Like many a heralded silent movie, this was lost for many years. Then it turned up in a private collection, and was donated to the AFI. They got Ennio Morricone to write a score and released it, claiming it was the first American feature, and the first Shakespearean feature.
It's true enough that Shakespeare is credited as a writer, and it follows the events of his play, but to offer a silent version of Shakespeare with not one of his lines seems to me to avoiding the pith and purpose of Shakespeare. True, few can cite more than three lines: "A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse"; "Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by the sun of York"; and "Was ever a woman in this humor wooed? Was ever a woman in this humor won?" And usually they don't understand the second and misquote the third as "Was ever a woman so rudely wooed?". This led me and a friend to plot a production with Groucho Marx as Richard, Margaret Dumont as Anne, with similar casting throughout.
Not one of Shakespeare's lines is offered, reducing the play to sheer pomp and pageantry. This avoids the problem that Richard is one of Shakespeare's worst-written characters: an enormously cynical, murderous, and successful politician until he becomes King, who then turns into an idiot; a cowardly and feeble hunchback who is a monstrously courageous and doughty warrior in war. All this in service of the Elizabethan-era truth that he should never have been king, and that her grandfather performed a valiant deed by slaying Richard on the battlefield.
The result is a movie made in the Illustrated Text style of movie making without quoting one line of text. There are lots of extras shaking spears. I suppose that's enough for people who want to say they've seen Shakespeare. As for Frederick Warde, who plays Richard here, he later wrote
"I found the action of the camera necessitated entirely different methods of acting from the stage. Spontaneity must be replaced by deliberation and concentrated expression take the place of words. I had much to learn and considerable to unlearn but the director and photographer were very considerate, although my ignorance of the necessities of the camera must have tried their patience almost to the limit."
Which brings us back to another popular Groucho quote. Enough said.
