Shakespeare, Loncraine, Donaldson, Richard, and Me
Act 2.4 of Loncraine’s Richard III is where I started furiously scribbling notes in the margins of notes. After Rivers is shockingly murdered, Loncraine films a still shot of the countryside. A farmer leads an ox in the foreground, while a train noisily passes in the background. There is a quick cut to the train, smoke billowing from its engines, entering a dark tunnel and then another cut to a toy train in the palace. The young Yorks are playing with the toy train and also a gray airplane. Queen Elizabeth and her mother-in-law, the Duchess of York, chat nearby. Their discussion is light. The Duchess expresses her desire to see the Prince, as she has heard he has grown. Margaret plays the piano in the background and the whistle of the toy train continues. Lord Stanley and Richmond enter, harboring grave news. Suddenly there are a series of short cuts between the faces of the Duchess, the Queen, Stanley and Richard as the news is revealed. Rivers has been murdered. At this moment, there is silence. Then the toy train begins to make noise again. Elizabeth says "I see the ruin of my family" and then another cut to the boys playing with their toy train and airplane. In the shadow of the hallway, Richard’s accomplice, Tyrrell, derails the toy train with his foot, smirking at young York. The toy train noise smoothly becomes a real train whistle. And lastly, the scene is framed with the image of the real train, on which the Prince is a passenger.
After watching this is the scene of Loncraine’s film, I hit the pause button triumphantly. I positioned my text of Richard III and Donaldson’s essay "Cinema and the Kingdom of Death: Loncraine’s Richard III adjacent to each other and ea...
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...ces an extensive dialogue within the text with an image of the train, arousing a modern anxiety of doom: the destructive capabilities of rapidly growing technology are seizing an innocent and aweless existence.
Before reading Peter S. Donaldson’s article, "Cinema and the Kingdom of Death: Loncraine’s Richard III," I slept eight hours, ate a well-balanced breakfast, and ran a mile to warm up. I knew from reading "In Fair Verona," that Donaldson writes for fit athletes of an intense analytical and intellectual field. Focus, pacing, and especially composure are essential to navigating his intricate and challenging course of connections, allusions, Shakespeare, media, history, past, present, future and beyond. I was prepared, though, and began slowly, but confidently, on another one of Donaldson’s awesome paths. And this time, I just may have created some of my own.
In this play of challenge and debate, could it be possibly suggested that King Richard had a part to play in the murder of his uncle the Duke of Gloucester? Could the reader possibly pick up this assumption having known nothing about the play? These are all factors that one must find by reading in between the lines, noticing and understanding the silence that is exchanged. For the silence is just as important as the speech.Why is it assumed that King Richard II has anything to do with the murder? Let us review a scene from the play were Gaunt accuses Richard of being accountable for Gloucester's death.
Monumental architecture in Pharaonic Egypt is represented primarily by the funerary complexes of the pharaohs. The principal function of these elaborate complexes was to ensure that the pharaohs, who were exalted as living gods, would attain the afterlife they desired. This required that two basic conditions be fulfilled: the body had to be preserved from disturbance or destruction; and the material needs of the body and the ka had to be met (Edwards 20). Pharaonic burial complexes were also centers of worship for the god-king interred there and were designed to exalt his memory and deeds.
The article “The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606, by James Shapiro” by Jane Smiley seeks to explain how James Shapiro connected the events of the year 1606 with Shakespeare’s master pieces. Smiley writes a book review for “The New York Times” which analyzes not only the book, but Shakespeare himself, the events, the author and how they all connect.
Richard, like Satan, is heroically amiable and well-spoken, but his greediness and insubordinate lust for power lend him to his predestined downfall. When Richard says, “I am determined to prove a villain”, he implies a tragic conception that he controls his predestined fate, and the providentialism eventually endorses this meaning. He uses his political eloquence to rebel, he is isolated and therefore his mental and physical energy is unhampered by his moral deformity, and he masks his satanic traits with charisma. Though the ending is tragic for Richard, it is a new beginning for England, and in a way, Richard purges England of its collective guilt.
Beauman, Sally, ed. The Royal Shakespeare Company's Centenary Production of Henry V. Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1976.
Temple Grandin, a doctor in the field of animal sciences who suffers from Autism, once said, “People are always looking for that single magic bullet that will totally change everything. There is no single magic bullet.” Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a general term for a group of complex disorders of brain development. The Autism Spectrum can be split into many subtypes, including Childhood Disintegrative Disorder, Asperger’s Syndrome, and Pervasive Development Disorder- Not Otherwise Specified (PDD-NOS). Starting from an age as young as infancy, symptoms of Autism may be conveyed. Repetitive behavior, any loss of speech or social skills, and attachment to parents are three of the many symptoms expressed by children with Autism (“What is Autism?”). In order to improve theses symptoms, many types of treatments have been established. First are the Behavior and Communication Approaches, which include Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA), the Early Start Denver Model (ESDM), and different sorts of therapy. Other treatments include dietary approaches, medication, and Complimentary and Alternative treatments. Based on the developed treatments, the early intervention Behavior and Communication Approaches exhibit the most benefits to children diagnosed with autism.
"therefore, since I can not prove a lover, To entertain these fair well spoken days, I am determined to be a villain".As a villain Richard must be heartless, he can not let his emotions interfere with his actions.
Shakespeare constructs King Richard III to perform his contextual agenda, or to perpetrate political propaganda in the light of a historical power struggle, mirroring the political concerns of his era through his adaptation and selection of source material. Shakespeare’s influences include Thomas More’s The History of King Richard the Third, both constructing a certain historical perspective of the play. The negative perspective of Richard III’s character is a perpetuation of established Tudor history, where Vergil constructed a history intermixed with Tudor history, and More’s connection to John Morton affected the villainous image of the tyrannous king. This negative image is accentuated through the antithesis of Richards treachery in juxtaposition of Richmond’s devotion, exemplified in the parallelism of ‘God and Saint George! Richmond and victory.’ The need to legitimize Elizabeth’s reign influenced Shakespeare’s portra...
...f control of scenes and verbal encounters, which finally ends with his magnificent downfall. [implement more Margaret control/curses/competition in the beginning]. Despite Richard's best attempts to write his own ending, the audience is now forced with the truth that it was Margaret's prophecy that ripened to fruition. With Richard's final soliloquy taking blame for his actions and "the outward movement away from any semblance of Richard's control, completes the separation of Richard and audience" (Schellenberg 66). Through the course of Act V, Richard takes part in only two of the six scenes. Of these two scenes, he shares the stage with Richmond, the rising actor to take the lead role.
Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, Vol. 34, No. 2, Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama (Spring, 1994), pp. 341-356 Published by: Rice University http://www.jstor.org/stable/450905
Richard had weakened since he had become king and was no longer ruthless as he had no reason to be ruthless. He had got what he wanted and was pleased with himself. He thought he was invincible, and he was too confident, which cost him his life. If he had been more careful, he would have been aware of the danger that lied before him. But, he did use some similar techniques in both the scenes.
Egyptian pyramids are some of the famous art in the world. The pyramids of Giza are famous for their size and because they are located near the Nile River, which helped Egyptian civilization to grow. Their famous construction techniques continue to fascinate scholars and archaeologists. The pyramids are important because they are immense significant to the history of ancient Egypt. Ancient Egyptians believed in the afterlife, so they invested much time and money into building these structures which were a part of that process of moving to the
Many treatments have been suggested to parents for children with autism. An Internet survey was carried out and allocated to parents in order to classify the treatments applied by parents of children with autism. Almost all 108 of the 111 treatments recorded in the survey were used by at least one parent. An overall of 764 surveys were presented to the website throughout the 3-month data gathering tim...
---. “The Snowman”, “Tattoo” and “The Idea of Order in Key West” in poemhunter. Web. May
Knight,G.Wilson. “The Shakespearean Superman: An essay on The Tempest.” The Crown of life: Essays in Interpretation of Shakespeare’s Final Plays. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1947. 203-255