A thorough study of the progressive development of the description of Richard in the sources of Shakespeare's play and a comparison of the results of such a study with Shakespeare's portrait may make possible a deeper and clearer understanding of the character of the man as well as some further insight into the methods of Shakespeare's art.

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Richard III is regarded as one of Shakespeare's longest and most complex plays, with a complicated plot, and a character that is a Machiavellian villain. After a workshop of Act I as an MFA Directing Project, I was granted by Temple University to stage a full production of Richard III as my thesis. Approaching the play proved difficult for me due to my lack of experience with Shakespearean text. However, by analyzing Shakespeare's text, and approaching the adaptation with the goal to make the story as clear as possible, I desired to create a production that embodied the idea of "now." The designed team and I created a world that was a-historic pulling from classic and modern forms that provided the necessary landscape for the play to occur. Through a series of seven chapters I explain my process from conception to production. I also evaluate my growth as a director during this artistic achievement. A Director's Script, Actor's Lexicon, Program Note, Design Renderings and Production Photos support my journey to opening night of Richard III. / Theater

Thesis (doctoral)--Johann Wolfgang Goethe Universität zu Frankfurt am Main. / Bibliography: p. 294-301.

Abstract This thesis aims to analyze metadramatic elements in Shakespearean history plays mainly from the interplay between the actor and the audience. I do not focus on a particular history play but on two characters: Richard III and Prince Hal. Different from most critics of metadrama, I do not search for ruptures in a dramatic text or interpret those ruptures from the deconstructionist¡¦s perspective. Nor do I view metadrama as an established theory when I notice that most critics of metadrama fail to offer a succinct definition to the term. To be specific, metadrama is a kind of dramatic practice on the Renaissance stage. Furthermore, matadrama is constituted of types of metadramatic modes, and during my research, I gradually realize that self-reference is a peculiar phenomenon in history plays. The function of self-reference is to challenge the audience¡¦s fixed perception of things and to reexamine the part of exaggeration and counterfeit in the historical documents. Shakespeare uses self-reference to develop not only the personality of dramatic personae but also his theatrical perspective of historical characters.¡@By analyzing self-reference, I wish to clarify Shakespeare¡¦s attitude toward historical characters. Also, I shall argue that Shakespeare modifies the historical portrayals of Richard III and Prince Hal and authenticates the theatrical perspective of them.

Because it signified the violent transition from the Plantagenet to Tudor dynasty, the death of King Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth’s Field was a monumental event. After five centuries, his skeleton was rediscovered by an archaeological team at a site, formerly the location of the Greyfriars Priory Church. The presentation uses the forensic evidence to examine the extent to which the perceived image of Richard III is the result of Tudor propaganda.

My argument assesses and reconfigures binary structures in Shakespeare’s plays and in Shakespeare criticism. I contend that ideas in early modern literature often exhibit three aspects, but that critics, who mostly rely upon a binary philosophical vocabulary, tend to notice only two aspects at a time, thereby “digesting” the third. My opening chapter theorizes the superimposition of triadic structures upon dyads, arguing that this new polyrhythmic strategy helps recapture an early modern philosophical perspective by circumventing the entrenched binary categories we have inherited from the Enlightenment. In Chapter Two, I examine the relationship of tyranny and conscience in Tudor politics, Reformed psychology, and Richard III. Early modern political theorists often employ a binary opposition of kingship and tyranny, and historians typically draw a binary distinction between absolutists and resisters. I argue that there were in fact three ideological positions on offer which these binaries misrepresent. As well, Reformed psychology emphasizes the relationship of the individual subject and an objective God, unmediated by community, and I propose that this opposition of subjectivity and objectivity digests the idea of intersubjectivity. In Richard III, Shakespeare interrogates the implausibility of Tudor political binaries and stages a nostalgia for intersubjective community and conscience. In Chapter Three I read the debates on value in Troilus and Cressida alongside contemporary economic writings by Gerard de Malynes on currency reform and “merchandizing exchange.” Our current models of value – intrinsic and extrinsic, use and exchange, worth and price – are emphatically binary, but the mercantile practices that Malynes describes depend upon a triadic conception of value. My contention is that Troilus and Cressida becomes a less problematic problem play when value is conceived as triadic rather than dyadic. In Chapter Four I explore early modern scepticism in connection with Coriolanus. Reading Montaigne and Wittgenstein in parallel, I distinguish between various conceptions of truth that are regularly grouped together under the blanket term “scepticism.” Then I turn to read Coriolanus as an experiment in competing modes of early modern epistemology, arguing that the play ultimately endorses the same sort of polyphonous Pyrrhonian scepticism that we find in Montaigne and Wittgenstein.

The popular image of Richard III remains, even today, deeply indebted to Shakespeare's portrayal; however, the century following the publication of Shakespeare's play in 1597 witnessed a fresh and vibrant re-evaluation of this character in a diverse range of texts from poems and history works to pamphlets. While many authors still perpetuated the negative Tudor image, original writings challenged this ingrained view and resulted in a more nuanced assessment of Richard III than the one pervading the sixteenth century. The present thesis investigates a range of seventeenth-century texts about Richard III which shed new light on the reception of Shakespeare's play, bring unique testimony to the contemporary understanding of tyranny, and capture specific social and political anxieties of the period: the end of the Tudor dynasty, the conflict between the Crown and Parliament culminating in the Civil Wars, and the execution of Charles I. These texts offer a fuller picture of the contemporary literary-political climate, while illuminating the role of historical memory in forming national consciousness, including the forging and dismantling of myths. The thesis analyses seventeenth-century responses to Richard III in historiography, legal and constitutional debates, poetry, plays, and the visual arts. The first two chapters demonstrate that historians and legal theorists during the Stuart reign and the Civil Wars proved unexpected advocates of Richard III. Challenging the traditional narrative of Tudor chronicles, they reappraised Richard's election by parliament and his moderate taxation policies and contrasted them with the controversial high-taxation programmes of the Stuarts. The third chapter offers a re-evaluation of Richard's portraits which betray hitherto unnoticed marks of ageism as a symbol of governmental inadequacy. The chapter explores visual art as a distinct incarnation of historical commentary. Chapter four examines the depictions of Richard's conscience in poems by Richard Niccols and Christopher Brooke. The final two chapters analyse two extensive poems on Richard III. John Beaumont's 'Bosworth Field' (1629) offers an original account of the battle and Richard III as a study of patriotism and leadership. Thomas Wincoll's Plantagenets Tragicall Story (1649) transforms Richard III into a vehicle of anti-Cromwellian political allegory in the time of the regicide. By reconstructing the life of Wincoll, a royalist poet from a puritan family, the chapter outlines the contradictory nexus of convictions which underlie Civil War literature. Overall, my thesis argues that Richard III evolved from the plainly negative tyrant of Tudor chronicles to a more complex figure, resulting in a more original and balanced portrayal of his character in the seventeenth century.

No description available.

My argument assesses and reconfigures binary structures in Shakespeare’s plays and in Shakespeare criticism. I contend that ideas in early modern literature often exhibit three aspects, but that critics, who mostly rely upon a binary philosophical vocabulary, tend to notice only two aspects at a time, thereby “digesting” the third. My opening chapter theorizes the superimposition of triadic structures upon dyads, arguing that this new polyrhythmic strategy helps recapture an early modern philosophical perspective by circumventing the entrenched binary categories we have inherited from the Enlightenment. In Chapter Two, I examine the relationship of tyranny and conscience in Tudor politics, Reformed psychology, and Richard III. Early modern political theorists often employ a binary opposition of kingship and tyranny, and historians typically draw a binary distinction between absolutists and resisters. I argue that there were in fact three ideological positions on offer which these binaries misrepresent. As well, Reformed psychology emphasizes the relationship of the individual subject and an objective God, unmediated by community, and I propose that this opposition of subjectivity and objectivity digests the idea of intersubjectivity. In Richard III, Shakespeare interrogates the implausibility of Tudor political binaries and stages a nostalgia for intersubjective community and conscience. In Chapter Three I read the debates on value in Troilus and Cressida alongside contemporary economic writings by Gerard de Malynes on currency reform and “merchandizing exchange.” Our current models of value – intrinsic and extrinsic, use and exchange, worth and price – are emphatically binary, but the mercantile practices that Malynes describes depend upon a triadic conception of value. My contention is that Troilus and Cressida becomes a less problematic problem play when value is conceived as triadic rather than dyadic. In Chapter Four I explore early modern scepticism in connection with Coriolanus. Reading Montaigne and Wittgenstein in parallel, I distinguish between various conceptions of truth that are regularly grouped together under the blanket term “scepticism.” Then I turn to read Coriolanus as an experiment in competing modes of early modern epistemology, arguing that the play ultimately endorses the same sort of polyphonous Pyrrhonian scepticism that we find in Montaigne and Wittgenstein.