Secret Life of Books

Guns and (war of the) Roses. The irresistible rise of Shakespeare's Richard III

29 Apr 2025

Audio

Description

Richard III is one of the OG villains of English literary history, the usurper king who killed his brother, nephews (the infamous “Princes in the Tower”) and seduced his brother's wife all in the space of about six months. Richard III is also known as “Crookback,” or the hunchback of Windsor Castle, because of his curvature of the spine, which prompted the great historian and Tudor apologist Thomas More to describe him as “little of stature, ill featured of limbs, crooked-backed,” a condition that made him “malicious, wrathful and perverse.” Shakespeare used Richard’s villainy and disability with unprecedented skill and daring, creating a character whose deformity and appetite for evil became assets and sources of charm.Richard III is Shakespeare’s first masterpiece. He probably wrote it in 1592 or 93, after warming-up with Taming of the Shrew, Henry VI parts 1, 2 and 3, Two Gentlemen of Verona and Titus Andronicus. With the psychological depth of these characters and his analysis of relationships under the strain of political volatility and anxiety, Shakespeare accessed a new kind of writing, influenced by Marlowe’s hit Tamburlaine. In Richard III we see the cruelty and misogynistic violence of Shrew reappear, along with the lust for blood that Shakespeare front loaded in Titus Andronicus. And we see the sit-com like return of the royal family from the Henry VI plays – all of whom would have been familiar to Elizabethan audiences. Richard III is like the season finale of Succession, when we find out what’s going to happen to all the scheming, unpleasant, entitled nepo babies and their underlings.-- To join the Secret Life of Books Club visit: www.secretlifeofbooks.org-- Please support us on Patreon to keep the lights on in the SLoB studio and get bonus content: patreon.com/secretlifeofbookspodcast-- Follow us on our socials:youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@secretlifeofbookspodcast/shortsinsta: https://www.instagram.com/secretlifeofbookspodcast/bluesky: @slobpodcast.bsky.social Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcription

This episode hasn't been transcribed yet

Help us prioritize this episode for transcription by upvoting it.

0 upvotes

🗳️ Sign in to Upvote

Popular episodes get transcribed faster

Other episodes from Secret Life of Books

Transcribed and ready to explore now

The Women Who Made Jane Austen

16 Dec 2025

Secret Life of Books

View all episodes from Secret Life of Books

Comments

There are no comments yet.

Please log in to write the first comment.

Report any issue

Secret Life of Books

Guns and (war of the) Roses. The irresistible rise of Shakespeare's Richard III

This episode hasn't been transcribed yet

Other episodes from Secret Life of Books

The Women Who Made Jane Austen

Sign in to Audioscrape

Share this moment