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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  SHAKESPEARE AND THE THREE KINGS
  
  Victoria Alexander
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Copyright
  
  This ebook is licensed to you for your personal enjoyment only.
  
  This ebook may not be sold, shared, or given away.
  
  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either
  products of the writer’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to
  be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales,
  organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
  
  Shakespeare and the Three Kings
  
  Copyright © 1998 by Victoria Alexander
  
  Ebook ISBN: 9781943772339
  
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  Dedicaiton
  
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