英國在結束長年的玫瑰戰爭之後，由約克家族的愛德華登上王位，成為愛德華四世，但愛德華的小弟─理查．葛羅斯忒公爵，不僅是一個相貌奇醜，更是充滿了野心、詭詐陰險的人，理查為了達到稱王的目的，不擇手段，凡是阻擋他稱王之路者，不論親生手足，也不顧叔姪之情，更罔顧夫妻之愛，全遭其毒手，最後，叛軍領袖亨利里奇蒙，終於起兵討滅理查三世，同時娶愛德華四世之女伊麗莎白為妻，結束了長達三十年的兄弟鬩牆之戰，同時並開創了英國史上的「都鐸王朝」。莎士比亞在《理查三世》一劇中將他塑造成一個相貌醜陋、絕斷自私、全無道德觀念的殺人狂。
This is the first edition of "Richard III" to be developed by and for the RSC, the world's leading Shakespeare theatre company and it includes unique material to help the reader understand and enjoy Shakespeare on the stage as well as on the page. It is illustrated with photographs of classic and unusual performances. It presents outstanding on-page notes which explain words and phrases unfamiliar to a modern audience, including the slang, political references and bawdy humour often ignored or censored in competing editions.It includes scene-by-scene summary, offering an easily understandable way into the play. It includes completely new introduction by Jonathan Bate, exploring the text and critical debates around it. It provides summary of the play's performance history at the RSC and elsewhere. It also includes interviews with important Shakespearean actor Simon Russell Beale, designer Tom Piper and directors Bill Alexander and Richard Eyre, discussing key productions of the play at the RSC.With interviews with actors and directors including Simon Russell Beale, Bill Alexander and Richard Eyre, along with detailed looks at productions at the RSC and elsewhere, this new edition of the play offers innovative ways of looking at and understanding Shakespeare, as well as student-friendly notes and scene-by-scene.
作者簡介：
About the Author
JONATHAN BATE is Professor of Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature, University of Warwick, UK, and the editor of The RSC Shakespeare: The Complete Works. He has held visiting posts at Harvard, Yale and UCLA and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a Fellow of the British Academy, an Honorary Fellow of St Catherine's College, Cambridge, and a Governor and Board member of the Royal Shakespeare Company. A prominent critic, award-winning biographer and broadcaster, he is the author of several books on Shakespeare, including The Genius of Shakespeare (Picador), which was praised by Sir Peter Hall, founder of the RSC, as "the best modern book on Shakespeare." In June 2006 he was awarded a CBE by HM The Queen 'for services to Higher Education'. ERIC RASMUSSEN is Professor of English at the University of Nevada, USA, and the Textual Editor of The RSC Shakespeare: The Complete Works. He is co-editor of the Norton Anthology of English Renaissance Drama and has edited volumes in both the Arden Shakespeare and Oxford World's Classics series. He is the General Textual Editor of the Internet Shakespeare Editions project - one of the most visited Shakespeare websites in the world. For over nine years he has written the annual review of editions and textual studies for the Shakespeare Survey.