I would definitely start with the context surrounding Shakespeare at the time of writing (The Tragedy of) King Richard III as well as the influences upon his work. Textual Conversations don't just have to be texts in the conventional sense (books etc.) but they can also be Royal Decrees (namely the Royal Decree from Queen Elizabeth censoring all plays). The Matrix Education website has an extremely generous amount of information pertaining to the course, here are some links, but don't forget that these articles focus on the intertextual conversations between Richard III and Looking for Richard (which is what my school is doing):
https://www.matrix.edu.au/year-12-e...guide/year-12-module-a-textual-conversations/
https://www.matrix.edu.au/module-a-king-richard-iii-looking-for-richard-part-1-dos-and-donts/
On the top of my head I can think of these textual conversations:
- The Royal Decree from Queen Elizabeth, this influenced how he portrayed Richard (namely as a cruel and evil villain to garner reputation with the current reigning family, the Tudors, and further their right to reign to bypass the censorships and get away with the large amount of providentialist vs self-determinist views and perspectives present in the play)
The context of the time, namely the big debate about providentialism (determinism) vs self-determinism (Great Chain of Being)
- Machiavelli's The Prince, and Richard portrays many of the features contained within Machiavelli's text and is himself a Machiavellian ruler
- "The Vice" character archetype from many other plays of the time
- The general form of Shakespeare's previous plays (they usually start with a character(s) talking of the Protagonist, or with a chorus outlining the events of the play, however Richard III starts with the titular character making a soliloquy of his intentions. This shows his self-deterministic intentions as it goes against the conventional beginnings of Shakespeare's plays and, in a sense, Shakespeare is "God" of the play, therefore it shows his ambition that challenges God's will by going against "God")
Particular resources would really be any website you can find that answers your questions and exposes you to more ideas and topic statements etc.. I'm pretty sure you'd have gone through some topics in class and have your own provided resources, and can look at what is being assessed (the rubric) to guide your research (key words like values, ideas etc.)
As for the question, you can ask your teacher as to how you can answer it. Remember, refrain from using personal language like "I" when answering the "To what extent do you agree with this statement?". I think it's bullshit how they say "you" in questions but forbid us from using personal language to answer it. I would find a way to incorporate the answer into the question, like "Intertextual conversations have extensively shaped the character of Richard in Shakespeare's Historical Tragedy "King Richard III"".
I didn't have even half the information I do now before I started researching. Class notes were a mess, and my school imposed a stupid rule where they can't mark whole essays, only 4 paragraphs per assessment task from 4 provided questions "to stop students from essentially writing the teacher's essay" using teacher feedback from the submitted responses. My English department is incompetent and I'm sure they're actively trying to fail us.
In the end, it is up to you to choose what topics you want to go with and what research to do. My own exam is on this Friday, and even though I'm not usually a perfect student (got 15/20 on my last English exam) I do think I'll do much better in this exam because of how damn much I'm suddenly enjoying it. You will need to do a lot more research into each topic in order to make a good argument. Most of what I've put is actually in those two links, you'll just need to filter out the "Looking For Richard" bits.
I hope this helps!
