The exploration of the connectedness between texts enhances an understanding of text’s textual integrity. This is evident within William Shakespeare’s ‘King Richard Third’ and Al Pacino’s docudrama ‘Looking For Richard’, where composers portray, through literary and film techniques, texts which reveal to their respective audiences valuable insights into their differing contexts. ‘Looking For Richard’ is based on ‘King Richard Third’ and adapts Shakespeare’s values to a modern context. Exploration of connections between the texts enhances the understanding of the values and contexts of each text. Connections enhances context, character and perspective as these values intensify connections. Through exploring context and character connections between texts, new perspectives of each text are possible, creating textual integrity. Richard Third - Context
Richard Third was written to a superstitious Elizabethan audience. It was written as pro-Tudor propaganda, whereby the representation of Richard as a sly and deformed character perpetuates the Tudor Myth, within the context of the War of the Roses. Richard exudes traits of a Machiavellian villain, with imagery exaggerating Richard as a “Deformed, unfinished” man who was “Sent before his time” in order to maintain his discontent. Furthermore, Richards evil characterization and relentless pursuit of power is highlighted to his audience through his opening soliloquy “since I can not prove to be a lover….. I am determined to prove a villain.” Shakespeare cleverly depicts the association between evil ones and lust for power in such a context that is appropriate to his audience, as the pun “sun of york” had influential meaning within his context. However, to a modern viewer, the context is foreign, making the pun undecipherable. The medium of a play to portray Richard III appealed to the Elizabethan audience due to it’s