Bill Alexander Commentary (AO5)

Question 1

How did Worcester Cathedral inspire Alexander to create the design for this richly pictorial production? (2 things)

Answer 1

’- ‘Its massive tombs and carved stone screen’
-‘In whose Gothic shadows wandered Margaret, wrapped in a huge Lancastrian flag.’’

Question 2

‘Reminiscent of the spectacular medievalism of nineteenth-century theatre,’ what is the most important part to this interpretation?

Answer 2

‘This interpretation kept its flamboyant Richard firmly at the centre of attention.’

Question 3

How did Antony Sher devise Richard’s character?

Answer 3

‘He devised a nightmarish figure for the Crookback, taking his cue from Margaret’s description of him as a ‘bottled-spider’’

Question 4

How did Richard support himself and move around the stage?

Answer 4

‘He supported his spindly frame on two black crutches, on which, with long sleeves trailing’
‘He propelled himself about the stage with terrifying power and agility’

Question 5

How did Antony Sher use the ‘two black crutches’ as ingenious tools? (2 things) and how was his ‘poisonous black hump finally pierced’?

Answer 5

‘To catch Hasting’s head in a pincer movement or to prove beneath women’s skirts’
It was finally pierced ‘by the cruciform sword of a Richmond in shining golden armour.’

Question 6

What are the two influences Bill suggested Shakespeare wrote the play from and how?

Answer 6

• Greek tragedy, choric mourning scenes
  -Medieval morality plays, Richard is drawn from the figure of vice.

Question 7

What did the death of the real Richard III in 1485 mark? (3 things)

Answer 7

Marked:
- The end of the medieval world
- The beginning of the Tudors
-Start of English Modern history

Question 8

Before Richard’s death, what was there that was an unshakable belief in for society?

Answer 8

The control of God, Richard’s death established the beginning of humanism.

Question 9

What are the two types of person we can see Richard as?
(Bill, and then Jung)

Answer 9

Either:
- An Anti-christ figure
-‘Modern man in search of a soul’

Question 10

What did Bill say about the Queen Elizabeth Scene when Richard requests to marry her daughter?

Answer 10

‘This confrontation has no equivalent in contemporary England. Maybe in Amin’s Uganda. The meeting between a mother and a man who’s killed her children.
A special Intimacy, even beyond hatred. A dreadful Intimacy. Maternalism versus Power.