Dark Sovereign, a New Version for the Stage

The first edition of "Dark Sovereign" was privately published in 1991 and has no ISBN number. Edition 2, published in July 2011, comprises the full text with its complete 715-item glossary. This edition, No. 3, "Dark Sovereign, a New Version for the Stage" was published in January 2019. ¶ For the first time in four centuries a modern writer has challenged William Shakespeare by writing a full-length play in the Bard's Renaissance English-fluently. Shakespeare wrote "The Tragedy of Richard the Third" as Tudor propaganda for the Court of Queen Elizabeth I, portraying King Richard III as a sociopath and a killer. ¶ Author Robert Fripp, formerly the series producer of CBC-TV's long-running investigative "The Fifth Estate" series, took four years to pen his modern, revised view of Richard III. Fripp's "Dark Sovereign" tells the real, the historical tale of Richard's troubled reign. "At last!" comments New York director Nathaniel Merchant. "Here is the antidote to the scurrilous but seductive play by Shakespeare. Fripp shocks with his skillful and uncanny use of verse and his portrait of Richard as a man, not a caricature or stock villain." ¶ Says the author, "It's not wildly revisionist. Just wildly different. 'Dark Sovereign' seldom gives King Richard's character more benefit of the doubt than reliable histories do. 'Dark Sovereign' is no whitewash. It runs close to a view long-held in England's northern counties: that Richard was a benign, capable ruler. He was caught between a rock and a hard place in a smouldering civil war, England's Wars of the Roses. 'Dark Sovereign' dramatizes the snake-pit of that conflict with a human, not a demonic, face. It's a stronger story without Shakespeare's character assassination.' So, why put the word "Dark" in the title? 'The word carries the sixteenth century sense you find in dark horse and dark star, ' says Fripp. 'It suggests a quality unknown; and that is certainly true of Richard III, smeared with his enemy's propaganda through four centuries.' Art historian Claude Marks, a lecturer at New York's Metropolitan Museum, called "Dark Sovereign" 'a cultural accomplishment of the highest order.' No wonder Samuel Liff, Senior Theatrical Agent at the William Morris Agency, described "Dark Sovereign" to the author's agent, Jennifer Watts, as 'The most courageous thing I ever saw in theater. A good play, too.' ¶ 'Many authors, including Shakespeare, Francis Bacon and the six teams of scholars who produced the King James Bible in 1611, were writing in what we call the Golden Age of the English language, ' says Fripp. 'It's a beautiful language. It's yours and it's mine.' The author should know. As a boy, Fripp won a choral scholarship to Salisbury Cathedral choir where he recited, chanted and sang early modern English for five years.