Claim: The second longest of Shakespeare's plays is Richard III.

Richard III is a historical play by William Shakespeare , believed to have been written in approximately 1592 . It depicts the Machiavellian rise to power and subsequent short reign of King Richard III of England . The play is grouped among the histories in the First Folio and is most often classified as such . Occasionally , however , as in the quarto edition , it is termed a tragedy . Richard III concludes Shakespeare 's first tetralogy -LRB- also containing Henry VI parts 1 -- 3 -RRB- .   It is the second longest play in the canon after Hamlet , and is the longest of the First Folio , whose version of Hamlet is shorter than its Quarto counterpart . The play is rarely performed unabridged ; often , certain peripheral characters are removed entirely . In such instances extra lines are often invented or added from elsewhere in the sequence to establish the nature of characters ' relationships . A further reason for abridgment is that Shakespeare assumed that his audiences would be familiar with the Henry VI plays , and frequently made indirect references to events in them , such as Richard 's murder of Henry VI or the defeat of Henry 's queen , Margaret .