Angus Fletcher
speaker
2,582 appearances
3 recordings
2 series
first heard Mar 2025
last heard 8 Jul
Angus Fletcher’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.
Appearances
They are incredibly formulaic.
They're pretty much like most of the other plays that are occurring at the time.
They don't have any of the sort of distinctive or interesting things that occur in his later plays.
There's nothing particularly special or exceptional about them.
And then suddenly, when he writes a play called Richard III, everything changes and
And Richard III, we think, was originally another one of his rip-offs.
And in particular, he was ripping off someone called Christopher Marlowe.
And Christopher Marlowe is really one of those undiscovered geniuses.
I mean, there are folks who know about him, but, you know, you don't really talk about him in high school.
Christopher Marlowe pioneered the idea of the innovator on stage.
And so Christopher Marlowe read Machiavelli, and he said, wouldn't it be extraordinary
if we put an innovator on stage.
So instead of the plays that existed in the Middle Ages, which were morality plays, and in a morality play, if someone does something good, they get rewarded.
If somebody does something bad, they get punished.
Marlowe said, what if I have a hero who isn't punished or rewarded, but who makes a new future?
And the first example he did of this is Tamerlane.
And Tamerlane is an example of someone who's born into poverty and then essentially makes an empire.
And in the original version of the telling of this story, whenever it was told in the Middle Ages, they would say, Tamburlaine became great, but because he was a bad person, he died in a horrible manner.
And so they would tell it in this tragic structure.
Marlow just tells the part to the rise and he ends the play.
Showing 1321–1340 of 2,582 · page 67 of 130
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