richard iii - women Flashcards
Hamamra - Margaret (Performative utterances
talks about Margaret as a ‘vocal force of divine retribution’ with her prophetic curses
- providence, prompt god to fulfil them
‘Cancel his bond of life’ - liminality between god, prayers, and curses’
Robin Philips production - Margaret
Structures and orchestrates action in play - equipped with hidden microphone (echo and reverberate like a ghost (timelessness, figure out of time, see history as a tragic cycle)
gunby - though a soliloquy, essentially a prologue
‘So now prosperity begins to mellow’
choric function which is prophetic, admonitory, and recapulatory - steady forward movement of inevitable history
refers to hasting, rivers and the rest as ‘beholders’ caught up in this ‘frantic play’ - what has ocurred is akin to a play within a play, dramatic action enlarging to include those who were formerly only spectators
‘now thy heavy curse
Is lighted on poor Hastings’ wretched head.’
margaret as ‘witness’ to ‘a dire induction’ which would prove ‘black, and tragical’
‘The bloody dog is dead’ Brailowsky
Dog is palindromic opposite of god - reiteration of M description of R, prophetic and allies voice with god
‘To worry lambs’ - connotations of hell and lambs evoke the renaissance belief in physical deformity as an exterior sign of spiritual evil
dear God I pray,
That I may live and say “The dog is dead.
Butler 1.2 Performative utterances
Butler argues that Richard manages to negate Anne’s curses by ‘appropriating, reversing and decontextualising such utterances’
‘curse not thyself, fair creature: thou art both’ - twists her own words into a self-curse (Anne is calling on darkness to end his life) - with power of words Richard manages to manipulate and twist her thoughts to control the events of the play
‘if ever he have wife, let her be made more miserable’
+ cause margaret to breather her own ‘curse against (herself)’
siemon - elizabeth
queen elizabeth defines the fearful position of a noble woman with her husband and its insecurity
‘what would betide on me’ if edward were dead
systemic female vulnerability contributes to richard’s power
ADELMAN - no positions of power
words ‘mother’ and ‘children’ are more numerous than in other shakespeare
richard ‘god, not we, hath plagued thy bloody deed’ - enlists bitterly divided opponents into a supporting chorus who are united
‘i am their mother. who shall bar me from them’ - motherhood combines rather than divides (elizabeth, duchess, anne)
BLOOM - curse and lament comprise a powerful female idiom of bitter tears
