LITA/2: RICHARD 111 By William Shakespeare

1592–94 and published in 1597 in a quarto edition seemingly reconstructed from memory by the acting company when a copy of the play was missing. The text in the First Folio of 1623 is substantially better, having been heavily corrected with reference to an independent manuscript. Richard III is the last in a sequence of four history plays (the others being Henry VI, Part 1, Henry VI, Part 2, and Henry VI, Part 3) known collectively as the “first tetralogy,” treating major events of English history during the late 14th and early 15th centuries. For the events of the play, Shakespeare relied mainly on the chronicles of Raphael Holinshed and, to a lesser extent, Edward Hall.