The History of King Richard the Third: by Sir George Buc, Master of the Revels Hardback

by Arthur Kincaid

Part of the Reports of the Research Committee of the Society of Antiquaries of London series

Hardback

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Description

Sir George Buc (1560-1622), one of the careful antiquarian scholars of the English Renaissance, is famous in literary history as Master of Revels under King James I, a position in which he was responsible for censorship of Shakespeareâ€™s later plays.

His own work has never received the attention and assessment it merits.

In 1619 Sir George wrote The History of King Richard the Third, a study of Richardâ€™s life and reign and a defence of his historical reputation against the Tudor chroniclersâ€™ slanders.

Sane, objective, and carefully documented, this work has taken over 350 years to reach us in the form the author intended. In the late 1960s-early 1970s Arthur Kincaid embarked on creating the first authentic edition of Sir George Bucâ€™s History from the badly fire-damaged manuscript draft, now in the British Library.

Thus, he uncovered Sir George Bucâ€™s original scholarly work, which for centuries had suffered the infamy of having been plagiarized and distorted by his great-nephew, whose name was, coincidentally, George Buck. This book presents George Bucâ€™s History, painstakingly reconstructed from the original text.

In this edition Kincaid has thoroughly updated and revised his introduction, discussing Sir Georgeâ€™s position in the literary and scholarly world of his day, and tracing the mystery of the textâ€™s transmission.

Extensive notes document the facts of Richardâ€™s reign and controversies surrounding them.