Displaying the bold vision and growing skill of a young playwright, these are Shakespeare's first three history plays, covering some sixty tumultuous years of English history. Their pageantry, violence, and stirring speeches excite audiences with action as well as character, and midway through the final play in this trilogy, a shocking, clever, inimitably evil new voice is heard--that of Richard of Gloucester, destined to become England's most fearsome and hated ruler of all time, Richard III. "From the Paperback edition. "