richard iii - tudor myth Flashcards
Richmond RSC 2022
richmonds face projected with a white light implying purity and deity
- purpose was the present as herioc saviours of england
“that foul defacer of God’s handiwork,” vs ‘God’s Captain’ - divine justice
‘And live with Richmond, from the reach of hell’
Olivier beginning
The prologue of the film states that history without its legends would be “a dry matter indeed”, implicitly admitting to the artistic licence that Shakespeare applied to the events of the time
‘Every take condemns me for a villain’
Loncraine asides
Speaks into cameras - charismatic yet uncomfortable, ensures intimacy and complicity
Richmond usurps R privilege and smiles into camera, complicates history as vicious cycle ‘god say amen’
‘what traitor hears me and says not Amen’ - moral imperative but manipulative
gunby - ironic echoes of the opening soliloquy ‘smooth-faced peace’ vs ‘grim-visag’d war hath smoothed his wrinkled front’)
harold bloom - Shakespeare actually using the Tudor myth in the play as a way of poking fun of the dynasty- ‘chop off his head’
Richard is seen as tyrannical in killing people as soon as they inconvenience him however this was a common trait of the Tudors, with Elizabeth being infamous for beheadings and Henry VIII executing all three of his ministers when they did not fulfil his aims.
Richmond would be more compelling + substantial (deus ex machina - abruptly resolved by unlikely occurrence)
- in first appearance only speaks 20 lines which give no sense of the individual + the focus in the scene is on richard as a ‘wretched, bloody, and usurping boar’
colley cibber later interpretation - richard exclaims ‘off with his head’ - flippant and thoughtles violence
Tillyard Tudor myth
Henry VII efforts to bolster claim to throne and establish undisputed sovereignty - linking of events in history with god (providential)
- the main business of the play is to display the working out of god’s plan to restore england to prosperity
‘Every tale condemns me for a villain’ - references all the contradictions about his identity - perhaps referencing how he is condemned as villain
Greenblatt ghosts
Memory of the murdered, and agents of a restored health and wholeness to the damaged community
‘richard fall in height of all his pride’
‘Despair and die!’ vs ‘live and flourish’
gunby
according to A he has ‘timorous dreams’ - supressing pangs of conscience or doubt during waking hours (like lady macbeth)
by visiting both richmond and richard, they are a visible summation of the retributive process now nearing its end
Hollow Crown
Hollow Crown - bleak ending, coronation of Henry VII cut with dead bodies on the battlefield, slowly zooms out showing the extent of the damage. Overall ominous feeling, perhaps foreshadowing a rather bloody reign in the Tudors.
sir thomas moore - history of king richard iii 1518
first displayed machiavellian characteristic (eg. complicity in murder of clarence)
- current thinking sees as literature rather than history
- but at time taken to be fully in possession of the facts
‘i am determined to prove a villain’ - SIEMON (accepts divine predestination to damnation and simultaneously chooses reprobation for himself)
siemon
richard come right out of late elizabethan anxieties
- pious hypocrite who ‘seem a saint’
warning against treason - richmond ending ‘that would with treason wound this fair land’s peace’
sher ending
kneeling, richard offered up the crown to god, as the golden visored richmond pinned him with a cross-like sword, executing the judgement of providence
