num_pages: 162
description: Playwright Migdalia Cruz breathes new life into Richard III.Nuyorican playwright Migdalia Cruz unpacks and repositions Shakespeare's Richard III for a twenty-first-century audience. She presents a contemporary English verse translation, faithfully keeping the poetry, the puns, and the politics of the play intact, with a rigorous and in-depth examination of Richard III--the man, the king, the outsider--who is still the only English king to have died in battle. In the Wars of the Roses, his Catholic belief in his country led to his slaughter at Bosworth's Field by his Protestant rivals. In reimagining this text, Cruz emphasizes Richard III's outsider status--exacerbated by his severe scoliosis, which twisted his spine--by punctuating the text with punk music from 1970s London. Cruz's Richard is no one's fool or lackey. He is a new kind of monarch, whose dark sense of humor and deep sense of purpose leads his charge against the society which never fully accepted him because he looked different.This translation was written as part of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival's Play On! project, which commissioned new translations of thirty-nine Shakespeare plays. These translations present the work of "The Bard" in language accessible to modern audiences while never losing the beauty of Shakespeare's verse. These volumes make these works available for the first time in print--a new First Folio for a new era.
language: English
title: Richard III
titlecomplete: Richard III
characters: Page to Richard III, John, a Priest, Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, Elizabeth of York, John Howard, 1st Duke of Norfolk, Tressel, gentleman attending Lady Anne, 2nd Citizen (Richard III), Pursuivant, William, Lord Hastings, Sir Walter Herbert, Richard of Shrewsbury, 1st Duke of York, Jane Shore, Sir James Tyrrel, Thomas, Lord Stanley, Earl of Derby, 2nd Murderer (Richard III), Berkeley, gentleman attending Lady Anne, Sir Richard Ratcliffe, Cecily Neville, Duchess of York, Sir William Brandon, Cardinal Thomas Bourchier, Archbishop of Canterbury, John de Vere, 13th Earl of Oxford, Elizabeth Woodville, John Dighton, Margaret of Anjou, Sir Thomas Grey, Marquess of Dorset, Sir Richard Grey, Lord Grey, Sir William Catesby, Thomas Rotherham, Archbishop of York, Sheriff (Richard III), Edward IV of England, George Plantagenet, 1st Duke of Clarence, Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, 1st Citizen (Richard III), Edward V of England, Henry VII of England, Scrivener, Anthony Woodville, 2nd Earl Rivers, Francis Lovell, 9th Baron Lovell, 6th Baron Holand, Edward Plantagenet, Miles Forrest, Edmund Shaa, Lord Mayor of London, Richard III of England, Edward Plantagenet, Earl of Warwick, Sir James Blunt, 1st Murderer (Richard III), Margaret Plantagenet, Keeper of the Tower, Third Citizen (Richard III), Lady Anne Neville, Sir Christopher Urswick, John Morton, Bishop of Ely, Sir Robert Brakenbury, Sir Thomas Vaughan, Henry VI of England
genres: Fiction, Plays, Theatre, Classics, Drama, Historical, Historical Fiction, Literature, Poetry, School
ratings_count: 52276
places: Tower of London, London, England, Bosworth Field
series: Wars of the Roses, Shakespeare's Minor Tetralogy
publisher: Wordsworth Edition