Richard III

THE LAST TWO EVENINGS in the pub have been morgue-like. Not just because an oppressive atmosphere of gloom has replaced the pall of tobacco smoke, but because the place is bloody empty.

I take a perverse pleasure in that, although I am surprised that so many people have carried out their threat to buy in their beer and stay at home. The reason I don’t stay away myself is that I don’t want to deny myself the company of people I’ve come to know well and the opportunity to meet others.

We all have our own ways of not allowing the bastards to grind us down. I’ve found a decent place to sit next to the door onto the smoking patio. So it could be worse. What really gets my goat is overhearing these sanctimonious bastards saying how nice it is without the smoke, before ordering a veggie burger and a hot chocolate. I’ve found that you can irritate them by dangling an unlit cigarette from your mouth and occasionally flicking on your lighter. They then feel the need to keep an eye on you in case a complaint needs to be registered.

Of course it’s petty.

Perhaps all the absenteeism from pubs will lead to a revival of family life, albeit a smoky one. No doubt that will be the next target.

IT'S A LONG TIME since I heard the phrase ‘party piece’. I suppose it went out with family gatherings round the piano.

Once upon a time my own part piece was a recitation of Albert and the Lion, complete with accent that was somewhere between Lancashire and Yorkshire. I would have preferred to do Sam’s Medal, but performing that correctly requires half a dozen different articles of headgear, and I never quite bothered to acquire them.

I never quite had the courage to sing, but once I was persuaded to duet the song The Ballad of Bethnal Green.

NOWADAYS I would want to declaim a speech from Shakespeare. Maybe a sonnet, if I want to demonstrate that underneath I am a sensitive romantic, but preferably Richard III’s opening speech, ‘Now is the winter of our discontent.’ It’s difficult to avoid attempting a Laurence Olivier impersonation, but the great thing about learning a speech or a poem is that you get to know and understand it more and begin to endow it with you own interpretation, even relating it to your own personality and experience.

The speech had four sections, of which the fourth is simple exposition of the plot and sets the action in motion. I’m not bothering to learn that.

In the first section Richard muses on the peace which has descended on England following what appears to be his brother’s decisive victory in the Wars of the Roses.

Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York.
And all the clouds that lower’d upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.

Here Richard comes across as happily triumphant. Only in retrospect can we see the dissatisfaction and sarcasm in his words. Ian McKellern, in his film, handled it quite deftly by speaking these opening lines at a celebration banquet and then cutting to Richard in the gents muttering his real thoughts as he pisses.

In amplifying the changes that peace has brought, Richard’s hatred of the quiet life becomes increasingly obvious.

Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;
Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
Our stern alarums chang’d to merry meetings;
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.

Interesting here that the alliteration and assonance is very helpful in memorising the text. Eg monuments, merry meetings, marches, measures; bosom, brows, bruised. There is also a marked contrast between the dramatic, vivid images of war and the vague, weak activities of peace.

Grim-visag’d war hath smooth’d his wrinkled front,
And now, instead of mounting barbèd steeds
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries
He capers nimbly in a lady’s chamber
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.

This is excellent stuff. You still might think Richard a stern, puritanical soldier, bored by peace and offended by the sexual hedonism of the new court.

But. Ah, the ‘But’. ‘But I. . .’ Gone is the ‘we’ of the preceding lines as we move into section two.

But I, that am not shap’d for sportive tricks,
Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass.
I, that am rudely stamped and want love’s majesty
To strut before a wanton ambling nymph.
I, that am curtailed of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature

(I can never say that line before thinking Olivier’s delivery – ‘chu, chu, chu’)

Deform’d, unfinish’d, sent before my time
Into this breathing world scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them.
Why I, in this weak, piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time,
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun
And descant on mine own deformity.

You could feel sorry for him. He certainly feels sorry for himself and his bitterness is palpable. Then he moves to the third section.

And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover
To entertain these fair, well-spoken days,
I am determinèd to prove a lover
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.

Now I shall check and see if I got it right. Excellent. I wonder where I can get an Equity card.