Books with title King Richard II

In Richard III, Shakespeare invites us on a moral holiday. The play draws us to identify with Richard and his fantasy of total control of self and domination of others. Not yet king at the start of the play, Richard presents himself as an enterprising villain as he successfully plans to dispose of his brother Clarence. Richard achieves similar success in conquering the woman he chooses to marry. He carves a way to the throne through assassination and executions.

King Richard the Second is a history play by William Shakespeare believed to be written in approximately 1595. It is based on the life of King Richard II of England and is the first part of a tetralogy, referred to by scholars as the Henriad, followed by three plays concerning Richard's successors: Henry IV, part 1, Henry IV, part 2, and Henry V. It may not have been written as a stand-alone work.

An exciting new edition of the complete works of Shakespeare with these features: Illustrated with photographs from New York Shakespeare Festival productions, vivid readable readable introductions for each play by noted scholar David Bevington, a lively personal foreword by Joseph Papp, an insightful essay on the play in performance, modern spelling and pronunciation, up-to-date annotated bibliographies, and convenient listing of key passages.

The Shakespearean Originals Series takes as its point of departure the question: "What is it that we read Shakespeare?" The answer may seem self-evident: we read the words that Shakespeare wrote. But do we? In the case of all the major editions of Shakespeare available in the market, the fact of the matter is that many of the words that we read in an edition of, say, Hamlet, never appeared in the text as it was printed during or shortly after Shakespeare's own lifetime. They are th e interpetations and interpolations of a series of editors who have been systematically changign Shakespeare's text from the eighteenth century onwards. Series has caused much debate, interest and favorable reviews within the academic community. Each volume in the series follows the same format and is produced to the same design. Students, researchers, teachers of Literary Studies and Shakepeare Studies. A Harvester Wheatsheaf Book

Treacherous, power-hungry, untempered by moral restraint, and embittered by physical deformity, Richard, the younger brother of King Edward IV, is ablaze with ambition to take England’s throne. Richard III, Shakespeare’s long chronicle of Richard’s machinations to be king, is a tale of murder upon murder. He gains the throne, but only briefly. In a terrible dream, the ghosts of his victims visit the now-despised monarch to foretell his demise. Richard's death in battle the next day concludes his reign of evil, ushering in at last a new and hopeful era of peace for England.

King Richard III is one of Shakespeare's most popular and frequently-performed plays. Janis Lull's introduction to this new edition, which is based on the First Folio, emphasizes the play's tragic themes--individual identity, determinism and choice--and stresses the importance of women's roles. A thorough performance history of stage and film versions shows how the text has been cut, rewritten and reshaped by directors and actors to enhance the role of Richard at the expense of other parts, especially those of the women.

Likely the most influential writer in all of English literature and certainly the most important playwright of the English Renaissance, William Shakespeare was born in 1564 in the town of Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire, England. The son of a successful middle-class glove-maker, Shakespeare attended grammar school, but his formal education proceeded no further. In 1582, he married an older woman, Anne Hathaway, and had three children with her. Around 1590 he left his family behind and traveled to London to work as an actor and playwright. Public and critical success quickly followed, and Shakespeare eventually became the most popular playwright in England and part owner of the Globe Theater. His career bridged the reigns of Elizabeth I (ruled 1558-1603) and James I (ruled 1603-1625); he was a favorite of both monarchs. Indeed, James granted Shakespeare's company the greatest possible compliment by endowing them with the status of king's players. Wealthy and renowned, Shakespeare retired to Stratford, and died in 1616 at the age of fifty-two. At the time of Shakespeare's death, such luminaries as Ben Jonson hailed him as the apogee of Renaissance theater.

The times have forced changes in the way we look at Richard II more than any other of Shakespeare's plays. What to his contemporaries was a balanced dramatisation of the central political and constitutional issue of the time, how to cope with an unjust ruler, has in the last century or so been translated into the poetic fall of a tragic hero. The introduction to this new edition of the play provides a full context for both the Shakespearean and the modern views of King Richard's fall. It relates the play's construction, imagery and staging to contemporary concerns and describes the changing views about Richard's deposition by means of a stage history. The accompanying illustrations suggest Elizabethan ideas of kingship and the staging of the play. The commentary is more detailed than for any previous edition of the play, and assimilates the most recent scholarship. The appendixes discuss the basis for Shakespeare's selection of material for his sources in this most carefully researched and composed of his history plays.