title: Shakespeare's Edward III: An Early Play Restored to the Canon
author: William Shakespeare
description: Since the eighteenth century, major scholars have asserted that Shakespeare wrote <i>The Reign of King Edward the Third</i> (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 <i>Henry V</i> in its first plot and <i>Measure for Measure</i> in the second, <i>Edward III</i> seems not fully polished yet stage worthy. Is there an English literature collection that should not include it? No. <i>Ray Olson</i>
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  # A Study of Shakespeare
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### Algernon Charles Swinburne, Edited by Edmund Gosse
  
  
  This page formatted 2005 Munsey's.
  
  
  http://www.munseys.com
  
  PREFACE TO THIS EDITION
  
  
  A STUDY OF SHAKESPEARE.
  
  
    
  I.
  
  
    
  II.
  
  
    
  III.
  
  
  APPENDIX.
  
  
    
  NOTE ON THE HISTORICAL PLAY OF KING EDWARD III.
  
  
  1879.
  
  
    
  REPORT ON THE PROCEEDINGS ON THE FIRST ANNIVERSARY
  
  
  SESSION OF THE NEWEST SHAKESPEARE SOCIETY.
  
  
    
  ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS.
  
  
  Footnotes.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  This ebook was prepared by Les Bowler.
  
  
  # A STUDY OF SHAKESPEARE
  
  
    
  BY ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE.
  
  
  ## PREFACE TO THIS EDITION
  
  
  Begun in the winter of 1874, a first instalment of “A Study of
  
  
  Shakespeare” appeared in the _Fortnightly Review_ for May 1875,
  
  
  and a second in the number for June 1876, but the completed work was
  
  
  not issued in book form until June 1880. In a letter to me (January
  
  
  31, 1875), Swinburne said:
  
  
  >
  
  
    
  “I am now at work on my long-designed essay 