I. THE HISTORY OF THE PLAY.

THE earliest known edition of the play is a quarto printed in 1597, with the following title-page:

The Tragedy of | King Richard the third. | Containing, His treacherous Plots against his brother Clarence: | the pittiefull murther of his innocent nephewes: | his tyrannicall vsurpation with the whole course | of his detested life, and most deserued death. | As it hath beene lately Acted by the Right honourable the Lord Chamber- | laine his seruants. | AT LONDON | Printed by Valentine Sims, for Andrew

Wise, dwelling in Paules Chuch-yard, at the | Signe of the Angell.

1597.

The play had been entered on the Stationers' Registers on the 20th of October, 1597, by Wise, under the title of “The Tragedie of Kinge Richard the Third, with the death of the Duke of Clarence.”

A second quarto edition was published the following year, with the addition of “By William Shake-speare" on the titlepage; in other respects it is a reprint of the first. Other quarto editions appeared in 1602, 1605, 1612, and 1622. All four are said to be "newly augmented," but they contain nothing that is not found in the 2d quarto, unless it be additional errors of the press.*

*

The text of the play in the 1st folio differs materially from that of the quartos. Besides many little changes in expression, it contains several passages—one of more than fifty lines-not found in the earlier texts; while, on the other hand, it omits sundry lines--in some cases, essential to the context--given in the quartos. The play is, moreover, one of the worst printed in the folio, and the quartos often help us in correcting the typographical errors. Which is on the whole the better text, and what is the relation of the one to the other, are questions which have been much disputed, but probably will never be satisfactorily settled. The Cambridge editors remark: "The respective origin and authority of the Ist quarto and 1st folio texts of Richard III. is perhaps the most difficult question which presents itself to an editor of Shakespeare. In the case of most of the plays a brief survey leads him to form a definite judgment; in this, the most attentive examination scarcely enables him to propose with confidence a hypothetical conclusion." Staunton says: "the diversity has proved, and will continue to prove, a source of

* A seventh quarto edition was printed in 1629. not from the folio of 1623, but from the quarto of 1622. An eighth quarto, a reprint of the seventh, appeared in 1634.

incalculable trouble and perpetual dispute to the editors, since, although it is admitted by every one properly qualified to judge, that a reasonably perfect text can only be formed from the two versions, there will always be a conflict of opinions regarding some of the readings." Furnivall considers "the making of the best text" of the play "the hardest puzzle in Shakspere-editing."

Non nostrum tantas componere lites. All that we can do is to take one of the texts as a basis-we are inclined, with Collier, Knight, Verplanck, Hudson, and White, to choose the folio-and to use the other, according to our best judgment, in correcting and amending it. All variations of any importance will be recorded in the Notes.

The date of the play was fixed by Malone in 1593, and Dowden considers that it "can hardly be later." White is inclined to put it in the same year, "or early in 1594." Furnivall and Stokes favour 1594; Fleay (Manual) says "probably 1595;" while Dyce (2d ed.) thinks it was "perhaps not long before 1597, the date of the earliest quarto."† If the allusion to "Richard" in the 22d of John Weever's Epigrammes, addressed "Ad Gulielmum Shakespeare," is to Richard III., as the critics generally agree, the date of the play cannot well be later than 1595, as the Epigrammes, according to Drake and Ingleby, were written in 1595, though not printed until 1599.

The internal evidence is in favour of as early a date as 1594. Stokes remarks: "There are many signs of comparatively early work for instance, the prologue-like speech

:

* Malone preferred the quarto, as do the Cambridge editors, Staunton, and (in his 2d ed.) Dyce. For a very full discussion of the relations of the two texts, see the papers by Spedding and Peckersgill in the Transactions of the New Shakspere Society, 1875-76, pp. 1–124.

† Collier also (2d ed.), referring to Malone's date of 1593, is "disposed to place it nearer the time of its original publication in 1597;” though Stokes quotes him as agreeing with Malone.

with which the play opens; 'the scenes (σrixoμvbiai) where the trilogy of the common lamentation of the women (ii. 2 and iv. 1) alternates like a chorus, dramatic truth being sacrificed to the lyric or epic form, and to conceits in the style of the pastoral Italian poetry' (Gervinus); the overstraining of many of the characters; and the analysis of motive sometimes exhibited." Oechelhäuser (Essay über Richard III.) observes that this play marks "the significant boundarystone which separates the works of Shakespeare's youth from the immortal works of the period of his fuller splendour."*

II. THE SOURCES OF THE PLOT.

Shakespeare found his materials in Holinshed and Hall, who for this portion of English history were chiefly indebted to Sir Thomas More. Dowden (Primer, p. 79) remarks: "Holinshed's account gives two views of Richard's character one in the portion of history previous to the death of Edward IV., in which Richard is painted in colours not so deeply, so diabolically black; and the second, in which he appears as he does in Shakspere's play. This second and darker representation of Richard was derived by Holinshed from Sir Thomas More's History of Edward IV. and Richard III., and More himself probably derived it from Cardinal Morton, chancellor of Henry VIII. and the enemy of Richard."

A Latin tragedy on some of the events of Richard's reign, written by Dr. Legge, was acted at Cambridge before 1583; and an English play, probably written before Shakespeare's, was published in 1594, with the following title-page: "The True Tragedie of Richard the third: Wherein is showne the

* See also extract from Furnivall, p. 33 below. In Guesses at Truth, Augustus Hare argues that the fact that Richard boldly acknowledges his deliberate wickedness, instead of endeavouring to palliate or excuse it like Edmund or Iago, shows that Shakespeare wrote this drama in his youth.

death of Edward the fourth, with the smothering of the two yoong Princes in the Tower: With a lamentable ende of Shores wife, an example for all wicked women. And lastly,

the coniunction and ioyning of the two noble Houses, Lancaster and Yorke. As it was playd by the Queenes Maiesties Players. London Printed by Thomas Creede, and are to be sold by William Barley, at his shop in Newgate Market, neare Christ Church doore. 1594.' Shakespeare certainly made no use of the former of these plays, and little, if any, of the latter.

With regard to "the degree of dramatic invention to be ascribed to the poet in this brilliant delineation of the most splendid theatrical villain of any stage," Verplanck remarks: "More had given the dramatist nearly all his incidents, and many of those minor details of Richard's person, manner, and character which give life and individuality to his portrait. He, and the subsequent chroniclers who built upon his work, had shown Richard as a bold, able, ambitious, bad man— they had described him as malicious, deceitful, envious, and cruel. The poet has made the usurper a nobler and loftier spirit than the historians had done, while he deepened every dark shadow of guilt they had gathered around his mind or his acts. The mere animal courage of the soldier he has raised into a kindling and animated spirit of daring; he has brought out his wit, his resource, his talent, his mounting ambition, far more vividly than prior history had exhibited them. His deeds of blood are made to appear, not as in the Tudor chronicles, as prompted by gratuitous ferocity or envious malignity, but as the means employed by selfish ambition for its own ends, careless of the misery which it inflicts, or the moral obligations on which it tramples. The Richard of Shakespeare has no communion with his kind—he feels

*This play was reprinted by the Shakespeare Society in 1844 from the only perfect copy (now in the collection of the Duke of Devonshire) that has come down to us. Dr. Legge's Latin tragedy is appended to it.