Composition littéraire, 2013-2014, S1
Compare and contrast the following texts, taking the pictures into account
Shakespeare’s Richard III, ACT 1 SCENE I. London. A street.
Enter Richard, Duke of GLOUCESTER, solus
GLOUCESTERNow is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lour'd[1] upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;
Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
Grim-visaged war hath smooth'd his wrinkled front;
And now, instead of mounting barded steeds[2]
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,
He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.
But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks[3],
Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;
I, that am rudely stamp'd, and want love's majesty
To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;
I, that am curtail'd of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deformed, unfinish'd, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them;
Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time,
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun
And descant[4] on mine own deformity:
And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,
To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
I am determined[5] to prove a villain
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.
Plots have I laid, inductions[6] dangerous,
By drunken prophecies, libels[7] and dreams,
To set my brother Clarence and the king
In deadly hate the one against the other:
And if King Edward be as true and just
As I am subtle, false and treacherous,
This day should Clarence closely be mew'd[8] up,
About a prophecy, which says that 'G'
Of Edward's heirs the murderer shall be.
Dive, thoughts, down to my soul: hereClarence comes.
Enter George, Duke of CLARENCE, guarded
Brother, good day; what means this armed guard
That waits upon your grace?
CLARENCEHis majesty
Tendering my person's safety, hath appointed
This conduct to convey me to the Tower.
GLOUCESTERUpon what cause?
CLARENCEBecause my name is George.
GLOUCESTER
Alack, my lord, that fault is none of yours;
He should, for that, commit your godfathers:
O, belike his majesty hath some intent
That you shall be new-christen'd in the Tower.
But what's the matter, Clarence? may I know?
CLARENCEYea, Richard, when I know; for I protest
As yet I do not: but, as I can learn,
He hearkens[9] after prophecies and dreams;
And from the cross-row[10] plucks the letter G.
And says a wizard told him that by G
His issue disinherited should be;
And, for my name of George begins with G,
It follows in his thought that I am he.
These, as I learn, and such like toys[11] as these
Have moved his highness to commit me now.
GLOUCESTERWhy, this it is, when men are ruled by women:
'Tis not the king that sends you to the Tower:
My Lady Grey[12] his wife, Clarence, 'tis she
That tempers him to this extremity.
Was it not she and that good man of worship,
Anthony Woodville, her brother there,
That made him send Lord Hastings to the Tower,
From whence this present day he is deliver'd?
We are not safe, Clarence; we are not safe.
House of Cards, Michael Dobbs
London, New York, Simon & Schuster, 1989
Extract from the first chapter, ‘The Shuffle’
The Right Honourable Francis Ewan Urquhart was not enjoying himself. Ministerial office brought many pleasures, but this was not one of them. He was squashed into the corner of a small and stuffy living room pressed hard up against a hideous 1950s standard lamp, which showed every sign of wanting to topple over. He had never felt at home in his constituency, but then he never felt at home anywhere any more, not even in his native Scotland. As a child he had loved to wander through the bracing, crystal air of the Perthshire moors, accompanying the old gillie on a shoot, lying for hours in the damp peat and sweetly scented bracken waiting for the right buck to appear. But the Scottish moors and ancestral estates had never completely satisfied him and, as his appetite for politics and power grew, so he had come steadily to resent the enforced family responsibilities which had been thrust at him when his brother failed to return.
So amidst much family bitterness he had sold the estates, which could no longer provide him with an adequate lifestyle and would never provide him with a secure majority, and at the age of thirty-nine had exchanged them for the safer political fields of Westminster and Surrey. His aged father, who had expected no more of his only surviving son than that he devote himself to the family duties as he and his own father had done, had never spoken to him again. To have sold his heritage for the whole of Scotland would have been unforgivable, but for Surrey?
Urquhart had never disciplined himself to enjoy the small talk of constituency circles, and his mood had begun to sour as the day drew on. This was the eighteenth committee room he had visited today, and the early morning smile had long since been transfixed into a rigid grimace. It was now only forty minutes before the close of the polling booths, and his shirt was wringing wet under the Savile Row suit. He knew he should have worn one of his older suits: no amount of pressing would get it back into shape again. He was tired, uncomfortable and losing patience.
He spent little time in his constituency nowadays, and the less time he spent the less congenial his demanding constituents seemed. The journey to the leafy suburbs, which had seemed so short and attractive when he had gone for his first adoption meeting, seemed to grow longer as he climbed the political ladder from backbencher through Junior Ministerial jobs and now attending Cabinet as Chief Whip, one of the two dozen most powerful posts in the Government, with its splendid offices at 12 Downing Street just yards from the Prime Minister’s own.
Yet his power did not come directly from his public office. The role of Chief Whip does not carry with it full Cabinet rank. Urquhart had no great Department of State or massive civil service machine to command; his was a faceless task, toiling ceaselessly behind the scenes, making no public speeches and giving no television interviews. Less than 1 per cent of the Gallup Poll gave him instant name recognition.
His was a task which had to be pursued out of the limelight for, as Chief Whip, he was responsible for discipline within the Parliamentary Party, for delivering a full turnout on every vote. Which meant he was not only the Minister with the most acute political antennae, knowing all the secrets of Government before almost any of his colleagues, but in order to deliver the vote day after day, night after night, he also needed to know where every one of his Members of Parliament was likely to be found, with whom they were conspiring, with whom they might be sleeping, whether they would be sober enough to vote or had any personal crisis which could disrupt their work and the smooth management of parliamentary business.
And in Westminster, such information is power. More than one of his senior colleagues and many more junior members of the Parliamentary Party owed their continuing position to the ability of the Whips Office to sort out and occasionally cover up their personal problems. And many disaffected backbenchers had found themselves suddenly supporting the Government when reminded of some earlier indiscretion which had been forgiven by the Party and Whips Office, but never forgotten. Scarcely any scandal in Government strikes without the Whips Office knowing about it first, and because they know about it first, many scandals simply never strike – unless the Chief whip and his ten Junior Whips wish it to.
Urquhart was brought up sharply by one of his ladies whose coyness and discretion had been overcome by the heat and excitement of the day.
‘Will you still stand at the next election, Mr Urquhart?’ she enquired brashly.
‘What do you mean?’ he spluttered, taken aback.
‘Are you thinking of retiring? You are sixty-one years old now, aren’t you? Sixty-five or more at the next election,’ she persisted.
He bent his tall and angular figure low in order to look her directly in the face. ‘Mrs Bailey, I still have my wits about me and in many societies I would just be entering my political prime,’ he responded defensively. ‘I still have a lot of work to do and things I want to achieve.’
But deep down he knew she was right. Instead of the strong red hues of his youth, he was now left with but a dirty smear of colour in his thinning hair, which he wore over-long and straggly as if to compensate. He was not ageing with the elegance or the authority for which he would have wished.
Time was not on his side. Like most of his colleagues he had first entered Parliament harbouring unspoken ambitions to make it all the way to the top, yet during his career he had watched as younger and less gifted men had found more rapid advancement. The bitter experience had tempered his ambition while not being able to extinguish it completely. If not Downing Street, then at least a major Department of State would allow him to become an acknowledged national leader, repaying his father’s scorn with greater prominence than the old man could ever have dreamed of. He still had time to make his mark. He believed in his destiny, but it seemed to be taking an unholy long time to arrive.
Yet now was surely the time. One of the most important responsibilities of a Chief Whip is to advise the Prime Minister on any Ministerial reshuffle – which Ministers should be preferred, which backbenchers deserved elevation, which colleagues were dispensable and should make way. Not all the suggestions were accepted, of course, but the majority usually were. He had given the post-election reshuffle a lot of thought, and he had in his pocket a hand-written note to the Prime Minister covering all his recommendations. They would not only mean a stronger and more effective Government, and God knew they needed that after the last couple of years, but also one in which his close colleagues and allies would be in the strongest positions of influence. And he, of course, would have that prominent position which he had so long deserved. Yes, at last his time had come.
Opening of House of Cards, TV series, BBC, 1990
Francis Urquart
Nothing lasts forever.
Even the longest, most glittering reign must come to an end some day.
Who could replace her? Plenty of contenders.
Old warriors, young pretenders.
Lord Billsborough, say.
Party Chairman.
Too old and too familiar.
Tainted by a thousand shabby deals.
Michael Samuels.
Too young.
And too clever.
Patrick Woolton.
Bit of a lout.
Bit of a bully-boy.
Yes, it could well be Woolton, Henry Collingridge.
The people's favourite.
A well-meaning fool.
No background and no bottom.
What, me? Oh, no, no, no.
I'm the Chief Whip.
Merely a functionary.
I keep the troops in line.
I put a bit of stick about, make 'em jump.
I shall, of course, give my absolute loyalty to whoever emerges as my leader.
You'll have to excuse me now.
Laurence Olivier in the opening scene of his screen adaptation of Richard III (1955)
Adaptations of House of Cards as TV series: Ian Richardson as Francis Urquhart (UK, BBC, 1990) and Kevin Spacey as Francis Underwood (US, Netflix, 2013) facing the camera and addressing the spectators
[1] Frowned upon, lowered
[2] Horses in armament
[3] Sexual games
[4] comment
[5] Resolved + pre-determined
[6] First steps in an undertaking
[7]defamation by written or printed words, pictures, or in any form other than by spoken words or gestures
[8] confined
[9] Listens to, believes in
[10] The alphabet
[11] Trifles, small things
[12] Richard insultingly refers to the queen, Elizabeth, by her former name. Her first husband was Sir John Grey, who was killed in battle. Edward’s brothers were hostile to her and her family.