Richard III was one of Shakespeare's earliest plays, and possibly aside from Titus Andronicus, one of his most brutal. This violence is contrasted with Shakespeare's use of supernatural elements such as dreams and curses, because these supernatural elements grant certain characters power who would otherwise be powerless in the face of the physical violence upon which Richard and his rise to power depend (even though Richard himself shies away from violence). However, in the 1995 film adaptation of Richard III, these supernatural elements are largely removed due to the fact that the fascist Britain in which the story is set has no room for the supernatural; by definition, under fascism the state itself takes on the status of an ultimate, divine power. While this is a necessary consequence of the "transposition and cutting of entire scenes" that is required when adapting Shakespeare to film, the change actually manages to reveal...
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