Now is the winter of our discontent, made glorious summer by this sun of York, and all the clouds

that lowered upon our house in the deep bosom of the ocean buried.

Hang with me now, hang with me now.

Now our brows bound with victorious wreaths, our bruised arms hung up for monuments,

our stern alarms changed to merry meetings. Grimvisaged war hath smoothed his wrinkled front.

And now, instead of mounting barbed steeds to fright the souls of fearful adversaries, he capers

nimbly in a lady's chamber to the lascivious pleasing of a lute.

Okay, hang on. You are at the Ranssen Heart Podcast. You don't tune us off just yet. Those of you English majors

will recognize the opening monologue from Richard III, Shakespeare's play. And hang with me.

There's a reason here. Richard is a devious man. Richard is the alleged, you know, protagonist of the play, but he is describing

in this opening monologue how his brother, who is this son of York, sunshine, sun, bringing

light and goodness to England, has just, you know, brought peace to the

land in the War of the Roses here towards the End of the War of the Roses.

Richard is actually upset by that because now everyone's turning back to domestic life and romance

and love and that sort of thing.

And he is not, and he is bitter about it. The issue is that Richard is physically deformed,

perhaps badly, physically deformed,

and therefore in a culture of beauty, he finds himself the object of shame and fear and derision.

So he's going to go on and explain sort of his plot in the play.

He says, but I that have not shaped for sportive tricks, nor made to court an amorous looking-glass,

I that am rudely stamped, cheated, of feature by dissembling nature,

deformed, unfinished, sent before my time into this breathing world,

...