#shakespeareposting

[agoodflyting]

A lot of Thoughts about Enver Gortash and the text of Richard III

Ok so William Shakespeare's character of Richard of Gloucester is very much the archetype for the Tyrant in western literature and I just have SO MANY THOUGHTS about the way Enver Gortash wears that particular crown... (Not to mention how the fangirl in me just loves some of Richard's dialogue and could easily see it coming out of Gortash's mouth, and I'm trying so hard NOT to write a whole ass fic just so I can get Gortash to say, "I am not made of stone.")

WHO IS RICHARD III?

In real life, he was the last Plantagenet king of England, and a controversial figure, but I'm just talking about how he's depicted as a character in William Shakespeare's play Richard III (and to a lesser degree in Henry VI) . In Shakespeare's plays he is written as the quintessential scheming, backstabbing, duplicitous tyrant who will stop at nothing to gain and keep power. He concocts a massive plan in which he will manipulate the whole of the English aristocracy into crowning him king, by creating a situation in which they will be so desperate and angry at an imagined enemy that they will beg him to assume power over them. Sound familiar?

"Since I cannot prove a lover (...) I am determined to prove a villain." They have different backgrounds, but with both Richard of Gloucester and Enver Gortash there's a driving current of otherness compared to the ranks of the nobility that they're manipulating. Gortash is from a working class family but clawed his way up to join the ranks of the well-bred elite through cunning and ingenuity (and lots of crime). Richard was born into a noble family, but is physically disabled and is often mocked or insulted for it. In context, Richard uses the phrase 'since I cannot prove a lover' less as a complaint about his love life and more as a general example of how he has doesn't fit in with his peers. Basically, "You don't accept me? I'll make that everyone's problem."

"How sweet a thing it is to wear a crown..." Both of them survived trauma and violence, which was directed at them by people against whom they were powerless at the time. Gortash was sold to Raphael as a child and spent years as a target of every kind of abuse his master deigned to throw at him. Richard saw his father and brother brutally tortured, then murdered by the queen of their country, while he could do nothing to stop it. In both cases they internalized at a young age that violence = power = safety.

"Was ever woman in this humour won? (...) I, that kill'd her husband and his father, to take her in her heart's extremest hate (...) and yet to win her, all the world to nothing!" Both Richard and Gortash are platinum-tier smooth-talkers, who are skilled at getting other people to act the way they want through use of charming words. Richard shoots his shot with Anne despite the fact that she knows full well he murdered her last husband and she literally spent the first half of the scene wishing death on him. But by the end of the scene he's convinced her to marry him. Gortash, similarly, can talk the player character around to siding with him against the Elder Brain in spite of having just spent the first 2 act of the games trying to unravel his evil plots. Why? Because they're both just. that. smooth. They both have a way of manipulating others with a smile and good cheer - they sound so reasonable, even when you KNOW you shouldn't listen to them.

"Why strew'st thou sugar on that bottled spider, whose deadly web ensnareth thee about? Fool, fool! thou whet'st a knife to kill thyself." Both of them have are underestimated partly because of their ability to be charming, and partly because of their status as outsiders. Gortash because of his working class background, and Richard because of his disabilities. In both cases, there are people who find them repulsive but generally toothless (Queen Elizabeth and Ulder Ravengard respectively) who live to regret it. In both cases there are also people who ring the alarm bell that this creep is up to no good, but who aren't heeded soon enough.

"And thou unfit for any place but hell." "Yes, one place else, if you will hear me name it." "Some dungeon." "Your bed-chamber." They both have a little bit of that freak in them and seem to get off on trying to fuck people who want them dead. See: Richard with Anne. Durgetash in general.

"I'll be at charges for a looking-glass, and entertain some score or two of tailors." Gortash and Richard are both exceptionally well-dressed, to the point of vanity. Gortash is described as handsome in the game, but even fans who dig him can admit that he has a very unconventional style of attractiveness. His teeth are discolored, his skin is blotchy, he's pushing late middle age, and he's got the sort of flat features that other fans have pointed out are typical of boxers and other people who've gotten punched in the face a lot. Similarly, Richard is described as hunchbacked and with features so deformed that 'dogs bark at (him) as (he) passes by'. Yet, despite not being conventionally pretty, both of them seem to spend a lot of money on their clothes. ... this is getting long, so I'm going to end this here. Might do a part 2 later if the brainrot is still upon me.

[lady-tadpole]

Hamlet, lines 185-190

Horatio: O day and night, but this is wondrous strange. Hamlet: Don't Care + Didn't ask + L + hoRatio + there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy

[akissforthewholeworld]

its all 'david tennant's macbeth' this and 'christopher eccleston's macbeth' that but nobody's talking about ralph fiennes' macbeth

[the--plant]

Pro Tip: You can eat his heart in the market-place.

[jokerpeterson]

TOP TEN INCELS

1. Iago

[koussevitzky]

Seeing The Tempest tonight :D not my favorite Shakespeare but maybe I’ll be able to give it more grace now that I’m seeing it performed for the first time and not just reading it

[zepuffer]

english class assignment 👍

[2nd-mushroom-circle]

if nothing was slang for vagina in shakespeare’s time, was it an intentional move to put that word in the title of much ado about nothing? i haven’t read the play yet so i don’t know. seems like something he would do.

omg how did i not see this

i mean hard to know what was intentional or not, unless there's some primary source i don't know about with shakespeare's process. but like you said i would be surprised if will shakespeare, who frequently not only used slang but invented his own words and sayings that then entered the popular lexicon, and who is known for his wordplay and love of double meanings, invoked that accidentally. especially in a title that, all respect to willy shakes, means nothing. like what is his obsession with naming comedies the vaguest possible names? "as you like it"? "all's well that ends well"? "measure for measure"? "the winter's tale"? "twelfth night" has NOTHING to do with the play itself, and the other name of the play is WHAT YOU WILL, which again DOESN'T MEAN ANYTHING!! "much ado about nothing"? be more vague, please!

anyways.

idk if you've read the play by now, but yeah, much ado about pussy would make sense as a title within the context of the play. the main plot is centered around hero being wrongfully accused of infidelity on her wedding day, so you could say that they're making much ado about hero's vagina. when, in fact, nothing happened.

[sunshineonashelf]

sorry for shakespeareposting guys in my defense david tennant was in it

[ponderingsoundtrack]

The Shakespeareposting is gonna be crazy for the next month or so, cause I’m playing Laertes in a production of Hamlet.

[essaytime]

hi i’m reading shakespeare for the first time and all your shakespeareposting is really funny and makes the experience much better and generally i think you’re really cool okaybye

- @iron--and--blood

OH IT'S YOU MY DARLING

thank you so much I think you're really cool too

[lumityfication]

not to Shakespearepost on main but romeo and juliet is just such an insane play. every time i watch it or read it i feel such raw emotions that i don’t think any other piece of media really gets out of me

[akissforthewholeworld]

if a man brutally killed the tyrant king after months of our homeland being in ruin and our families being slaughtered by him and his men, and then not even a minute later kneeled at my feet claiming ME the rightful king of scotland? id have made out with him on the spot

[pleuvoire]

ok back to what i was going to say before i got distracted with shakespeareposting. on the one hand. "booo the classics are all old dusty white men and we've moved past that, surely there is nothing of value to be found in a bunch of books by old dusty white men, i am allowing my annoyance at high school english class to inform my opinions on the value of literature" very annoying!!! very reductive!!! always worth pushing back against!!! but many people respond to this by just... defensively refusing to interrogate the merit of the western literary canon as a concept/category unto itself, or the idea of having a group of works elevated above all others such that they function as a mark of sophistication and intellectual rigor unto themselves, or the idea of evaluating people's knowledge of books and literature or even their intellectual worth off of how many of these they have read and successfully understood. just "you think classics are bad? well actually, classics are good and you're STUPID." and it's such a LAZY LAZY way of pushing back against people being annoying about books online

[sunnydotjpeg]

sorry for shakespeareposting we're reading othello in world lit and i remembered how much i like shakespeare

[thesarosperiod]

me finding out JUST NOW that hamlet's age being interpreted as 30 may have been due to a misunderstanding of the original script and that he likely WAS intended to be 16 (which makes the most sense-that would explain why he didn't take the throne as soon as hamlet sr. died, why he was away at university prior to his father's death, etc.) and suddenly the violently intense emotional connection i felt to hamlet at age 16 makes much more sense [source]