For the ordinary Shakespeare buff, this passage might elicit vicarious compassion, but for a few dozen young men who witnessed it on a recent afternoon, it had a more direct effect: they blinked in recognition and sat up in their chairs.  The setting was, in this case, C76, the main building for male inmates at Rikers Island. The audience members, in their Kelly-green jumpsuits, were those said to be guilty: indicted drug dealers, accused con artists, men charged with theft. The actors, in their approved costumes (chain mail, no; bathrobes, yes), were players with the Public Theater’s Mobile Shakespeare Unit, a wandering troupe spending three weeks performing “Richard III” in unusual locations: Army bases, homeless shelters, centers for older people — and jails.  “For us theater people, playing in these circumstances is seriously addictive,” said Oskar Eustis, artistic director of the Public Theater, who oversees the group. “You like to feel you matter that much.”  To enter Rikers Island isn’t easy. You need a gate pass, or an escort, to drive across the bridge from Hazen Street in Queens to the correctional complex. At the doors of each jail, there are metal detectors, full-height turnstiles and identification checks. A guard stamps your hand with an ultraviolet mark — should it not show up beneath the lamp when you are trying to leave, you can’t.  Next comes the Control Room: a blindingly lighted chamber, with a huge barred door that blocks your path. It eases open only when the matching door behind you has eased shut.  To enter stage left at Rikers is even more demanding. First of all, there was no stage when “Richard” was performed; instead, there was a playing space, 14 feet by 14 feet, taped off on a wood gymnasium floor. The acoustics were awful, what with the ceiling being three times as high as the basketball hoops and the fans oscillating at top speed in order to beat the heat. Distractions abounded: a telephone kept ringing in the corner; a guard kept walking by with jangling handcuffs and jingling keys.  Then there was the matter of the props.  “We have to be extra conscious, in a correctional facility, of what we’re bringing in,” said Amanda Dehnert, the director of the play. Weapons for the fight scenes, for example, were specially made of paper and rattan, as no metal was permitted. “We’re lucky that Shakespeare always says in his texts what the actors are carrying,” she said. “ ‘Here, I lend thee this sharp-pointed’ ” — or not-so-pointed — “ ‘sword.’ ”  The mobile unit was established by Joseph Papp, the founder of the Public Theater, but was out of service for nearly 40 years until it was revived last summer, Mr. Eustis said. This season’s tour is the longest and most ambitious yet. Stops include the Bedford Hills maximum-security women’s prison in Westchester County, the Fort Hamilton Army base in Brooklyn and the Queensboro Correctional Facility in Long Island City, Queens. The tour will close with a three-week run at the Public Theater in downtown Manhattan.  “The nature of Elizabethan culture was such that it brought together audiences that cut across class, religious and educational lines,” Mr. Eustis said. “It made for a more diverse audience than sat together since the Greeks. Shakespeare had to write to appeal to everyone. It’s extraordinary how it still speaks to so many different people.”  With a curtain time of noon, the troupe arrived by van at 11 a.m. at the Queens side of the bridge. As the actor playing Richard, Ron Cephas Jones, had a preshow smoke in the parking lot (tobacco is forbidden on the island), he was recognized by a jail employee, coming off duty.  “You know, you look familiar,” she told him. “Weren’t you in ‘The Wire’?”  Mr. Jones said no and suggested that perhaps she knew him from his cameo appearance in the movie “Paid in Full.” (“It’s an urban classic,” he would later say.) “Right!” the woman shouted. “The dope-fiend uncle! What are you here for now?” At the mention of Shakespeare, her star-struck look went blank.  After passing through the jail’s initial checkpoint (where a sign said: “Who is in the middle of SECURITY? UR!”), the actors gathered in the gym, rehearsing swordplay and doing vocal warm-ups to the amusement of some officers. At their 15-minute call, Stephanie Ybarra, the production’s line producer, called them to attention.  “O.K.,” Ms. Ybarra said, “you see that red box on the wall?” Everyone turned to look.  “That,” she said, “is an alarm bell. If it goes off during the show, don’t move. There may or may not be something going on outside these walls.”  Shortly after noon, the inmates shuffled in. Many were from a program known as Fresh Start — a jailhouse school of sorts, managed by the Osborne Association, a prisoner advocacy group. The actors sat among them, in neutral poses, waiting to perform. Clearly intrigued by each other, the two groups started to talk.  So was there air-conditioning in jail? And tell me, how do you remember all those lines?  “Before you got here, where were you living?” Lynn Hawley, an actor, asked an inmate.  Forty-sixth Street and Eighth Avenue, he told her.  “Wow, you were right in the theater district!” she said.  Enter Richard for “now is the winter of our discontent.” While the inmates seemed to struggle with the language, certain lines did land.  For instance, Richard to Margaret: “Foul wrinkled witch.” Or, in the company’s edited version, Clarence to Richard: “Why hast thou come here?” (“To murder you!” he says.)  Especially well received was the white bedsheet on which the company had diagramed Richard’s family tree as a visual aid. Every time a character was killed, one of the actors daubed the name with a bloody streak of paint, unleashing a chorus of “Ooh!” and “Yeah!” and “Dag!”  Then, at the moment of Richard’s coronation, the alarm went off.  It was extremely loud and lasted three minutes. Visibly startled, the actors froze onstage; the inmates, inured to such disruptions, shifted in their seats.  When the bell fell silent, the play resumed without a hitch — “Ha! am I king? ’tis so: but Edward lives.”  It turned out that some guards had been sent to search a cell; in the gym, however, one felt only the grateful suspension of disbelief.  The final fight scene drew applause, and it continued as the actors left the stage. Then it was time for inmate reviews.  What did they think of Richard?  “He wanted to take everything over — it was too much,” said Franklin Davis Jr., who is 26 and serving time on a probation violation.  “He was like a modern politician,” said Ron Smith, 44, in for selling drugs.  Ramon Lopez, 39, who was arrested last year for kiting checks, had a question of his own.  “Do you get to see this on the outside?” he asked. “Because I’d recommend it to anyone.”  This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:  An earlier version of this article incorrectly identified Oskar Eustis as the executive director of the Public Theater.  An earlier version of this article incorrectly identified Oskar Eustis as the executive director of the Public Theater.
Inmates were the audience for a performance of âRichard IIIâ by the Public Theaterâs Mobile Shakespeare Unit, which is staging the play in unusual locations.