Critics Flashcards
E.M.W Tillyard
‘great men die acknowledging their guilt and thinking of others’
Richard is a ‘desparing embodiment of evil’
Blades
‘unremitting gloom, sorrow, and danger and sinister shadows consuming all signs of virtuos shoots’- Mood of play from A1 S1.
‘Richmond the healer is immediately linked with imagery of brightness and warmth’
‘Elizabeth was merely weak and interchangable’
Childhood
Freud
‘we all demand reparation for our early wounds’
Disability
Donker
‘his physical damage is matched by complex psychological impairment’
Morals
Rossiter
‘holiday from morality’
Harold Bloom
‘threatens and seduces the audience, making all of us akin to the masochist Lady Anne
Rulers
Czach
‘Richard is one in a chain of comparable rules’
Bloom
‘We are on unnervingly confidential terms with him’ [Richard]
Women
Galloway
‘The women of the play function as voices of protest and morality’
Women
Levine
Richard is ‘warring with women’
Disability
Wood
‘To Shakespeare’s audience, Richard would have recognised Richard’s physical deformity and moral depravity as a synecdoche for the state’
Rulers
David Baldwin
Historian on the real Richard III
‘If Richard III had not had a ruthless streak in his character, he would not have been a successful medieval leader.’
Animalistic Imagery
Mothersdale
Actor of RIchard III
‘We looked at all the the animals he’s called in the play and asked: ‘What would a cross between a boar, spider, a slug and a hedgehog look like?’’
Shakespeare’s scandal sheet
Richard ‘personifies the unsettling contradictions of the grotesque: at once repellent and fantastic, a shock and a wonder’
Language
McDonald
Repeating patterns in Richard III is ‘a stronger speaker wrestling verbal power away from one who is weaker’.
Women
S.Levine
The women of the play ‘turn their grief into vengeance in an attempt to right the monstrosity they have engendered.’
Women
Galloway
The women of the Play ‘come to function as the national voice for retributive justice’
Morals
Dowden
Richard ‘inverts the moral order of things and tried to live in this inverted system… he dashes himself to pieces against the laws of the world which he has outraged’
Disability
Sir Ian McKellan, 1995 film version
‘Richard’s wickedness is an outcome of other people’s disaffection with his physique’
Kevin Spacey
The play ‘is about a man who doesn’t have a conscience and grows a conscience’
Disability
2019- Headlong version
-Mirrors around stage to highlight RIchard’s preoccupation with his physical appearance.
Disability
2016- Hollow Crown
-Struggles to get dressed at the start, psychological effects of disability.
Disability
Royal Shakespeare Company 2022
Arthur Hughes as Richard, has Radical Dysplasia.
Act 3 Scene 7, Bishops are the ones ordered to kill Clarence.
Women
Bilal Harmamra
‘[Margaret} is the voice of divine retribution against Richard’s blasphemous actions.’
Religion
Propellor Theatre Company
In the final scene during RIchmond’s pious speech, the guns of the soldiers are slowly lowered to the audience.
Rulers
Kolt
‘Shakespeare’s Kings personify a history without conscience or morality’
What is Formalism and New Criticism? When can it be used?
Formalism-Focuses on Structural purposes of text and how something is written rather than its contents.
New Criticism- Focuses on close reading, analysis of text and it’s direct meaning
Can be used in Section A
Moral and Philosophical Literary Critisism, what is it? When can it be used?
Approach literature based on ethical merits
Evaluates moral statements and judgements, believe that the larger purpose of literature is so teach morality and to discuss philosophical issues
They evaluate what is ‘truly right’ based on intersectional factors- e.g age or gender
Can be used to discuss the morals of Richard III and those around him
Biological Criticism + Historical Critisism what is it? When can you use it?
Biological Criticism examines the facts and motives of an author’s life to give light of the meaning of their work- this Critisism sees the work exclusively as a reflection of the author’s life
Historical Critisism, as it sounds, considers cultural and historical context of a text
Tudor Myth for Richard III, Divine Right of Kings, inner corruption represented with outer disability.
Feminist criticism, what is it? When can it be used?
Used to examine gender in literature, gender expectations and conflicts between men and women.
Women in Richard III are representative of how important marriage is to a woman’s social position, and how interlinked man, wife and child become after-unable to be separated as different entities.
Richard III displays features of contemporary ‘Toxic Masculinity’
Wiley Online Guardian
‘[The women of the Play] indulge in competitive lamentation and united under the pretence of avenging the death of their of avenging the death of their beloved, murdered children and family members’
Representative of Feminist Criticism that the women of the Play are victims of the misogyny of the time and are only able to express power and influence through the traditional feminine concept of lamentation, in order to avoid being dismissed by the men of the Play are
