The Oxford Shakespeare: The Tragedy of King Richard III (Oxford World's Classics) - Softcover

Shakespeare, William

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0192839934 ISBN 13: 9780192839930

Publisher: Oxford Paperbacks, 2001

Synopsis

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 play responds 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 special index of actors and other theatrical personnel.

About this title

Review:

"Now is the winter of our discontent," intones Richard, Duke of Gloucester at the beginning of Shakespeare's Richard III, one of his most abidingly popular plays, and one of the most chilling portrayals of political tyranny ever seen on stage. Richard emerges from the chaos which surrounds the reign of Henry VI, already dramatised by Shakespeare earlier in his career, determined to become king by removing his elder brother Edward IV by convincing him that their brother Clarence is plotting against the crown. The deaths of both Clarence and Edward take Richard inexorably towards the crown, and the series of murders and conspiracies that Richard masterminds confirms his claim that "I am determined to prove a villain". Richard's political and sexual charisma are truly chilling, and his seduction of Lady Anne, over her husband's corpse is one of the most disturbing scenes in Shakespeare. At another level, the play is also a strongly anti-Yorkist play, which has a vested interest in portraying Richard as such as vicious tyrant before seeing him toppled, ushering in a period of rule which prefigured the Tudor dynasty of which Elizabeth I was herself a part. The play has had a deep and lasting influence on audiences and writers; Brecht rewrote the play as The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, while both Laurance Olivier and Ian Mckellen have produced memorable film versions of Richard III, the latter updating the play into a 1930s fascist state ruled over by a Richard akin to Oswald Mosley. --Jerry Brotton

Review:

"A detailed, scholarly introduction...Siemon delivers impressively...particularly in the in-depth annotations that crowd the 290 pages of text in this epic history play....Commentary and collations...necessary notes, providing historical context, chronology, and pedigrees, a pattern that is repeated throughout this edition.

A detailed, scholarly introduction...Siemon delivers impressively...particularly in the in-depth annotations that crowd the 290 pages of text in this epic history play....Commentary and collations...necessary notes, providing historical context, chronology, and pedigrees, a pattern that is repeated throughout this edition.

Siemon's notes are elaborate when appropriate, and consolidated...when necessary...He authoritatively charts its historical contexts and complex theatrical afterlife. "Around the Globe magazine""

A detailed, scholarly introduction...Siemon delivers impressively...particularly in the in-depth annotations that crowd the 290 pages of text in this epic history play....Commentary and collations...necessary notes, providing historical context, chronology, and pedigrees, a pattern that is repeated throughout this edition.

Siemon's notes are elaborate when appropriate, and consolidated...when necessary...He authoritatively charts its historical contexts and complex theatrical afterlife. Around the Globe magazine

"

"A detailed, scholarly introduction...Siemon delivers impressively...particularly in the in-depth annotations that crowd the 290 pages of text in this epic history play....Commentary and collations...necessary notes, providing historical context, chronology, and pedigrees, a pattern that is repeated throughout this edition.

Siemon's notes are elaborate when appropriate, and consolidated...when necessary...He authoritatively charts its historical contexts and complex theatrical afterlife." --Around the Globe magazine

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford Paperbacks
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0192839934
• ISBN 13: 9780192839930
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 432
• Editor: Jowett John