The First Quarto of King Richard III (The New Cambridge Shakespeare: The Early Quartos)

There are 2,000 verbal differences between the text of the First Quarto of Shakespeare's Richard III (1597) and the version in the First Folio (1623). In this Quarto edition the text is accompanied by a collation of variant readings and substantial textual notes. Peter Davison argues that Shakespeare's company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men, used a memorially reconstructed text of Richard III during a touring performance of the play, and that text provided the manuscript for the 1597 Quarto. The result is a breakthrough in textual studies.