A horse, a horse! My kingdom for a horse!
Can we talk about this literary phrase? I'd like to break down its meaning. I think the phrase is a bit hyperbolic, as obviously no horse can cause the loss of a kingdom. I think the phrase is a bit ironic too, because it implies that the horse is more important than a kingdom.
what do you think Veeky Forums? also literary phrase thread I guess
Call me Ishmael
Waking up to a loud crash rarely means something good is happening. It’s never “CRASH! Mom made pancakes!” or “CRASH! We decided to adopt a Golden Retriever!”
mongols tho
The Winter of Our Discontent
its Shakespeare man. Its bound to be good.
For want of a good thread, the board was lost.
Stately plump Ishmael screamed across the sky while surrounded by heads and bodies
Just incase you aren't trolling: he's about to die because he's fighting on foot since his horse has been slain. He's saying he'll give his kingdom to anyone who gives him a horse to get him out alive.
Lurk moar
that's pretty shallow, but at least you're saying something more than OP
Richard is saying he'd give everything he's done so far up just to get out alive. The night before when he's tossing and turning in his cot, his conscious finally kicks in and he realizes his mistake. This is shown by him promising to creep around at night to make sure no one leaves his command. The old Richard would have had it so much under control that this wouldn't be a worry.
What his trade for a horse says about our own lives and how much we should cherish them compared to our accomplishments (or lack thereof) is up to you.
good thought, poor place of delivery
>this is shallow
>says the exact same thing
Kek
Sunset found her squatting in the grass, groaning. Every stool was looser than the one before, and smelled fouler. By the time the moon came up she was shitting brown water. The more she drank, the more she shat, but the more she shat, the thirstier she grew, and her thirst sent her crawling to the stream to suck up more water.
You are my creator but I am your master - obey!
So I know this is a troll thread and everything but since we're on the subject, I want to ask a question.
My high school English teacher said that the interesting thing about Richard III is that it's possibly one of the first works of fiction to feature an unabashedly evil protagonist.
I don't dispute that my English teacher was a much more learned woman than I'll ever be, but that characterization didn't gel with me then and I still don't get it. Is Richard really pure evil? I mean, he had a reasonable motive for hating his family: they shit on him for being an ugly cripple. Yeah, murder is wrong, but they started it. Furthermore, someone who is "pure evil" would not experience remorse to the degree he does before his fateful battle. A truly evil man would not feel sorry for murdering a child, he'd sleep like a baby (like Falstaff sleeps after passing it drunk in Henry IV pt I).
Am I just retarded?
Its not one man's opinion that matters.
>Is Richard really pure evil?
He says he is.
>And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,
>To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
>I am determined to prove a villain
>And hate the idle pleasures of these days.
Yeah but if someone in a play days they're pure good, so you take that at face value? What if yes just a poser? He clearly has moments of doubt so how can he be pure evil?
>The manga Requiem of the Rose King by Aya Kanno, which began in 2013, is a loose adaptation of the first Shakespearean historical tetralogy. It depicts Richard III as intersex instead of hunchbacked.[30]
why would you post this
No because by "my kingdom" he means the kingdom of god substantiated by the holy spirit which has departed from him. Was that not clear based on my explanation?
If that's in a soliloquy, though, then it's Richard's true thoughts. All the soliloquies in Shakespeare are him giving us direct access to a character's inner self. It's one of the conventions of Shakespearean theatre. Characters don't lie in their soliloquies, except perhaps to themselves.
>first works of fiction to feature an unabashedly evil protagonist.
Nah, dude. Shakespeare's writing just at the denouement of a certain form of English theatre--the Morality Play-- that features characters, or really stereotypes, with starkly contrasting ethical coda of which the audience is meant to identify with only one, i.e. the Good One.
Then you have creations like Barabas from the Jew of Malta, which immediately precedes and even influences Shakespeare, but which features none of the internal depth and reflectivity of Shakespeare's best villains.
These characters are not pure evil because they are human, and no human is pure anything. They might affect a certain disposition toward the world and the people around them, and try to convince us of their 'true' motives, but they conceal just as much as they reveal. This doesn't mean that we should overly psychologize them to reach a 'deeper' understanding of what they're about; merely recognize the limitations of trying to pigeonhole them.
So can't he lie to himself about being pure evil
I have always thought that Richard wanted a horse not to flee but to keep on fighting, thus reaching a sort of apotheosis as a warrior and as character.
>Characters don't lie in their soliloquies, except perhaps to themselves.
They absolutely do lie and decieve in their soliloquys, either us or other characters. Most obvious cases being Hamlet's 'To be or not to be' and Claudius' 'O, my offense is rank'. There's also Iago, who lies to the audience about his motives and his apparent feelings repeatedly.
I actually always read it as him lamenting.
>I can't believe I lost my fucking horse. Now my kingdom is gone all because of a horse!
Well, yeah. That's arguably the entire point. Richard wants to make himself into a villain to achieve his aims. How successful is he, in the end?
In the first two cases they are not lying, they are thinking out loud. In Iago's case it is not a soliloquy since he has an adressee.
Hamlet and Claudius are performing for each other. Remember each is spying on the other during the delivery of this speeches.
There is always an audience, an addressee, for Shakespeare's characters, so I don't see how that's relevant to Iago's form of polylateral subterfuge.
And Claudius comes right out and Indies us of his trickery:
>My words fly up, my thoughts remain below:
>Words without thoughts never to heaven go.
Seriously? No. Its a lamentation, you can tell because its repeated either side of turning down Catesby offering to escort him from the field.