TRAGEDY OF

KING RICHARD THE THIRD.

EDITED, WITH NOTES,

BY

ames

WILLIAM J. ROLFE, A.M.,

FORMERLY HEAD MASTER of the HIGH SCHOOL, CAMBRIDGE, MASS.

Wm. C. Rogle.

ENGLISH

CLASSICS.

EDITED BY WM. J. ROLFE, A.M.

Illustrated. 16mo, Cloth, 60 cents per volume; Paper, 40 cents per volume.

PUBLISHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK. Any of the above works will be sent by mail, postage prepaid, to any part of the United States, on receipt of the price.

Copyright, 1880, by HARPER & BROTHERS.

PREFACE.

THE difficulties in preparing a satisfactory text of Richard III. are briefly set forth in the Introduction below. In the present edition (see p. 11) I have followed the folio, except where the quarto has clearly the better reading. According to Mr. Spedding (see p. 11, foot-note) there are about 1300 variations in the two texts. In act i., out of 1062 lines in the quarto, "a little more than 300" have been altered in the folio; in act ii. 161 lines out of 414; in act iii. 411 out of 1028; in act iv. 321 out of 848; and in act v., which appears to have been revised less minutely, 89 out of 458. The folio also contains 193 lines (inserted in 45 different places) which are not in the quarto; while, on the other hand, the quarto has a number of lines, and in one instance a passage of 17 lines, omitted in the folio. The more important of these variations are mentioned in the Notes, with a sufficient number of the others to show how trivial they are. The difference is often too slight to hang an argument upon; wherefore the critics, as their wont is, have disputed over it all the more vehemently.

Aside from these textual questions, Richard III. presents few serious difficulties, perhaps not one worthy to be called a crux. For school reading it will be found one of the easiest of the plays, and may well be taken up earlier than most of the other "Histories."

The views of localities, buildings, etc., are nearly all taken from Knight's Pictorial Shakspere, which, as I have said in the preface to 1 Henry IV., is specially to be commended for this class of illustrations.

Cambridge, April 20, 1880.