Screech’s Tale — Hubris, Justice and the Bardcore City

In “Screech’s Tale”, Ren turns a single night in London into a street-corner tragedy. The story picks up where Jenny’s Tale leaves off — another voice, another choice, another life cracking under pressure. This time it’s pride, not fear, that sets the chain in motion. Screech moves through the city like a spark in dry grass — young, angry, desperate to matter. His name already sounds like violence; the streets know what’s coming long before he does.

The London that speaks

Poverty and consequence play out again, but this time London itself seems to speak. The city watches, listens, breathes — a living witness to every choice made and every life cut short. Where Shakespeare used soliloquies, Ren uses rhythm: a pulse that makes us hear the city’s heartbeat under the verse. Each act of violence becomes another line in a poem London keeps writing.

“In Ren’s London, mercy and justice are never cleanly divided — only echoed through broken glass and streetlight.”

Pride and punishment

Screech’s story is a study in hubris — pride cracking into guilt, and guilt summoning consequence. Like Macbeth or Romeo, he acts first and understands later. By the time the shot rings out, the story’s already written. Yet Ren never frames him as a monster. Screech is both agent and artifact — part choice, part circumstance. The system that failed him becomes part of the tragedy itself.

This is what gives the song its moral weight: we can’t quite hate him, even as we watch him fall. The tale refuses to let us stay comfortable — every beat asks who truly carries the blame.

Enter Richard, the witness

We meet Richard — the police officer who will later return in Ren’s Vincent’s Tale cycle. His role may seem small here, but it’s deliberate: Ren plants him quietly, a symbol of duty and humanity amid chaos. Through Richard, we glimpse how tragedy radiates outward, touching not just the fallen, but those left to pick up the pieces. His later reappearance ties the Bardcore world to the Vincent world — showing that Ren’s universe is a web of consequence, not isolated tales.

Shakespeare in the streets

Like Shakespeare’s tragedies, Screech’s Tale doesn’t moralise — it observes. The rhyme and flow replace blank verse, but the bones are the same: hubris, fate, consequence. Ren’s London becomes a stage, the alleyways a chorus. Screech’s downfall feels inevitable not because he’s evil, but because he’s trapped inside a cycle older than himself. Ren’s genius is in the compassion behind the chaos — a refusal to look away from pain, yet never to surrender hope entirely.

Reflection

This Screech’s Tale Shakespeare analysis sees the track as a meditation on pride, guilt, and the thin line between justice and mercy. Richard’s quiet presence grounds the chaos — a reminder that tragedy doesn’t end with death; it lingers in those who survive. Where Jenny’s Tale teaches the cost of fear, Screech’s Tale shows the cost of pride. Together they form two sides of the same city — one trembling, one defiant, both doomed to learn what mercy costs.

“In Ren’s Bardcore city, every decision hums with consequence — and the city always keeps the score.”