APPENDIX C
The Text of the Present Edition
The text of the present volume is based, by permission of the Oxford University Press, upon that of the Oxford Shakespeare, edited by the late W. J. Craig. Craig's text has been carefully collated with the Quarto of 1597, and with the first Folio of 1623.[1] The textual difficulties in Richard III are numerous. The variations between the Quarto of 1597 and the Folio text are striking. Craig inclined to lean upon the authority of the Quarto; the present editor has relied mainly upon the Folio, since the trend of recent editors has been toward a return to this text.
The Folio contains nearly two hundred lines not found in the Quarto, together with many minor changes of words and additions of several short lines and parts of lines. The longer passages of the Folio are not questioned, even by advocates of the Quarto text, as un-Shakespearean. Further, the stage directions of the Folio are more complete and detailed. Apart, therefore, from obvious errors of the press to be found in the Folio, its major variations are admittedly of Shakespearean origin.
There are, however, in the Quarto some lines which do not occur in the Folio, though they are considerably less in number than the additions of the later text. In the second scene of the fourth act, for example, there is a passage, found only in the Quarto, which is dramatically essential. All such lines and passages belonging exclusively to the Quarto have been included within square brackets. Difficulties resulting from ob-
- ↑ In all, six quartos appeared before the publication of the First Folio, in the following years: 1597, 1598, 1602, 1605, 1612, 1622.
