Page 37 - Shakespeare in the Movie From the Silent Era to Shakespeare in Love

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THE WINTER OF OUR DISCONTENT

King Richard III

My kingdom for a horse!
—Richard III

ate in 1592 Shakespeare suffered under intense pressure, both
Lprofessional and personal. As a writer assigned to create show-
cases for Richard Burbage's bombastic talent, he needed to create a
character worthy of that remarkable, if less than subtle, actor. As a
patriotic Englishman, he nervously witnessed growing animosity in
some quarters toward the queen, culminating in attempts on her
life. Haunted by England's costly War of the Roses, Will may have
grown fearful that such civil strife might occur again. A predecessor
of the twentieth-century philosophy that those who cannot learn
from history are doomed to repeat it, he provided playgoers with a
lesson in political ethics and simultaneously satisfied the needs of
his superstar.
The perfect project would allow the in-embryo writer to propa-
gandize the rightness of Elizabeth's claim to England's throne while
focusing on some historical figure, charismatic if questionable, whom
Richard Burbage might play. From this perspective, the Bard appears
as fated to have written Richard III as Richard himself had been, in
Shakespeare's version, destined for defeat at Bosworth Field by Henry,
Earl of Richmond, shortly to be Henry VII, the first Tudor king.
The plays of Will's chief competitor, Christopher Marlowe, were
then highly popular. Tamburlaine the Great, Marlowe's violent epic
about an ancient Eastern despot, delighted the public with its vision
of a Machiavellian ruler who, despite his cruelties, remains an

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