Product details
Biographical note
Burton Raffel (1928–2015) was Distinguished Professor of Arts and Humanities emeritus and professor of English emeritus at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Among his many edited and translated publications are Poems and Prose from the Old English, Cligès, Lancelot, Perceval, Erec and Enide, and Yvain. Harold Bloom (1930–2019) was Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University and Berg Professor of English at New York University. His many books include The Western Canon, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, and Genius: A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds.“Besides the scholarly texts, these include lists of suggested further reading, essays, and more. Fab for the price.”—<i>Library Journal</i><br /><br />Selected by the Association of American University Presses as an Outstanding Book for Public and Secondary School Libraries, 2007<br /><br />“Each volume of the Annotated Shakespeare proves to be a splendid addition to the series.”—Tita French Baumlin, Southwest Missouri State University<br /><br />“The volumes in this series will enrich any library that stocks editions of individual Shakespearean plays. . . . Especially helpful are definitions of common words that have changed meanings over the past four hundred years.”—Judith McGowan, American Association of School Librarians<br /><br />
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.
This fully annotated version of Richard III makes the play completely accessible to readers in the twenty-first century. It has been carefully assembled with students, teachers, and the general reader in mind. Eminent linguist and translator Burton Raffel offers generous help with vocabulary and usage of Elizabethan English, pronunciation, prosody, and alternative readings of phrases and lines. His on-page annotations provide readers with all the tools they need to comprehend the play and begin to explore its many possible interpretations.