Richard III is a play in the First Folio of Shakespeare's plays.
Richard III is a historical play by William Shakespeare , believed to have been written in approximately 1592 . The play is grouped among the histories in the First Folio and is most often classified as such . It is the second longest play in the canon after Hamlet , and is the longest of the First Folio , whose version of Hamlet is shorter than its Quarto counterpart . The plays written by English poet , playwright , and actor William Shakespeare ( 1564 -- 1616 ) have the reputation of being among the greatest in the English language and in Western literature .