Mod A – Practice Questions on Richard III and Looking for Richard

Resource Description

“To what extent do the texts you have studied demonstrate that the values a text presents are shaped by its context?”
Respond to this question in relation to your prescribed text.

The values and ideas within a text are shaped by the author’s personal, cultural and social context, and provide a deeper insight on the meaning of the text. Richard III by William Shakespeare echoes the values of the Elizabethan society through various themes and ideas and contradicts them in various others. Al Pacino’s Looking for Richard adapts the themes evident in Richard III to adhere to a contemporary society’s values as the context varied significantly between each texts’ era.. Each text presents their own representation of themes such as gender, religion and the human conscience to satisfy the morals of their audience and illustrate the values of their society.

Gender is a prominent theme within all texts and context has a great influence on how it is illustrated. The role of women in Shakespeare and Pacino’s eras are vastly different, with the former having a more archaic approach towards the theme. Throughout Richard III, the women have varying roles and levels of power, however none exceed that of which was given to the male characters. Queen Elizabeth has a significant role within Shakespeare’s play as she is the wife of the King’s brother and Richard III’s sister in law and enemy. Her character has an emotional impact to the play and many of her scenes are of her distressed and saying lines such as; “If he were dead, what would betide on me?” and “…his minority is put under the trust of Richard Gloucester, a man who loves not me nor none of you.” The emotive language the Queen uses reflects the perceptions Shakespeare’s audience would naturally have on women; emotional and dramatic characters. Her confusion when rhetorically asking what would happen to her if the king passed is a reflection of the reliance women had on men during the fifteenth century.