Abstract
In the sixth book of her award-winning science fiction series the Vorkosigan Saga, Lois McMaster Bujold offers an important fact about her main character, Miles Vorkosigan: at a young age, he memorized all of Shakespeare’s Richard III, and, years later, he can still recite it, complete with falsetto voices for the female characters.1 In the series, Richard III provides a mirror for Miles’s political situation and some of his personal characteristics: Miles stands only a few steps from the throne of a tri-planetary empire at the end of a bloody civil war, and was raised as the current Emperor’s foster brother. He is deformed, with a hunched back, brittle bones, and a scarred body. He is charismatic and persuasive in situations where persuasion should be impossible, and he can be utterly ruthless when it suits him.
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© 2015 Patricia Taylor
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Taylor, P. (2015). ’This is not the play’: Shakespeare and Space Opera in Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan Saga. In: Hansen, A., Wetmore, K.J. (eds) Shakespearean Echoes. Palgrave Shakespeare Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137380029_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137380029_12
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-47908-5
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-38002-9
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