was first performed in London theatres in the aftermath of England’s defeat of the Spanish Armada during the early 1590s. On 1 December 1595 printer Cuthbert Burby entered
Edward the third and the Black Prince their wars with King John of Francein the Stationer’s Register. The quarto text was published the following year, with a claim on the title page that the play had “
bin sundrie times plaied about the Citie of London”
.A second quarto was printed in 1599. The quarto’s title page lists no author, and it was not until 1760 that the Shakespeare editor and scholar Edward Capell suggested that Shakespeare had a hand in the play’s composition. Capell’s claim was largely ignored until the late twentieth century, when editors began to explore the possibilities of…
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Citation: Vaughan, Virginia Mason. "King Edward III". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 12 November 2020 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=15967, accessed 26 November 2024.]