Analyse How the Central Values Portrayed in King Richard Iii Are Creatively Reshaped in Looking for Richard.
"An honest tale speeds best, being plainly told.” This quote from William Shakespeare’s King Richard III is a seed from which Al Pacino’s docu-drama Looking For Richard grows, both texts demonstrating the intrinsic relationship between contexts and the composition of texts. As 21st century students, we see Pacino’s creative reshaping emphasise inherent values within the original text, from dynamic perspectives to interpretational understandings, presented in an ‘honest’ and ‘plainly told’ composition. The parallels drawn between the texts stem from the contextual challenge to the responders inherent within each text, along with equivalence to the dynamic perspectives and differing interpretations of the creative reshaping.
King Richard III and Looking For Richard are compositional products that directly correlate to historical and social contexts respectively, the latter drawing on the former’s challenge to the context in which it was written. Shakespeare’s late sixteenth century play was crafted in a turbulent time of rigid political and religious adherence, and written under the weight of sectarian distrust and forced political alignment to the reigning Tudors. Thus, Shakespeare’s portrayal of Richard as a Yorkist focus’s on his devilish and Machiavellian nature. Written eight decades earlier, Niccolo Machiavelli’s The Prince asserts that an effective ruler should abandon traditional Christian virtues and morality to grow in power at any cost: ‘Politics have no relation to morals.’ This view of power and politics indicates a shift to a secular notion of leadership. Richard is, to a degree, a Machiavel; he calls himself a devil, ‘Thus like the formal Vice, Iniquity, I moralise two meanings in one word.’ (III.iii.82–83) This play is weighted with rigid historical context, but also challenges the notion of providentialism through Richard’s determination to ‘prove a villain.’ There is also a challenge in Pacino’s Looking for Richard for the modern audience, and
King Richard III and Looking For Richard are compositional products that directly correlate to historical and social contexts respectively, the latter drawing on the former’s challenge to the context in which it was written. Shakespeare’s late sixteenth century play was crafted in a turbulent time of rigid political and religious adherence, and written under the weight of sectarian distrust and forced political alignment to the reigning Tudors. Thus, Shakespeare’s portrayal of Richard as a Yorkist focus’s on his devilish and Machiavellian nature. Written eight decades earlier, Niccolo Machiavelli’s The Prince asserts that an effective ruler should abandon traditional Christian virtues and morality to grow in power at any cost: ‘Politics have no relation to morals.’ This view of power and politics indicates a shift to a secular notion of leadership. Richard is, to a degree, a Machiavel; he calls himself a devil, ‘Thus like the formal Vice, Iniquity, I moralise two meanings in one word.’ (III.iii.82–83) This play is weighted with rigid historical context, but also challenges the notion of providentialism through Richard’s determination to ‘prove a villain.’ There is also a challenge in Pacino’s Looking for Richard for the modern audience, and