2025-02-27 0:15:35 ¶ ● ⬀ ⬈

currentlycryingaboutlancelot:

> shakespeare villains are funny because there’s a sliding scale from them being understandable characters like claudius or macbeth who are very well-developed and it’s very clear what they’ve done and why and what the stakes are and there’s also kind of this internal moral struggle going on that makes them very believable. and then you have like. don john and richard iii cartoonishly rubbing their hands together and cackling like a looney tunes character as they decide to mess things up for no other reason than that they just announced they are the villain in their first speech, so what else are they going to do for the next 2.5 hours

then you have characters like Shylock, Edmund/Goneril/Regan, and Tamora who are entirely correct in their grievances and you really wanna root for them, but then shakespeare throws in something horrendous for them to do to prove they’re evil. and it’s usually mutilation.