Excerpt from The Tragedy of King Richard II, Vol. 1: Printed for the Third Time by Valentine Simmes in 1598, Reproduced in Facsim, From the Unique Copy in the Library of William Augustus White The text of Shakespeare's King Richard II here reproduced in facsimile is that of a Quarto of 1598, identified by Miss Henrietta C.Bartlett as belonging to an edition quite distinct from the one of that year already known. The original, which is believed to be unique, is preserved in the library of Mr. W. A. White of New York, by whose liberality it is now rendered available for study by any one interested in the bibliography of Shakespeare and the relations of the early Quartos and First Folio edition of his plays. The First Quarto of Richard II was printed in 1597, and is one of the rarest of the early editions, the only copies recorded being those in the Capell Collection at Trinity College, Cambridge, the Devonshire Collection, which passed last year into the possession of Mr. Huntington of New York, and the library of Mr. Alfred Huth, from which, under the terms of a right to claim any fifty books, generously conferred on the British Museum in his will, it passed to the national library in 1911 along with the, also very rare, first editions of King Richard III and The Merry Wives of Windsor. The 1597 edition of Richard II was Printed by Valentine Simmes for Androw Wise, and, by a combination of carelessness and care on the part of the printer, each of the three extant copies of it may be called unique, leaves A4 recto, B1 verso, B3 verso, B4 recto, C1 recto, C2 verso, Di recto, Ii recto, 13 recto, each existing in two states, one of which is more correct than the other. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.