1438000 1623 Shakespeare. Richard III. Complete.
10235.
Richard III. Extracted from the First Folio. 1623.
Complete. Histories 173-204.
Shakespeare, William. “The tragedy of Richard the third: with the Landing of Earle Richmond and the Battel at Bosworth Field” extracted from Mr. William Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies. London. Printed by Isaac Jaggard, and Ed. Blount. 1623.
Folio, 16 leaves, q5-q6, r-s6, t1-2, paginated 173-204, headpiece ornament and caption title on q5r, satyr tailpiece on t2v. Apart from a long closed tear from the lower margin into the text of q5, repaired without loss, a very good copy with good margins, a few scattered stains; quarter russet morocco and buff cloth boards.
A substantive text of Richard III extracted from the first folio. There were six earlier quartos, each doubtful rather than bad, the earliest 1597, but the folio offers an improved text. Like Lear and Othello, it was sett from a quarto amended with readings from a playhouse manuscript, in this case probably Shakespeare’s foul papers. The quarto’s are “not without value”, writes Charlton Hinman commenting on the “extraordinarily complex and difficult problems…raised by these three plays”, but in each instance the Folio provides the more satisfactory text.
Richard III is believed, according to contemporary accounts, to have been the role which established Richard Burbage as the foremost actor of his age.Incredibly, Burbage also originated the roles of Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, and virtually all the leading male roles in the Shakespeare canon.
The play was, along with Henry IV Part One, the most popular of Shakespeare’s works judging by the number of editions which preceded the 1623 Folio.
Hinman discovered a number of press variants among the Folger copies of Richard III. Of the substantive variants this copy has the corrected speech heading “Ric” for “Riv” on r2 (line b31), the stage direction “and that Clarence and keep” on the same page (sometimes missing: b52) and the correct reading “want” for “went” on S6 (lying b63). From a copy broken up by William H. Robinson Ltd. in the 1950s, with their printed certificate. Charlton Printing and Proof-Reading, I, 276-8; Hinman, Norton Facsimile”, xii-xv; Greg, III, 1109-13; STC 22273.
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