BM1 - Introduction to Literature - Assignment 2: Richard III

Please address the following four tasks and questions. You may write up to three pages of text, according to the formatting specifications of the style sheet (we need margins and 1.5 line height to correct your paper). Longer Assignments will not be accepted.

1. Give a structured summary of the following text passage of the 1597 quarto edition of Richard III.
2. Locate the passage within the context of the play.
3. Identify and briefly define three rhetorical elements from the dialogue (you may use the folio edition to widen your choice).
4. Compared to the 1597 and the 1623 editions of Shakespeare's Richard III, the Arden edition followed a modern decision to read Richard's lines 109-111 as an aside. Would it be possible to play this passage not as an aside? How would that affect our perception of Richard's character?

Quarto edition, 1597, E2v

html: http://www.pierre-marteau.com/editions/1597-richard-iii.html

Folio edition, 1623, p.183-184

Arden edition, 1981, II,ii lines 79-111