“Richard II is Shakespeare’s ultimate play about hystericization (in contrast to Hamlet, the ultimate play about obsession). Its topic is the progressive questioning by the king of his own kingship - What is it that makes me a king? What remains of me if the symbolic title ‘king’ is taken away? ‘I have no name, no title, No, not that name was given me at the font, But ‘tis usurp’d: alack the heavy day, That I have worn so many winters out, And know not now what name to call myself! O that I were a mockery king of snow, Standing before the sun of Bolingbroke, To melt myself away in water-drops!’ In the Slovene translation, the second line is rendered as: ‘Why am I what I am?’ Although this clearly involves too much poetic license, it does convey the gist of the predicament: deprived of its symbolic titles, Richard’s identity melts like a snowman’s in the sun.”
- Slavoj Zizek, How to Read Lacan (via goneril-and-regan)
- Slavoj Zizek, How to Read Lacan (via goneril-and-regan)