‘Sad stories of the death of kings’: Richard II

‘Sad Stories of the Death of Kings’: <i>The Hollow Crown</i> and the Shakespearean History Play on Screen

William Shakespeare evokes “sad stories”—traumatic historical narratives—to explore how sorrowful language exposes Richard’s emotional fragility. “Infused” by “self and vain conceit,” King Richard sees monarchial agency as perfunctory, where Death allows him but “a breath, a little scene, to monarchize” himself among the “murdered” kings. Richard II engages a residual tension between a traumatic monarchial history and an emergent political narrative that sought to energize the Tudor political apparatus. E.M. Tillyard famously notes that the history play dramatized historical mythology to support the Tudor monarchial line, encouraging the queen’s people “to look on the events that led to their accession” in a way that endorsed Elizabeth within the canon of earlier English monarchs. Shakespeare maps Richard’s propensities for inaction and slumber, correlating despair to poor leadership with its affective response to it. In terms of the deficit model, sluggard despair is a temporary, downward position, “artificial” in that Richard’s brooding is situationally inappropriate and a product of his wallowing.

‘For such loss ... abundant recompence’ (‘Tintern Abbey’, 88- 9): this formula governs a view of elegy now, apparently, become normative. Something works to redeem the harrowing logic of ultimate loss, perhaps even—as in certain Christian and Marxian mythoi—to transform it into splendour. In its lowest common denominator the formula traces out a dismal science of balanced books or capitalist growth. More impressive and even thrilling is the cancellation of loss executed through a general economy of gift-giving or potlatch. Of course ‘civilized’ cultures—witness the historical evolution of Christianity—have always tried to restrict the economy of wholesale sacrifice, to bring order and a measure of reasonableness to the sad, ecstatic, or spectacular stories of the deaths of kings.

The <i>ubi sunt</i> topos in Middle French: sad stories of the death of kings

Sad Stories of the Death of Kings

‘Sad stories of the death of kings’: Narrative Patterns and Structures of Authority in Regino of Prüm’s <i>Chronicle</i>

(1985). “… Sad stories of the death of kings”: The involution of divine kingship. Ethnos: Vol. 50, No. 3-4, pp. 248-272.

Like Aeschylus’s Women of Aetna , fifth-century Greek tragedy functioned as an augury of happiness. In Aristotle’s time, however, these tetralogies were performed only as “monologies.” Stripped of their celebratory satyr plays and other civic elements, fifth-century tragedies came to look like one-act tear-jerkers, merely sad stories of the deaths of kings. This type of play, which Aristotle calls tragedy and attributes to Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, was probably the invention of fourth-century Method actors. Their professional skill, together with new rules for tragic competition, transformed a propitious political art into a weepy histrionic one—and produced Aristotle’s otherwise perplexing “sad-ending” theory of tragedy.

Introduction: Sad Stories of the Death of Kings

Anyone acquainted with the critical literature of ‘Narratology’ is likely already to have raised an eyebrow at my title, since for the doyen of narratologists, Gerard Genette, as for Aristotle, drama is by definition a non-narrative mode of representation, tout court. Genette indeed has recently written of the ‘truly insurmountable opposition between dramatic representation and narrative’ .1 For the time being, my reply to this fairly comprehensive objection to what I am about to argue here must be a ‘commonsense’ one-and thus, no doubt, naive.

‘Sad Stories of the death of kings’: Narrative Patterns and Structures of Authority in Regino of Prüm’s Chronicle

“Sad Stories of the Death of Kings”: Seven Guitars and King Hedley IIIn light of Donald Pease’s extensive reading of Seven Guitars and King Hedley II in the “Critical and Performance Perspectives” section of this book, this chapter, in order to avoid unnecessary repetition, is somewhat abbreviated.

One. Sad Stories of the Death of Kings

Tragedy, as everyone knows, tells “sad stories of the death of kings,” but among surviving Greek tragedies only Euripides’ Trojan Women shows us the extinction of a whole city, an entire people. Despite its grim theme, or more likely because of the way that theme resonates with the deepest fears of our own age, this is one of the relatively few Greek tragedies that regularly finds its way to the stage. The power of Euripides’ theatrical and moral imagination speaks clearly across the twenty-five centuries that separate our world from his. The theme is really a double one: the suffering of the victims of war, exemplified by the women who survive the fall of Troy, and the degradation of the victors, shown by the Greeks’ reckless and ultimately self-destructive behavior. Trojan Women gains special relevance, of course, in times of war. Today, we seem to need this play more than ever. Let us begin, however, by considering this extraordinary document of human suffering and resilience in the context of its own times. We know that Euripides competed at the City Dionysia of 415 with a trilogy of Trojan tragedies and won second prize—almost tantamount to losing, because only three playwrights competed in the tragic competition.

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Book ReviewsFull AccessSad Stories of the Death of KingsRoger Peele, M.D., and Humaira Siddiqi, M.D.Roger PeeleSearch for more papers by this author, M.D., and Humaira SiddiqiSearch for more papers by this author, M.D.Published Online:1 Dec 2011https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ps.00621517aAboutSectionsPDF/EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InEmail Sad Stories of the Death of Kings by GiffordBarry; New York, Seven Stories Press, 2010, 224 pages, $16.95This book remindedus that when providing supportive psychotherapy to patients who have collected a long list of injustices, we like to discuss the following proverb with them: “The heat that melts the butter hardens the egg.”Roy, born in 1946, grows up in an immigrant-filled part of Chicago, the same year and location as experienced by author Barry Gifford. The book begins when Roy is 11 years old and chronicles his growth through 42 stand-alone vignettes, each two to six pages long. Chicago is described as a place of snow, cold rains, or muggy weather in which Roy's adventures usually begin on the street, among friends. In the vignettes, we get to know briefly people who die of homicide or suicide or who are put away in psychiatric wards or jails. Most are luckless. Most smoke.One vignette has Roy sneaking into a run-down strip joint in the early hours for the last numbing feature, a middle-aged stripper being introduced thusly: “And now, for the delicious not to mention the pleasure of you gentlemen out there, direct from Paris—that's a burg in southern Illinois—guaranteed to raise your spirits if nothing else, the proud proprietor of the best breasts in the Middle West, Miss May Flowers.” Miss Flowers appears on stage and strips lifelessly before a couple dozen semicomatose patrons without raising anything. After the show, coming out of her dressing room, she sees Roy and asks him to light a cigarette for her because her hands are full, one holding a bag with her outfit and the other a bag with her wig. After he has torched the cigarette for her, she tells him, “Don't you end up like these bums come in this dive don't do nothin' but tell each other sad stories of the death of Kings,” apparently referring to Shakespeare's Richard II:“For God's sake let us sit on the groundAnd tell sad stories of the death of kings.”Each story, told without anger or patronizing, beautifully captures the times of Chicago in the late 1950s and early 1960s and tells of many people meeting their fate at an early age.Besides many a death in his world, Roy has to adjust to gruesome events, harshness, and disillusionments. By the time he reaches adulthood, Roy is a very hard egg.Dr. Peele is with the Montgomery County Government, Rockville, Maryland.Dr. Siddiqi is with Crisis and Emergency Services, District of Columbia Department of Mental Health, Washington, D.C.The reviewers report no competing interests. FiguresReferencesCited byDetailsCited ByNone Volume 62Issue 12 December 2011Pages 1517-1518 Metrics PDF download History Published online 1 December 2011 Published in print 1 December 2011