Richard III is a 1955 British Technicolor film adaptation of William Shakespeare's historical play of the same name, also incorporating elements from his Henry VI, Part 3. It was directed and produced by Laurence Olivier, who also played the lead role. Featuring many noted Shakespearean actors, including a quartet of knights, the film depicts Richard plotting and conspiring to grasp the throne from his brother King Edward IV, played by Sir Cedric Hardwicke. In the process, many are killed and betrayed, with Richard's evil leading to his own downfall. The prologue of the film states that history without its legends would be "a dry matter indeed", implicitly admitting to the artistic licence that Shakespeare applied to the events of the time.
Theatrical re-release poster
In the First Folio, the plays of William Shakespeare were grouped into three categories: comedies, histories, and tragedies. The histories—along with those of contemporary Renaissance playwrights—help define the genre of history plays. The Shakespearean histories are biographies of English kings of the previous four centuries and include the standalones King John, Edward III and Henry VIII as well as a continuous sequence of eight plays. These last are considered to have been composed in two cycles. The so-called first tetralogy, apparently written in the early 1590s, covers the Wars of the Roses saga and includes Henry VI, Parts I, II & III and Richard III. The second tetralogy, finished in 1599 and including Richard II, Henry IV, Parts I & II and Henry V, is frequently called the Henriad after its protagonist Prince Hal, the future Henry V.
Opening page of the First Folio King John
'Henry VII crowned at Bosworth', by Richard Caton Woodville Jr.—a key moment in the 'Tudor myth'
'Joan of Arc conjures demons in Shakespeare's Henry VI' (engraving by C. Warren, 1805, after J. Thurston). "Next to her, Talbot is a blundering oaf, who furiously attributes her success to sorcery, whereas the audience knows that she has simply outfoxed him by superior military strategy." – H. A. Kelly (1970)
'Falstaff', (Adolfo Hohenstein)—according to Danby, "in every sense, the bigger man" than Hal