Lucid, eloquent and boldly structured, Richard II ranks among Shakespeare’s finest works, readable equally as tragedy, history play, political drama, or one strand of the vast dramatic cycle that helped forge England’s national identity. What can look conservative to modern eyes struck Shakespeare’s own contemporaries as potentially subversive – famously prompting an indignant Queen Elizabeth to declare, ‘I am Richard II’. Numerous recent revivals on stage and screen have shown the enduring power and poignancy of this drama charting the downfall of an egoistic yet pitiable monarch. Edited, introduced and annotated by Cedric Watts, M.A., Ph.D., Emeritus Professor of English, University of Sussex, Richard II is the seventeenth volume in the Wordsworth Classics’ Shakespeare Series, each instalment of which has been freshly edited by Watts.
ISBN 13: 9781840227208
Author: William Shakespeare
