analysis of the link between mirrors and kings: Richard II and Richard III. In Richard II, Shakespeare creates a climactic scene in which, after having relinquished his crown to Bolingbroke, the newly deposed king demands a looking-glass to identify the remaining aspects of his former self. The article reads the reversal of the sanctified ceremonial coronation, the substitution of investiture by divestiture as a demonic rite of reciting Scripture passages backwards. This act activates the most dramatic effects, transforming Richard’s looking-glass into what Ernst Kantorowicz famously calls a “magic-mirror.” The ambivalence of the mirror is manipulated by Shakespeare in order to unveil Richard’s two-fold persona. The dissolution of kingship leaves behind a fragmented selfhood that can no longer ensure Richard’s survival, reducing him to nothing. Keywords: mirror, kingship, selfhood, crown, deposition, Richard II "

scholarly journals Second ethical comments towards COVID-19 (one year later)

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-24
Author(s):  
O. I. Kubar ◽  
M. A. Bichurina ◽  
N. I. Romanenkova
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Social Trust ◽  
Vaccine Preventable Diseases ◽  
Ethical Content ◽  
Ethical Conflicts ◽  
The Face ◽  
One Year ◽  
The Stability ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Real Picture

At the beginning of COVID-19 development, when social vulnerability in the face of the global infectious threat became obvious, we presented target information on a key civilizational issue — the role of ethics in epidemic emergencies. The compliance of RF legislation and the world ethical standards analyzed on based on the study of the humanitarian heritage of pandemic management and a review of existing international documents. Today, one year later, it is time to practically evaluate the effectiveness of the ideology of ethical commitment and objectively comprehend the conflicts that have arisen, their causes and consequences. It should be emphasized that this work is not a so-called “moral lesson learned from COVID-19”, but representation of a real picture of how the centuries-old experience of former epidemics and pandemics was taken into account and the unique truth of the ethical content of management decisions and actions was accepted. It is particularly important to have a possibility to present this article as a continuation of our research topic on the bioethics of pandemics, on the pages of such an authoritative, specialized journal, which fully allows us to preserve the integrity of ideas about the humanitarian essence of anti-epidemic measures. This humanitarian parallel starts from the moment of managing a particular patient with infectious pathology until large-scale measures for eradication vaccine-preventable diseases. A comprehensive and dynamic look at the need to find ways and the nature of overcoming ethical conflicts during the ongoing pandemic of the new coronavirus infection could determine the ethical approach of longterm recommendations in the field of public health protection and ensure the stability of social trust in the future.

Shakespeare's Body Parts

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Huw Griffiths
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
History Plays ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
Sovereign Power ◽  
Richard Ii ◽  
Richard Iii ◽  
Henry V ◽  
Henry Iv ◽  
Political Writing ◽  
Human Flesh

This book provides a sustained, formalist and theoretically-informed reading of the multiple body parts that litter the dialogue and action of Shakespeare’s history plays, including Henry V, Richard II, Richard III, King John, and the Henry IV plays. Starting with a literary critical analysis of these dislocated bodies, the book follows Shakespeare’s own relentless pursuit of a specific political question: how does human flesh, blood, and bone relate to sovereignty? Shakespeare’s treatment of the body is also read against two other bodies of work: early modern political writing, and twentieth- and twenty first-century critical theory. Like Shakespeare’s histories, these develop understandings of sovereign power through considerations of the body: from Jean Bodin’s inalienable sovereignty, located in the body of the monarch, through Hobbes’ mechanistic Leviathan, to Kantorowicz’s “two bodies” and Derrida’s “prosthstatics” in which forms of sovereign power are imagined as machine- or animal-like. Along the way, particular body parts – knees, hands, heads, and throats – come to the fore as particular objects of interest.

Em transe-to

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-55
Author(s):  
Natalia Christofoletti Barrenha
Keyword(s):  
The Face ◽  
The Stability ◽  
The City

This text seeks to explore the Argentine films Castro (Alejo Moguillansky, 2009) and El asaltante (Pablo Fendrik, 2007) from within the displacement of their characters through the city. This transit configures the organising element of the plots, determining the direction and rhythm of events. The escape motto will structure the film analyses, which are also twinned by the sensory apprehension that comes from the spaces they travel through. The notion of escape, as explored by Esteban Dipaola in Argentine cinema of the 1990s, continues to throb in mid-to-late 2000s production, and in these films represents the means by which the protagonists deploy critical attitudes—sometimes radical and explosive, sometimes silent—in the face of fixed notions, suggesting some scepticism about the “stability” and “order” that they (dis)encounter in normality. RESUMEN Este texto busca explorar los largometrajes argentinos Castro (Alejo Moguillansky, 2009) y El asaltante (Pablo Fendrik, 2007) a partir del desplazamiento de sus personajes por la ciudad. El transitar se configura como elemento organizador de las tramas, determinando la dirección y el ritmo de los acontecimientos. El tema de la fuga irá estructurando los análisis de las películas, las cuales también están relacionadas por la aprehensión sensorial que hacen de los espacios que recorren. La noción de fuga, tal y como fue explorada por Esteban Dipaola en el cine argentino de los años 90, continúa vigente en la producción de mediados/fines de la primera década del siglo XXI, y en estas películas es el recurso por medio del cual los protagonistas despliegan actitudes críticas – a veces radicales y explosivas, y a veces silenciosas – frente a nociones convencionales, lo cual hace pensar que existe un cierto escepticismo con relación a la “estabilidad” y al “orden” que ellos (des)encuentran en la normalidad. RESUMO Este texto busca explorar os longas-metragens argentinos Castro (Alejo Moguillansky, 2009) e El asaltante (Pablo Fendrik, 2007) a partir do deslocamento de seus personagens pela cidade. O transitar configura-se como elemento organizador das tramas, determinando a direção e o ritmo dos acontecimentos. O mote da fuga estruturará as análises dos filmes, os quais também se irmanam pela apreensão sensorial que fazem dos espaços que percorrem. A noção de fuga, conforme explorada por Esteban Dipaola no cinema argentino da década de 1990, continua a pulsar na produção de meados/fins dos anos 2000, e é, nestes filmes, o recurso através do qual os protagonistas desdobram atitudes críticas – às vezes radicais e explosivas, às vezes silenciosas – diante de noções fixas, sugerindo certo ceticismo em relação à “estabilidade” e à “ordem” que eles (des)encontram na normalidade.

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