Reviews for Richard III

The average rating for Richard III based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2009-10-22 00:00:00 Shawn Bay Richard III, abridged: RICHARD: Mwahahaha! Mwahahahahaha! Mwahaha! CLARENCE: Hey brother! So, I guess I'm being sent to the Tower of London. Sucks, right? RICHARD: Don't worry, Clarence, you'll be fine. I'll try and get you out, and certainly won't hire assassins to kill you or anything. CLARENCE: Awesome! You're the best! RICHARD: Mwahahaha! ANNE: You killed my husband and my son in the last play, you asshole! I HATE YOU SO MUCH! RICHARD: I only killed your husband because you're so fucking hot. ANNE: OMG TAKE ME RIGHT NOW. RICHARD: Mwahahahaha. MARGARET: YOU'RE ALL GONNA DIE BECAUSE OF RICHARD! I CURSE ALL YOU FUCKERS! EVERYONE: *ignores Margaret* EDWARD V: The king is dead! Good thing he made you Lord Protector, Richard, so now you can make sure no one steals my throne. RICHARD: Yeah...so you know what the best hotel in town is? The tower of London. I got you and your brother a suite. EDWARD V: Awesome! Let's go! RICHARD: Mwahahahahahaha! Hey everybody, those kids are bastards. I should be king instead. EVERYONE: WOOOO! WE LOVE RICHARD! HASTINGS: Okay, I was fine with all the usurping and mudering up until now but...seriously dude, I gotta ask: WHY ARE YOU SO EVIL? RICHARD: I'm a hunchback. Discussion closed. Oh, and you're under arrest. Say hi to my dead nephews for me. BUCKINGHAM: Wait, what? Dude, you have officially overdone it. I'm out. RICHARD: Memo to self: get Buckingham killed. Mwahaha. ELIZABETH: Okay Richard, you've now killed my two sons, my brothers, and I'm not completely sure you didn't kill my husband too. What else could you possibly do to me? RICHARD: Well, your daughter's kinda hot. And fortunately, my wife just came down with a deadly illness - the symptoms include head/neck separation, very gross - and I've got to start making some legitimate heirs, if ya know what I mean. ELIZABETH: Fuck you. The Earl of Richmond is gonna kill you so hard. RICHARD: Oh shit, that's right, we're being invaded. Guess I'd better head over to Bosworth field, then. AUDIENCE: Oh thank god, it's nearly over. (For those of you keeping score at home, Richard's current body count is ELEVEN FUCKING PEOPLE.) GHOSTS OF LITERALLY EVERYONE IN THE PLAY: BOOGEDY BOOGEDY BOOGEDY! You're so gonna die tomorrow, Richard, because we're on the Earl of Richmond's side. In fact, we've already started calling him Henry VII. DESPAIR AND DIE, MOTHERFUCKER! RICHARD: Mwaha...ha? AUDIENCE: SERIOUSLY CAN HE PLEASE GET KILLED ALREADY SO I CAN GO TO THE BATHROOM? RICHARD: All right men, first let me say thanks for sticking with me, despite the fact that all my close friends seem to mysteriously die whenever they disagree with me. Secondly: Yorkists, ready your breakfasts and eat hearty. FOR TONIGHT, WE DINE IN HELL! MWAHAHAHAHAHA-aaaack! That hurt! AND WHERE THE FUCK DID MY HORSE GO? HENRY VII: I KEEL YOU! RICHARD: Oh, fuck. *dies* AUDIENCE: Thank god. *sprints for the bathrooms* THE END.

Review # 2 was written on 2007-05-12 00:00:00 Andrej Blejec I remembered this play as being nothing more than a superb melodrama organized around a charismatic, one-dimensional villain, but I now realize it is more complex than that. Richard's deformity is not merely a physical sign of spiritual evil, but also a metaphor for the twisted era of internecine and intra-generational violence of which he himself is the inevitable conclusion. Richard claims that his disability disqualifies him for a peaceful age's love-making, but his effective wooing of Lady Anne--literally over her husband's dead body--belies this claim. No, Richard, who from infancy has known nothing but civil war and betrayal, can only be effective when he is either murdering his Plantagenet relatives or plotting to do so. (Thus, when he finally becomes king, he can neither enjoy the honor nor rise to the challenge, and therefore is soon plagued with nightmares and consigned to destruction.) Richard fancies himself as the medieval Vice, commenting sardonically to the audience on the action he has devised, heedless of the fact that he is also part of a universal moral design. Richard, who embodies in concentrated form the worst deeds of his time, must be purged so that a new age can be established. It is here that the women of the play become important, transforming it into Senecan if not Sophoclean tragedy. In periodic choruses, the queens Margaret, Elizabeth and Anne (plus the Duchess of York) mourn their children and others who have been snatched from them by civil war, and call down vengeance on Richard and other murderers. The interesting thing about this chorus, however, is that it is not composed of unified expressions of grief and vengeance, for the woman continually curse and blame each other, each proclaiming her own sorrow as somehow superior to that of the others. Ironically, the age's long history of crimes against mothers deprives even maternal grief of its unity. I believe this is Shakespeare's first self-conscious attempt to create tragedy--in the classical sense--out of popular drama. The conception of the women's chorus--both a traditional tragic chorus and at the same time something more personal, more ironic--is particularly impressive in this regard. Unfortunately, however, Shakespeare overreached himself. In execution, the chorus of queens is often whiny and wearying, and slows down the action without illuminating it. Nevertheless, it is a great step toward the tragic resonances of the major plays.