Made Glorious

One of Richard's costumes has this great golden shoulder guard.

Richard III's opening speech is wonderful example of Shakespeare's command of the blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter) poetic form. Here's an example with some paraphrase from me in italics after both couplets.

    Now is the winter of our discontent
    Made glorious summer by this sun of York;

Finally! This horrible patch of tough luck the York family's had
Is turned around because my brother's [with a play on the homonyms sun/son] in control;

    And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house
    In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.

And all the bad stuff that's happened to us
Is far away and done with.

The speech goes on to explain that even though things are looking up for Richard, he's still not satisfied and will set his brothers Edward and Clarence against each other in order to seize the throne for himself. What a guy. He ends the 41-line speech with the following—

    Dive, thoughts, down to my soul. Here Clarence comes.

And so the story begins. . . .