Breaking tradition : a study of film adaptations of Richard III

Since the advent of film as a visual and artistic medium, Shakespeare's Richard III has captured the interest of filmmakers and viewers alike. In the play, Shakespeare, through his central character Richard Gloucester, renders his vision of radical evil. The conception of evil, a perennial theme both in literature and in the world it seeks to describe, has changed in tandem with shifting performative mediums: A Renaissance understanding of evil is to a late twentieth-century understanding of evil as Shakespeare's stage is to the modern movie theatre. In short, Shakespeare's Richard is worlds apart from the evil figures that we see through pop cultural mediums today.

This thesis asks the following questions: if Shakespeare's England is so different from twentieth-century Hollywood, then why do filmmakers continue to revisit Shakespeare's material in general and Shakespeare's Richard III in specific? Further, how do they appropriate Shakespeare's understanding of evil to fit with their own and their world's conceptions? To answer these questions, this project examines three film adaptations: Laurence Olivier's Richard III (1955), Ian McKellen's Richard III (1995), and Al Pacino's Looking for Richard (1996).