INTRODUCTION. I. LITERARY HISTORY OF THE PLAY. § 1. RICHARD THE SECOND, the second in historical order of Shakespeare's English Histories, was first printed in 1597, having been written, probably, Texts. three or four years earlier. The first edition (in quarto), which is also the first authentic edition of any of Shakespeare's undoubted plays, was entered in the Stationers' Register on Aug. 29th, 1597, and bears the following title: "The | Tragedie of King Ri- | chard the se- | cond. | As it hath beene publikely acted by the right Honourable_the| Lorde Chamberlaine his Ser- | uants. | LONDON | Printed by Valentine Simmes for Andrew Wise, and | are to be sold at his Shop in Paules church yard at the signe of the Angel. | 1597" A portion of the edition seems to have been printed from a corrected version of the MS.; of this portion a single copy remains, in the library of the Duke of Devonshire.1 All specimens of the edition omit the deposition scene, act iv. 154-318, and it was probably omitted in the representation also, as too dangerously suggestive, in spite of the sympathy it awakens for Richard, at a time when the dethronement of Elizabeth was being enjoined as a duty upon her Catholic subjects. "Wot ye not, I am Richard II.?" Elizabeth is reported to have said. The omission was repeated in the second edition, 1598. It was only in the third, 1608, when Elizabeth's death had removed the main objection to it, that this part of the scene was published, the addition being announced on the title-p of some copies in the words: "With new additions of the Parliament Sceane and the deposing of King Richard". 1 A useful Facsimile of this has been edited by Messrs. W. A. Harrison and W. P. Daniel. -page But it is certain that the 'additions' formed part of the original play, both because they are indistinguishable in style from the rest, and because the words which immediately follow in the earliest text, "A woeful pageant have we here beheld" (iv. 319), can only be applied to the deposition scene. A fourth quarto edition, in 1615, shows the continued popularity of the play. In the first folio edition of Shakespeare, 1623, the text of the fourth quarto was in the main reproduced, but with the omission of several passages which it was perhaps usual to omit on the stage. "In the "new additions of the Parliament Sceane' it would appear that the defective text of the quarto had been corrected from the author's MS. For this part therefore the First Folio is our highest authority; for all the rest of the play the first quarto affords the best text."1 A fifth quarto was printed in 1634, from the Second Folio (1633); its readings "sometimes agree with one or other of the earlier quartos, and in a few cases are entirely independent of previous editions". 2 Performances. § 2. Of the performances of the play during Elizabeth's and James's reigns we have no certain details. There are, indeed, three records of the performance of plays upon the story of Richard; but one refers certainly, and another probably, to a play or plays other than Shakespeare's; while as to the third there is no evidence either way. (i) On the eve of the intended outbreak of Essex's conPlays not by spiracy, Feb. 8, 1601, the play of deposing King Shakespeare. Richard II. was performed before the conspirators, at the instigation of one of them, Sir Gilly Merrick, apparently by way of whetting their appetite for the similar enterprise they had in hand. The players, we are told, had at first demurred, on the ground that "the play was old and that they should have a loss in playing it, because few would come to it"; but an extra payment of 40 shillings was offered them, "and thereupon played it was".3 The only 1 Cambridge Shakespeare, vol. IV. ix. 2 Ibid. player whose name we know, Augustine Phillips, belonged to Shakespeare's company, the Lord Chamberlain's Servants. On the other hand, the description of the play as old and unpopular, and the still stronger term used by Camden in describing the event ("exoletam tragoediam de tragica abdicatione regis Ric. II."-'an obsolete tragedy'), make it very improbable that this was Shakespeare's play. (ii) The second performance is that recorded to have taken place on board the ship of Captain Keeling, off Sierra Leone, on Sept. 30, 1607. The record occurs in the captain's journal. "Sep. 30. Capt. Hawkins dined with me, when my companions acted Kinge Richard the Second." It is worth noting. that Hamlet had been acted on Sept. 5, and that on Sept. 31 (Captain Hawkins having again been invited to a 'fish-dinner') Hamlet was again acted: "which I permitt", the captain naively adds, "to keepe my people from idlenes and unlawfull games or sleepe". Cf. Notices of Dramatic performances on board the ship Dragon in 1607,...ed. Rundall, 1849; quoted by Halliwell, Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare, p. 517. Here the collocation of Hamlet affords a faint presumption that Shakespeare's Richard was meant, but hardly more. (iii) The third performance was that described by Dr. Simon Forman, 30th April, 1611, at the Globe. But as this contained Wat Tyler's revolt and other scenes of bloodshed and violence not found in Shakespeare's play, it has interest here only as showing the popularity of the subject. It is possible that this was the old play of 1601. We are not therefore entitled to assert (with the Clarendon Press Editors) that there were two plays on the subject besides Shakespeare's.1 Possibly, as Prof. Hales suggests, the old play was in two parts. In the Restoration period the play held its ground, after 1 The existence of an old play is confirmed by Shakespeare's evident assumption that his audience were familiar with the subject in some detail. What could they otherwise have made of such an allusion as York's to the "prevention of poor Bolingbroke about his marriage" (ii. 1. 167), of which not a word is said elsewhere in the play? undergoing extensive alteration at the hands of the thirdrate poet and psalm translator, Nahum Tate. In the eighteenth century it was further 'adapted' by Theobald and by Goodhall,1 and, again, in 1815, by Wroughton, for the memorable performance by Edmund Kean. This last adaptation, says Hazlitt, who witnessed that performance and wrote a critique of it, “is the best that has been attempted: for it consists entirely of omissions, except one or two scenes, which are idly tacked on to the conclusion".2 The growing reverence for Shakespeare was, in fact, restricting the business of the 'adapter'. Hazlitt (one of the finest of English dramatic critics) thought Kean's playing of Richard too energetic; he "made it a character of passion...whereas it is a character of pathos". A generation later, and the play enjoyed one of the earliest of those faithful and painstaking 'revivals' in which Mr. Irving, in our own day, has taken the lead. It has been felicitously described by Mr. Pater in his Appreciations,—“the very person of the king based on the stately old portrait in Westminster Abbey, the earliest extant contemporary likeness of any English sovereign', the grace, the winning pathos, the sympathetic voice of the player, the tasteful archæology confronting vulgar modern London with a scenic reproduction, for once really agreeable, of the London of Chaucer. In the hands of Kean the play became like an exquisite performance on the violin". Yet the play is not well adapted to attract a popular audience. Its studious avoidance of the grosser kinds of effect, of noise and bustle, of obvious and harrowing tragedy, make it “ill-suited”, as Coleridge says, "for our modern large theatres". On a first reading or hearing it may seem bald : its wealth of poetry and meaning are disclosed only by intimate study. It has therefore always been more a favourite with the critic than with the general reader. But the critic's estimate of it has been 1 Ward: Hist. of Dram. Literature, i. 388. 2 Criticisms of the English Stage, p. 220. 3 W. Pater: Appreciations, p. 203. 4 S. T. Coleridge: Lectures, &c., ed. Ashe, p. 256. 1 extraordinarily high. "In itself, and for the closet," says Coleridge, "I feel no hesitation in placing it as the first and most admirable of all Shakespeare's purely historical plays." And the most brilliant and sagacious of German critics of Shakespeare, F. Kreyssig, endorses Coleridge's judgment upon what he calls "this masterpiece of political poetry" 2 II. THE DATE OF THE PLAY. Evidence. § 3. The only definite date at our disposal in connexion with the production of Richard II. is the publication of the first quarto edition in 1597. The play was pro- (a) External bably written several years earlier; but the probability rests wholly upon internal evidence. One piece of external evidence has indeed been alleged :—the resemblance (pointed out by Grant White) of certain passages of this play to certain others found in the second edition of Daniel's narrative poem Civil Wars, published in 1595; but these show, at the most, that one of the poets borrowed from the other; that is, that Richard II. was produced either before 1595 or—after.3 Instead of helping us, therefore, to the date of Richard II., this fact can only be interpreted at all when that date is known. We are thus thrown back upon internal evidence. § 4. Internal evidence of date, in questions of Shakespearian criticism, is derived chiefly from three classes of facts, which differ much in definiteness and in cogency; facts of metre, of style, and of construction. Metrical facts are the most definite and palpable of all facts of literary form. The variations in a poet's use of rhyme 1 S. T. Coleridge: Lectures, &c., ed. Ashe, p. 256. 2 Kreyssig: Vorlesungen, i. 178. (b) Internal Evidence. (1) Metre. 3 Prof. Hales appositely refers to the rebuke civilly enough administered to 'sweet honey-dropping' Daniel in the Return from Parnassus as indicating on which side the 'theft', if there was one, probably lay "Only let him more sparingly make use Of others' wit, and use his own the more, |