Despite its enormous cast, Richard III belongs to its title character alone: gleefully wicked and charismatically Machiavellian, Richard dominates every scene, a role that has gratified leading actors from David Garrick and Laurence Olivier to Anthony Sher, Ian McKellen and Al Pacino. Political Machiavellianism being never out of fashion, this drama of a lethally corrupting quest for power remains perennially topical, and numerous stage and screen revivals have confirmed its enduring cogency – making it one of the finest of Shakespeare’s history plays. Richard III is the twenty-first play in the Wordsworth Classics’ Shakespeare Series, of which The Times Literary Supplement has said: ‘Many students and ordinary readers will be grateful to Watts and his publishers for making such useful editions available at such low cost.’
ISBN 13: 9781840225907
Author: William Shakespeare
