STC 22317 copy 2, title page
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Creator: William Shakespeare
Title: The tragedie of King Richard the third. Conteining his treacherous plots against his brother Clarence: the pittifull murther of his innocent nephewes: his tyrannicall vsurpation: with the whole course of his detested life, and most deserued death. As it hath bin lately acted by the Right Honourable the Lord Chamberlaine his seruants. Newly augmented, by William Shake-speare.
Date: London : Printed by Thomas Creede, and are to be sold by Mathew Lawe, dwelling in Paules Church-yard, at the signe of the Foxe, neare S. Austins gate, 1605.
Repository: Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC, USA
Call number and opening: STC 22317 copy 2, title page
View online bibliographic record
Terms of use
Images that are under Folger copyright are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. This allows you to use our images without additional permission provided that you cite the Folger Shakespeare Library as the source and you license anything you create using the images under the same or equivalent license. For more information, including permissions beyond the scope of this license, see Permissions. The Folger waives permission fees for non-commercial publication by registered non-profits, including university presses, regardless of the license they use. For images copyrighted by an entity other than the Folger, please contact the copyright holder for permission information.
Copy-specific information
Creator: William Shakespeare
Title: The tragedie of King Richard the third. Conteining his treacherous plots against his brother Clarence: the pittifull murther of his innocent nephewes: his tyrannicall vsurpation: with the whole course of his detested life, and most deserued death. As it hath bin lately acted by the Right Honourable the Lord Chamberlaine his seruants. Newly augmented, by William Shake-speare.
Date: London : Printed by Thomas Creede, and are to be sold by Mathew Lawe, dwelling in Paules Church-yard, at the signe of the Foxe, neare S. Austins gate, 1605.
Repository: Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC, USA
Call number and opening: STC 22317 copy 2, title page
View online bibliographic record
Folger Shakespeare Library staff, "Richard III, fourth edition," Shakespeare Documented, https://doi.org/10.37078/275.
Folger Shakespeare Library, STC 22317 copy 2. See Shakespeare Documented, https://doi.org/10.37078/275.
This is the fourth edition of Richard III, printed in 1605. On June 25, 1603, Andrew Wise, who published the first three editions, transferred the rights to Matthew Law. Interestingly, Law retained the same printer, Thomas Creede, who printed the second and third editions. The fourth edition, like those before and after it, is substantially the same as the first edition; a different version was used for the text in the First Folio.
The copy shown above is one of two owned by the Folger Shakespeare Library, and is one of seven listed in the English Short Title Catalogue. It was purchased by Henry Folger in February 1920 from the London bookseller Quaritch. The list price was £3000 but acquisition records indicate that Mr. Folger negotiated a price of £2700.
To learn more about the plot and early printing history of Richard III, please see the Folger Shakespeare Library’s Shakespeare's Works and the British Library’s Shakespeare in Quarto, which also contains information about additional copies of this edition.
Written by Folger Shakespeare Library staff
Sources
The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare, eds. Michael Dobson and Stanley Wells, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), s.v. "Richard III."
Martin Wiggins and Catherine Richardson, British Drama, 1533-1642: A Catalogue, Vol. III: 1590-1597 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), s.v. "950. Richard III."
Last updated January 25, 2020
