King Richard III and Looking For Richard Comparative Essay
How has the study of the connection between your set texts shaped your understanding of context and values?
The exploration of William Shakespeare’s play ‘King Richard III’ and Al Pacino’s 1996 doco-drama film ‘Looking for Richard’ reveals the explicit relationships between each text and their respective audience. The Elizabethan and twentieth century contexts in each of these texts are important as it demonstrates the value of each text and enables the understanding of how the film enriches the ideas presented in the play. Shakespeare’s ‘King Richard III’ portrays a malicious and corrupted Richard to explore the themes of divine justice and the notion of outer appearance versus inner reality in the theocentric context of the Elizabethan society. Four centuries later, Al Pacino’s ‘Looking for Richard’ reflects the director’s quest to come to terms with a Shakespearean text in a contemporary context, providing a personal examination of the same Richard’s behaviour, whist simultaneously reflects the post modern era with the absence of divine order and the change in views of conscience. Ultimately, it is through the study of these texts and a comparative study that these texts illuminate our understanding of different contexts and values.
Shakespeare depicts Richard’s duplicity through his soliloquies and asides as they reveal his multifaceted and deceptive nature. Richard’s oratory skills, whilst they are revealed to be witty, as he is shown to use intelligent word play, irony and stichomythia, he is ultimately cast as the Machiavellian character from the outset of the play “determined to play a villain”. Richard puts the blame on his appearance for the immoral acts he commits “deformed, unfinished, sent before my time” and uses it as an excuse to be power hungry. Richard’s duplicity is highlighted when his brother Clarence is sent to the tower to be murdered. Any sympathy elicited from the audience in the opening soliloquy is undermined immediately by the deeply
The exploration of William Shakespeare’s play ‘King Richard III’ and Al Pacino’s 1996 doco-drama film ‘Looking for Richard’ reveals the explicit relationships between each text and their respective audience. The Elizabethan and twentieth century contexts in each of these texts are important as it demonstrates the value of each text and enables the understanding of how the film enriches the ideas presented in the play. Shakespeare’s ‘King Richard III’ portrays a malicious and corrupted Richard to explore the themes of divine justice and the notion of outer appearance versus inner reality in the theocentric context of the Elizabethan society. Four centuries later, Al Pacino’s ‘Looking for Richard’ reflects the director’s quest to come to terms with a Shakespearean text in a contemporary context, providing a personal examination of the same Richard’s behaviour, whist simultaneously reflects the post modern era with the absence of divine order and the change in views of conscience. Ultimately, it is through the study of these texts and a comparative study that these texts illuminate our understanding of different contexts and values.
Shakespeare depicts Richard’s duplicity through his soliloquies and asides as they reveal his multifaceted and deceptive nature. Richard’s oratory skills, whilst they are revealed to be witty, as he is shown to use intelligent word play, irony and stichomythia, he is ultimately cast as the Machiavellian character from the outset of the play “determined to play a villain”. Richard puts the blame on his appearance for the immoral acts he commits “deformed, unfinished, sent before my time” and uses it as an excuse to be power hungry. Richard’s duplicity is highlighted when his brother Clarence is sent to the tower to be murdered. Any sympathy elicited from the audience in the opening soliloquy is undermined immediately by the deeply