by William Shakespeare

Straight-up Thrilling.

In Shakespeare’s brilliant, brutal, and dazzlingly innovative play, England’s royal cousins play a deadly game of seize-the-throne. The House of Lancaster led by the fearsome Queen Margaret plots revenge and counter-revenge against the House of York led by Richard and his sons Edward (who becomes King Edward IV), George, and Richard Duke of Gloucester (who will become King Richard III). Paper crowns, bloody napkins, triple suns, patricide, filicide, regicide, extreme cruelty, and fierce love: Shakespeare holds nothing back in the thrilling penultimate play in his Wars of the Roses cycle. At the end of Act V, King Edward hopes that here “begins our lasting joy.” But as Crookback Dickie has already told us: not bloody likely.

In the 2012 Actors’ Renaissance Season, we continue the series The Histories: The Rise and Fall of Kings with Richard III, the final chapter of the Wars of the Roses—while in Fall 2011, we end Shakespeare’s first Henriad with Henry V.