Shakespeare's Edward III: An Early Play Restored to the Canon [Hardcover]

William Shakespeare (Author), Eric Sams (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0300066260 | ISBN-13: 978-0300066265 | Publication Date: September 25, 1996 | Edition: 1st

"Edward III" was first published, anonymously, in 1596. Though most scholars now discern Shakespeare's hand in the play, academic uncertainties over "collaboration," "plagiarism", and "memorial reconstruction" have kept it firmly outside the canon. Now Eric Sams, whose "The Real Shakespeare" confirmed the playwright as a writer of popular plays from an early age as well as an assiduous reviser of his own work, offers a new edition that authenticates "Edward III" as Shakespeare's own, unaided work. As well as Shakespeare's full text, this edition includes a detailed synopsis, copious notes for the general reader, and a conspectus of previous commentary. In particular it presents a close analysis of many hundreds of resemblances classified under some 30 headings (such as antithesis, biblical and classical reference, imagery, favourite topics, vocabulary, word-play, manuscript characteristics and canonical parallels) that together identify the author beyond reasonable doubt. Now, in 1996 exactly 400 years after its first appearance, Edward III is restored to the stage, the literary world, the public, and to William Shakespeare himself. This controversial new edition should become the standard text for students and scholars, as well as for actors and directors eager for the challenge of a "new" Shakespeare play.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Since the eighteenth century, major scholars have asserted that Shakespeare wrote The Reign of King Edward the Third (1595), but that has never been a majority opinion. Editor Sams devotes a third of this volume's pages to making the case for definitely adding the play to the bard's canon, a third to textual notes, and the remainder to an enthusiastic introduction and the 2,600 lines of the play, which concerns two campaigns of the fourteenth-century English king. One is military, conducted against France to assert Edward's matrilineal claim to its throne; the other is amorous, conducted against the virtue of the Countess of Salisbury, whose husband is a loyal subject. The first campaign succeeds; the other fails. In both, Edward comes across as a sometimes charmingly, sometimes shockingly impulsive man, and other characters are as impressive. Recalling Henry V in its first plot and Measure for Measure in the second, Edward III seems not fully polished yet stage worthy. Is there an English literature collection that should not include it? No. Ray Olson

Product Details

• Hardcover: 252 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press; 1st edition (September 25, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300066260
• ISBN-13: 978-0300066265
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #609,336 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Black Prince, A Lucifer of Light, March 2, 2011

By 

Jacques COULARDEAU "A soul doctor, so to say" (OLLIERGUES France) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Shakespeare's Edward III: An Early Play Restored to the Canon (Hardcover)

Eric Sams does a very good job in this book with the line by line notes and the exegesis of the play itself. The debate about the author of the play is interesting and well presented, though the accusation of plagiarism for some other plays, like Ironside is for me slightly exaggerated. There are at times some things that go around and can be found in many works. That is not plagiarism even if it is not very creative.

This play is in the nationalistic line of Elizabethan theater. It is a play that is supposed to laud King Edward III and the Black Prince, Edward Prince of Wales in their campaign in France (the beginning of the 100 years war).

Apart from the second act which deals with the tentative sexual approach of the Countess, wife of Salisbury, to obtain the feudal right of a king to possess the wives of his vassals, the whole play turns around the sole military campaign and the Sluys, Crécy, Poitiers and Calais battles. In those battles the King as well as the Prince are shown as being gallant and generous. The Prince is shown as being a good tactician who defeats the French in spite of their superiority in number.

The feudal second act is surprising in many ways though it shows clearly that in Elizabethan times and probably already in the 14th century, feudal rights were definitely wearing out or starting to wear out. The Countess traps the King in a promise he cannot hold: to kill his own wife and then the Countess would kill her own husband who is living in her heart: in other words one way or the other the King will not have the Countess. He gallantly, though his previous demand was not very gallant, steps back.

As for the battles, the bloody violence of that war is described properly but the battles systematically, concerning the Black Prince, are shown as unwinnable and then like due to some kind of miracle the battle is won. A flock of Ravens causes the flight of the French forces in Poitiers. And what's more the French King and one of his sons are made prisoners and taken to England to discuss the terms of the truce. And the Black Prince is reported to have said: "It was agreed that we should take our way, flanking them, in such a manner that if they wished for battle or to draw towards us, in a place not very much to our disadvantage, we should be the first ... the enemy was discomfited, and the king was taken, and his son; and a great number of other great people were both taken and slain."

We all know the last line "three kings two princes and a queen" and of course it is slightly arranged since the King of Scotland was made a prisoner and brought to Calais for the occasion that is in no way historical. It is all the more important to have those six persons here because it is the reflected image of the six bourgeois of Calais that have been humiliated and finally released just in time not to be put to the sword.

There is though one thing that is missing for this play to be complete. Nowhere do we find any comic character. So there is no funny wit in the play. Even the very nationalistic Henry V had the funny Falstaff to dynamize the humor of the play. Romeo had his Mercutio and many other tragedies or histories had such a clown or buffoon, even if only in the shape of the skull of Yorick. None of these here.

What remains is the lauding chants addressed to the Black Prince in a context of clemency and generosity. The French King being made a prisoner and ransomed to the extreme will die in captivity. And yet the English King will not conquer France. One battle is not the whole war that was to last one hundred years.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU