The Tragedy of King Richard III

by Shakespeare, William; Jowett, John

• ISBN13: 9780192839930
• ISBN10: 0192839934
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-05-17
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Richard III is one of Shakespeare's most popular plays on the stage and has been adapted successfully for film. This new and innovative edition recognizes the play's pre-eminence as a performance work: a perspective that informs every aspect of the editing. Challenging traditional practice,the text is based on the 1597 Quarto which, it is argued, brings us closest to the play as it would have been staged in Shakespeare's theatre. The introduction, which is illustrated, explores the long performance history from Shakespeare's time to the present. Its critical engagement with the playresponds to recent historicist and gender-based approaches. The commentary gives detailed explication of matters of language, staging, text, and historical and cultural contexts, providing coverage that is both carefully balanced and alert to nuance of meaning. Documentation of the extensive textual variants is organized for maximum clarity: the readings of the Folio and the Quarto are presented in separate banks, and more specialist information is given at the back of the book. Appendices also include selected passages from the main source and a specialindex of actors and other theatrical personnel.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	ix
Introduction	1	(2)
Taking Shape	3	(34)
Date, Theatre Companies, and Patrons	3	(5)
The First Tetralogy	8	(2)
Touching Those Times	10	(9)
`As it were stage plays'	19	(2)
History and Tragedy	21	(6)
Barabas and the Vice	27	(5)
Re-formation, Deformation	32	(5)
Episodes on the Edge of History	37	(35)
Structuring Absences	37	(2)
`Arise, Dissembler': Anne	39	(5)
Prophecy of Revenge	44	(4)
Unquiet Slumbers	48	(5)
Upon Record	53	(7)
Woe's Scene	60	(6)
Conscience	66	(3)
Succeding Ages	69	(3)
On Stage	72	(38)
Burbage and Others	73	(3)
Elizabethan Staging	76	(4)
Early Revivals	80	(3)
Cibber's Adaptation	83	(4)
Cibber to Shakespeare, Garrick to Irving	87	(8)
Modernism and After	95	(15)
In Print	110	(23)
The First Quarto	111	(4)
Quarto Reprints	115	(3)
The Folio	118	(1)
Quarto and Folio Compared	119	(8)
Editorial Issues	127	(6)
Editorial Procedures	133	(10)
Abbreviations and References	135	(8)
THE TRAGEDY OF KING RICHARD THE THIRD	143	(216)
Appendix A Passages First Printed in the 1623 Folio	359	(7)
Appendix B Quarto Copy for F	366	(6)
Appendix C Alternations to Lineation	372	(2)
Appendix D Longer Textual Notes	374	(12)
Appendix E Passages from Sir Thomas More's `History of Richard III'	386	(11)
Appendix F A Prologue for the Theatre	397	(2)
Appendix G Index of Actors, Directors, and Others	399	(4)
Index	403