The co-opting of the notion of witchcraft for contemporary film audiences presents a particular challenge in McKellen and Loncraine's Richard N.'
Unsupported by popular discourse on the topic of sorcery as conducive to conceptions of women, as was the case in Shakespeare's Elizabethan England, the representation of moral transgression inherent in the image of the .witch warrants different systems of signification to this end. The appropriation of
Margaret's alleged witchery in the image of the Duchess of York is, to a large degree, lost in the film. However, the metaphysical aspect of Shakespeare's representation of Margaret may be noted in Loncraine's use of stair imagery as a metaphor for the moral and political hierarchies implied in Margaret's…show more content… The occasion is a ball in celebration of York's victory over Lancaster and the instatement of Edward IV on the English throne. While the ascending of stairs is symbolic of the Yorkist rise to power, it at the same time anticipates the decline of the monarchy as a result of the Fascist uprising led by Richard.
Metaphorical readings of stair imagery in contemporary art extend this symbolic agency. According to Paul Monaghan, the staircase is a common metaphor for the transitional status of human existence in a variety of art forms: "The staircase is a particularly potent symbol ... in that it suggests humanity's potential access to higher truths as well as the possibility that these higher truths might influence material life" (120). Bearing this symbolic agency in mind, the scene in which King Edward lies dead in an upstairs bedroom while the royal family awaits news of his condition downstairs is endowed with a new level of meaning; having witnessed her husband's death,
Queen Elizabeth descends the stairs.
While the stairs represent the course of descent that corroborates the
