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 docodrama 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 ironic dialogue with Clarence.
Richard appears to have no idea what is going on and innocently asks “Brother, good day. What
means this armed guard/ That waits upon your grace?” Clarence claims that their older brother, the
King Edward has sent him to the tower to be killed, however ironically, it was Richard what had
persuaded Edward to send Clarence to the tower. Richard then tries to act like the loving brother
“Brother farewell… this deep disgrace/ Touches me deeper than you can imagine”. The audience is
comforted in the knowledge that divine order will be restored and retribution will be reaped. The
Elizabethan audience would have been disturbed by Richard’s ability to be so duplicitous and
would have wanted his duplicity punished.
Pacino’s film ‘Looking for Richard’ reflects the values of its society as Pacino attempts to create a
Shakespearean play more accessible to a twentieth century audience. The film begins and ends with
the intertextual use of an extract from Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest’ that through the voiceover,
ultimately justifies the postmodern ambiguity of the twentieth century “our actors… all spirits…this
insubstantial pageant…such stuff that dreams are made on…our little life is rounded with a sleep.”
This reinforces that life cannot provide us with moral certainty and stability and that the search for
the truth, morality and reality is futile and endless, unlike the Elizabethan era. It also suggests that
life is an illusion of dreams and that our lives are just one big performance. Pacino’s portrayal of
Richard’s duplicity revels in his ability to deceive those who trust him best “he’s in good shape. He
can move around. He can maneuver. He’s got room”. He is able to play the villain, loving brother
resistant king and desperate lover with incredible skill. The fluid editing between rehearsal scenes,
the staged performances and the actors’ heated discussions reveal Richard’s ability to (re)construct
the truth, especially the scene where Richard is hugging Clarence and persuading Edward, where
his duplicity is emphasised. Richard’s punishment is not God’s divine retribution, at worst, he
becomes psychologically fragmented and haunted by his conscience. The final scene almost
positions the audience to feel somewhat sympathetic towards his looming death, which low angle
shots are used to reflect his loss of power. The contemporary, post-modern audience understands
that humans are multifaceted and expect individuals to have many facades in their daily lives and
thus, do not condemn his deception as immediately as the Shakespearean audience.
‘King Richard III’ depicts the characterization of Richard through the representation of divine order
and justice. Richard attempts to usurp the position and authority as king and is the catalyst of the
chaotic events that sweep the nation. Richard constantly tries to obtain the position as king and
tactically removes anyone that acts as a barrier to him completing his mission, including his own
family “lies well steeled with weighty arguments”. This thirst for power results in his increasingly
diabolic depiction “foul devil”, as a result of his attempts to disturb the divine order. The text was
set in a theocentric society in which people believed that God will seek retribution to anyone that
goes against his will. This is demonstrated when Margaret curses Richard for killing her husband
and son in the War of the Roses “sin, death and hell have their marks set on him”. The Elizabethan
audience believed that to disrupt this rigid moral order would cause social chaos, thus, in
Shakespeare’s morally didactic and thoroughly moralistic text, divine order had to be restored “A
murderous villain… which God revenge” and those who usurped the hand of God had to pay the
ultimate price for their sins “Hie thee to hell for shame… there thy kingdom is”.
Conversational, ‘Looking for Richard’ ignores the extent of the social chaos caused by Richard’s
villainy. Instead, it targets the audience lacking any spiritual references and live in a world with no
absolutes where importance is placed on the individual. This becomes evidently when Pacino
succinctly states “A person has an opinion. It’s only an opinion. It’s never a question of right or
wrong.” The dialogue reflects a secular society where theocratic elements are no longer universally
accepted. The film juxtaposes the twentieth century values with those of the Elizabethan audience
to depict that individuals are guided only by their own moral compass and not by religion. This is
revealed as Pacino has omitted the dialogue between Clarence’s murderers as they reveal their fear
of the divine price of their murderous behaviour. Instead, he chooses to focus the conversation on
their own individual guilty consciences and the impact on their lives “Faith, certain dregs of
conscience are here within me”. Pacino chooses to cut out the religious rhetoric to highlight that
although the ideas remain pertinent, Elizabethan values are to an extent, irrelevant to the twentieth
century audience. Rapid camera movements of Richard depict him as a tormented, fragmented and
a psychologically unstable man. Richard is haunted by the ghost of his conscience and ultimately, is
punished by his madness rather than his death. ‘Looking for Richard’ empahasises that there is no
fear of divine retribution but the impact of their immoral behaviour on their individual identity. In
the twentieth century context justice comes in the form of their own psychological fragmentation
and guilty conscience, rather than sanctioned by God.
Thus, the analysis of this pair of texts served to heighten our understanding of the values and
contexts of the texts and the commonalities between them. Shakespeare’s fifteenth century audience
placed great significant value on religion. The Elizabethans are comforted in the knowledge that
any individual to usurp the hand of God will face divine retribution and right will definitely be
restored. On the other hand, Pacino’s twentieth century audience have no agreed spiritual references
and live in a postmodern world where independence is placed on the individual rather than God.
Ultimately the contextual comparison of the texts furthers our understanding of the values portrayed
within the two different time periods.