Modernizing Shakespeare: Richard Loncraine's Richard III

Abstract

Loncraine’s filmic version of Richard Ⅲ presents the play’s characters and action through some prominent people and events in the nineteen thirties to emphasize the play’s modern relevance and significance. This movie compares Richard Ⅲ, Edward Ⅳ, and the Wars of the Rose to Hitler, Edward Ⅷ, and the World War Ⅱ respectively in order to portray the fearful political atmosphere of the medieval England through the rise of fascism in the early twentieth-century Europe. This film also identifies Richard with a typical twentieth-century American gangster to show that criminal behavior is a universal phenomenon in all periods, classes, and nationalities. Loncraine’s time travel into the nineteen thirties is also appropriate in that during the period the past and the present coexisted in terms of lifestyle. The early twentieth century, having both classical and modern characteristics in language and atmosphere, can serve well as a bridge to connect Shakespeare's plays to modern audiences. Loncraine’s film also approaches Richard Ⅲ from various modern perspectives such as criminal psychology, existentialism, and radical political ideology, thus deepening the audience’s perceptions about those important issues of the modern period. The film draws from Shakespeare’s play some universal themes or subtexts to provide meaningful messages for the modern audience. Furthermore, this film makes the most of the modern cinematographic techniques to maximize its visual effects which, as a substitute for language, help to show the play’s themes, characters and atmospheres more impressively. In addition, this film prepares an alternative plan to remedy any loss that may occur in the process of modernization; the alternative not only minimizes the loss but produces another effect that compensates for it. Loncraine’s Richard Ⅲ thus serves as a good example of modernizing Shakespeare effectively. In brief, the movie selects an appropriate periodical background, provides modern messages through the play’s hidden meanings, produces visual effects that can replace language profitably, and remedies any defects that may accompany modernization.