Richard_the_Iii

The values and concerns central to both composers are embedded within each text and are portrayed both directly and indirectly through the conventions of each textual form. Both composers adopt forms popular within their contemporary context in order to explore contextual theme of an outcast but a gifted individual’s power to persuade, whether that is through language or film. Textual form and context affects any interpretation that we have of the text despite what we are directly presented with. Although both texts utilise different techniques, both Shakespeare’s Richard the III (henceforth R3) and Pacino’s Looking for Richard (henceforth LFR), allow the responder to recognise that the audience is complicit in a collaborative process of making meaning. Both composers had to appeal to the mass audience of the time to portray both an appealing story and their concerns. Plays were the main form of entertainment for Shakespeare’s context; however Shakespeare’s concerns were bound by the rigidity of the Elizabethan world view inherited from the Middle Ages in the hitherto unquestioned paradigm of the Great chain of being. Shakespeare challenges this paradigm by setting it against the emerging paradigm of humanism through the personified figure of Richard. This notion is highlighted in act I during the opening soliloquy as Richard begins to build and self-determine his character, so that the audience learns that he is an actor in both senses of the word: he feigns the social forms necessary for his acceptance, of contrary to the feudalist model, he act independently of the will of God, “determining” himself “to be a villain”. He also acts as a concerned brother for Clarence in Act 1, scene 1 “Well your imprisonment shall not be long, I will deliver you.”However his punning use of the term “deliver” signalling that he will deliver Clarence to God- i.e. kill him and his overt aside to the audience, confiding with us that “Clarence hath not long to live” creates a sense of both horror and excitement, as we see this Machiavellian anti-hero going about his work. The dramatic use of asides constructs the villainous character but also makes the audience complicit in the drama representation of acting as a signal of humanist Machiavellianism and positioning the audience to consider clash between the new world order and the old. Richard’s Machiavellianism now dangerously challenges the Elizabethan paradigm of Nature as it was believed an external deformity reflected the twisted inward character of an individual. Furthermore Richard in his opening soliloquy states, “Since I cannot prove a lover I am determined to prove a villain,” and the antithesis of the sentence and return to iambic pentameter in the second phrase signals the two contextually opposing paradigms, since his enaction of the pout of “villain” is now deliberately being appropriated by him in a conscious challenge to the medieval world order. On the other hand, in LFR, Pacino’s audience deriving from a predominantly visual culture, and titillated by filmic devices, operate within a profoundly individualistic and post Nietzschean paradigm. The choice of the docudrama form furthers the notion of humanist empiricism as Pacino is attempting to capture what seems to us, the responder, to be the scientific reality of Richard. The opening scene consisting of montage shots uses a collision of images that starkly depicts different aspects of setting, of medieval buildings and a modern urban setting, thus building immediate connections between the temporal frames hence making the comparison between contexts seem almost seamless. This is further illuminated by intertextual dialogue from The Tempest “Our revels now are ended; these are actors as I have foretold you...” This voice over illustrates how Pacino, like Richard, is an actor, and thus a link between the two is immediately established. Pacino is then seen as a director asking the responder “Who’s gonna say action'” “Me or you'” Pacino through rhetorical questioning accepts his audience as one that does not want to be told how to construct a character but rather wanting to ‘look for Richard’ themselves. This highlights the notion of the docudrama as a profoundly process-based text, in keeping with the central tenets of method acting. Pacino explains how Richard’s deformity was exaggerated by Shakespeare with the echoing diagetics of the words ‘deformed’ and rapid jump cuts of a hunched Richard, yet, paradoxically, intimate close ups make the responder feel for him as a character even though he is a psychopath. A connection is able to be established between both the later and the source texts and yet the responder’s understanding of Richard is illuminated more by the context of Pacino’s Hollywood acting career than by their historical references. That is, the responder is drawn to the psychology of the character and the value Pacino places on the exploration through method acting of the character’s mind, a large focus for a modern audience drawn into drama through the psyche of a character. This interpretation arose from the increased importance placed on psychotherapy and psychoanalysis in the late twentieth century, post Freud. Therefore, we can see that while LFR springs from its source text, it has undergone a profound shift in meaning. Both composers use their textual medium to present particular representations of Richard. Pacino uses the filmic docudrama form to modify the text. In Act 5 where Shakespeare uses a clear antithesis between the character of Richard and Richmond, Shakespeare does this to confirm ultimately the great chain of being, since the monarchy of Queen Elizabeth I is head of state, and Richmond’s victory justifies this Tudor line. Shakespeare thus had to portray Richard as more ‘evil’ under this paradigm in order to portray Richmond as a promising victor. This is demonstrated dramatically in Act V, scene 3 where both Richard and Richmond set up their tents on opposite sides of the stage before battle. Richard uses exclamations and imperatives “up with my tent!” “Fill me a bowl of wine” or “Give me a watch” positioning the responder to view Richard’s abuse of power as a tyrannical king; Richmond on the other hand is much gentler, establishing musicality through iambic pentameter: “Once more good night, kind lords and gentlemen” Furthermore juxtaposition towards the end in the dream scene in Act V, scene 3 between the ghost’s exclamation to Richard to “Despair and die” and to Richmond and “Live and flourish” demonstrate the clear political line that Shakespeare is being forced to draw. Moreover even in dramatic terms Shakespeare is referencing back to the motif within classical Greek tragedy of hubris, the downfall of one who has abused their power and the return of the fates, furies or eumenides as signalled in the dream sequence. The, as it were, karmic return of Richards’s bad deeds signals a cyclic process that is a product of both the Christian world view as well as the Aristotelian model of classical tragic theatre. In comparison, in LFR, Pacino is not confined to the restrictive Elizabethan beliefs but to other paradigms. The scope of characterisation available to the modern viewer has increased and Richard needs to therefore be a more plausible character than the distant Machiavellian Richard which Elizabethan society, albeit excited by, ultimately chose not to identify with. Rather Pacino uses his own experience of previous roles he has enacted drawing on the significance placed on the Stanislavskian model of method acting- making his performance more accessible to the audience. Pacino places Richard at the very centre of the docudrama as he controls the scenes and portrays his version of Richard as the fulcrum around which all other concerns become subsidiary. Furthermore his transmogrification of Richard into a gangster-like character referencing his previous films has LFR presenting Richard through such costuming devices as Pacino with the cap backwards or the casual Pacino, with sunglasses on and varying hairstyles. In the final, Battle of Bosworth scene Pacino leaves the responder to consider the character of Richard more sympathetically depicted helpless and isolated through long shots in conjunction with dissolves. Through these film techniques which Pacino’s audience are well versed in, Pacino is able to direct audience empathy for Richard. Pacino therefore, through authorship presents a Richard he feels is more human and less of a sociopath that Shakespeare presents him to be. The responder learns how context shapes the meaning of the text and their interpretations of a character (Richard), where in LFR the responder through a re-evaluation of the text views Richard as a more sympathetic anti-hero. Thus Pacino’s version is restricted and embedded within the paradigm of individualism itself, which disregards all other concerns in the Shakespearean source text in order to privilege this notion. Hence, the values and concerns of the composer’s context are inescapable elements of a text that are illuminated through the composer’s medium. Meaningful connections are made through close examination and it becomes clear that it is due to the change in the context that the responder is presented with two different Richards. Pacino’s film creates the schism between the interpretation of Richards character to be reassessed as a more three dimensional character than the two dimensional one Shakespeare presents; and yet, stripped of the technical forms of filmic representation and Method acting, Pacino’s sole focus on the individual psychic composition of Richard’s character brushes over the social, intellectual and contextual subtleties of the source text.