The Wars of the Roses (adaptation) IV", Hall wrote, "underlying these plays is the curse on the House of Lancaster. Bolingbroke deposed Richard II to become Henry IV. Richard II was a weak and sometimes a bad king, ungoverned, unbalanced; he could not order the body politic. Yet for Shakespeare, his deposition is a wound on the body politic, which festers through reign after reign, a sin which can only be expiated by blood-letting. The bloody totalitarianism of "Richard III" is the expiation of England." John Jowett argues the production very much reinforced the teleological assumptions upon which the Tudor myth is based; "it generated an
Cultural depictions of Richard III of England best-known film adaptation of Shakespeare's play "Richard III" is the 1955 version directed and produced by Sir Laurence Olivier, who also played the lead role. Also notable are the 1995 film version starring Sir Ian McKellen, set in a fictional 1930s fascist England, and "Looking for Richard", a 1996 documentary film directed by Al Pacino, who plays the title character as well as himself. In the 1960 BBC series based on Shakespeare's history plays, "An Age of Kings", Paul Daneman played Richard. Ron Cook played Richard III in the 1983 BBC Shakespeare production of the play. Away from the Shakespearean