Richard III Paperback – August 7, 2022

This is a copy of the famous Shakespeare play--Richard III--published by Signet Publishing Company. This particular publisher has been my favorite publisher Shakespeare plays since my undergraduate days. Signet's entire collection of Shakespeare's plays contains much more than the simple transcript of the play itself. Each volume contains an extensive number of essays and articles on the particular play which is contained in the volume. I have gone back to these volumes time and time again in order to read these articles.

I received it pretty late, longer than expected but other than that, product was good for me. It's cheap for an old book and that is all it matters to me.

Quite a few unexpected markings inside the book.

I’ve been looking for a reliable Kindle edition of Shakespeare that would have well-edited play text and helpful footnotes. Unsatisfied with the Complete Editions available on the market, I turned to individual play editions. In print, my favorite are Oxford World’s Classics - they have the best introductions and solid critical apparatus. However, they only offer a few plays as ebooks. I thought Pelican would be a good alternative. Alas, after a quick preview discovered two typos already in the early dialogue between Gloster and Anne:Pelikan:Thy deeds inhuman and unnaturalProvokes this deluge most unnatural.Oxford:Thy deed, inhuman and unnatural,Provokes this deluge most unnatural.Pelikan:Villain, thou know’st nor law of God nor manOxford:Villain, thou know’st no law of God nor manNeedless to say, I didn’t bother any further. And these were just the two errors that jump out because of grammar; who knows how many other transcription errors there are...Edit: This seems to hold for all Penguin edition, even the older ones: they continue reproducing the same text. The regular Penguin Classics edition has better notes which are also cued to the actual text rather than to the line number as here.Bottom line, if you’re ok with a somewhat dubious edition of the text, the Penguin (and after that Pelikan) editions of individual plays are best suited to kindle and offer decent footnotes. If you’re buying print editions, go with Oxford World’s Classics. Oxford has the most authoritative, thoroughly researched play-text and the critical apparatus and introductions are bar none. I wish they had more of their plays available as ebooks. The most recent New Oxford Shakespeare is still not as good as individual plays, and instead of solid introductions in the cheaper Modern OS edition, they have random quotes about random things about each play, and if you want introductory material you need to get the more expensive Critical Reference edition...

The cover said Richard III, which I ordered. Inside the cover, the pages were of another book, The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta.