King Richard II

The New Cambridge Shakespeare appeals to students worldwide for its up-to-date scholarship and emphasis on performance. The series features line-by-line commentaries and textual notes on the plays and poems. Introductions are regularly refreshed with accounts of new critical; stage and screen interpretations. For this second edition of King Richard II Andrew Gurr has added a new section to the introduction; in which he discusses a number of important theatrical productions as well as the scholarly criticism of recent years. Gurr foregrounds the growing interest in re-historicising and re-politicising the play; emphasising that; to Shakespeare's contemporaries; King Richard II was a balanced dramatisation of the central political and constitutional issue of the day: how to reign-in an unjust ruler. The Introduction provides a full context for both contemporaneous and modern views of King Richard's fall. An updated reading list completes the edition.