LITERARY HISTORY.

Of this play there are more editions printed before 1640 than of any other play of Shakespeare's. As in the case of I. Henry IV., six Quarto editions of this play appeared before the publication of the first Folio in 1623. The first Quarto was printed in 1597, and entitled:

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 Churchyard, at the Sign of the Angell. | 1597. | The next Quarto appeared in 1598; the title-page is substantially the same, except that the name of the author ("By William Shakespeare") was added, and that it was printed by Thomas Creede for the same publisher. The third Quarto was printed in 1602. On the title-page of this edition we find "Newly augmented;" but this statement is not founded on fact, as no additions were made. It was reprinted from the second Quarto by the same printer for the same publisher; and the only additions to be found in it are some additional errors of the press. The fourth Quarto was printed in 1605 from the third, with the same title-page, except that it was printed for "Mathew Lawe, dwelling in Paules Churchyard, at the Signe of the Foxe, neare S. Austins gate, 1605." and not for Andrew Wise. The fifth Quarto, which has on the title-page: "As it hath beene lately Acted by the Kings Maiesties seruants. |" was

printed in 1612 not from Q. 4 but from Q. 3, by the same printer and for the same bookseller as the last edition. The next edition, the sixth Quarto, is the rarest of all, only one copy being known, which is in the Capell collection. It was published in 1622, and the title-page is the same as that of Q. 5, except that it was printed by Thomas Purfoot for the same publisher, Matthew Lawe. Another edition, Q. 7, was printed in 1629; the text was taken, not from F. 1, but from Q. 6. "It was printed by John Norton for Matthew Law. Except in the name of the printer, and the substitution of the word 'tiranous' for 'tyrrannical,' the title-page does not differ from that of Q. 6" (see Cambridge ed. p. xv.). The eighth and last Quarto is a mere reprint of Q. 7, and was printed by John Norton in 1634. "There is no bookseller's name on the titlepage, if we may trust that which Capell has supplied in MS. 'from a copy in the possession of Messrs. Tonsons and Draper'" (ut supra).

The differences and discrepancies between the two principal authentic texts, viz. Q. 1 and F. 1, are so numerous, and so bewildering in their variety and character, that the attempt to piece together from these discordant authorities a text, which shall approach as closely as possible to what Shakespeare intended his amended text to be, is enough to fill any editor with despair. Various theories have been started to account for the utter want of agreement between Q. 1 and F. 1; but none of them furnish any satisfactory solution of the mystery. The theory of the Cambridge editors is so ingeniously devised, and so carefully worked out, that in justice to them we must quote it at length:

"The following scheme will best explain the theory which we submit as a not impos

sible way of accounting for the phenomena of the text:

A1

B1

A 1 is the author's original MS.

A 2

B2

B1 is a transcript by another hand with some accidental omissions and, of course, slips of the pen. From this transcript was printed

the Quarto of 1597, Q 1.

A 2 is the author's original MS. revised by himself, with corrections and additions, interlinear, marginal, and on inserted leaves.

B 2 is a copy of the revised MS., made by another hand, probably after the death of the author, and perhaps a very short time before 1623. As the stage directions of the Folio, which was printed from B 2, are more precise and ample as a rule than those of the Quarto, we may infer that the transcript, B2, was made for the library of the theatre, perhaps to take the place of the original which had become worn by use, for Richard III. continued to be a popular acting play. Some curious, though not frequent, coincidences between the text of the Folio and that of the Quarto of 1602, Q3, lead us to suppose that the writer of B 2, had occasionally recourse to that Quarto to supplement passages which, by its being frayed or stained, had become illegible in A 2. They go on to say: "Assuming the truth of this hypothesis, the object of an Editor must be to give in the text as near an approximation as possible to A,1 rejecting from F1 all that is due to the unknown writer of B2 and supplying its place from Q1, which, errors of pen and press apart, certainly came from the hand of Shakespeare. In the construction of our text we have steadily borne this principle in mind, only deviating from it in a few instances where we have retained the expanded version of the Folio in preference to the briefer version of the Quarto, even when

1 It is clearly so printed in my copy (Ed. 1864); but it may be a misprint for Ag.

we incline to think that the earlier form is more terse and therefore not likely to have been altered by its Author. Our reason is this: as the Folio version contains substantially that of the Quarto and as the question does not admit of a positive decision we prefer the risk of putting in something which Shakespeare did not to that of leaving out something which he did write. Cæteris paribus we have adopted the reading of the Quarto."

The conclusion thus arrived at seems rather inconsistent with the facts advanced in their theory; since what an editor should aim at is to make the text as nearly as possible identical with A 2, which, according to the theory of the Cambridge editors, was Shakespeare's own revision of his original text. We have therefore based our text upon that of F. 1, only adopting such readings from Q. 1 as the sense, or metre may seem to require. There is no reason to suppose, from what we know of Shakespeare's natural objection to have his plays printed, as long as the acting right was vested in his own company, that Q. 1 was, in this case, an authorized transcript from his original text; and we cannot agree with the Cambridge editors that any superiority possessed by either text is, on the whole, to be assigned to the Quarto rather than to the Folio.

It is much easier to find fault with the theories of others upon this difficult question than to propound any more satisfactory theory one's self. It is highly probable that it is owing to the very extraordinary popularity of this play that so many discrepancies are found between the text of Q. 1 and F. 1. The former must have been published within a comparatively short time after the first production of the play. It has already been observed that, from what we know of the history of the other Quartos, it is very improbable that the First Quarto of Richard III. was printed with the sanction or under the supervision of the author, and not from a copy obtained by more or less surreptitious means. It is evident that, whatever else it may be, Q. 1 could not have been the play as it was acted when Shakespeare was one of the leading members of the Lord Chamberlain's Company; that is to say, it was not the play as

finally revised by him. It is a very suspicious circumstance that the words "greatly augmented" should appear on the title-page of Q. 3, as there is nothing in the text to justify such a description; and it certainly looks as if the printer had been promised a copy of the play, as rerised by the author, with the additions that he had made in the course of its successful career. In the case of Romeo and Juliet Q. 2 has upon its title-page "Newly corrected, augmented, and amended;" and it, undoubtedly, contains Shakespeare's own revisions, and is the chief authority for the text as now recognized. Also in the case of Hamlet, the surreptitiously printed Quarto of 1603 was more than usually defective; and Q. 2 (1604), which is the best and fullest text of the play we have, has upon its title-page "Newly imprinted and enlarged to almost as much againe as it was, according to the true and perfect coppie."

With regard to the Cambridge editors, who, in their text, adhere with almost fanatical reverence to Q. 1 in the cases where the difference between it and F. 1 are unimportant, and, in some cases, where the advantage certainly seems to be with the latter-even they acknowledge that the text of F. 1 is very often preferable, and that it contains corrections and additions which must have been made by Shakespeare himself. How, then, are we to account for the fact which must be frankly admitted that, in some cases, the reading of F. 1 is manifestly wrong, and that in many of these cases we are able to correct the mistake by the aid of Q. 1? Some of these mistakes, of course, are mere errors of the transcriber of the MS. or of the printer. But a large balance remains which cannot be so explained. Unfortunately space does not allow us here to go into a minute analysis of the differences between Q. 1 and F. 1. In the case of one scene taken haphazard we have done so; but we must refer our readers to the late Mr. Spedding's admirable paper in the New Shakspere Society's Transactions, 1875 (p. 1-75), with nearly all of which, especially the concluding paragraph, we most cordially agree. Mr. P. A. Daniel, in his Introduction to the Facsimile Reprint of Q. 1, has most patiently analysed the

differences between Qq. 1-6 and F. 1; and he comes to the conclusion that F. 1 was printed from a copy of Q. 6, altered "in accordance with the theatrical MS. which the transcriber had before him." The arguments by which he reaches this conclusion are worthy of the closest attention, though we cannot agree with him on all points. But even he admits that an editor should take F. 1 "as the basis of his text."

We can only here suggest some facts which may partially explain the difficulty above mentioned. In order to form an idea of what a playhouse copy of a play was in the time of Shakespeare, one ought to see the MS. copy of some comedy acted by one of the travelling companies in Italy. The stage is, after all, a very conservative institution. Some fifteen or sixteen years ago, if not now, in Italy the theatre-copy of a play was, except for modern handwriting, quite as confused as the playhouse copy would be in the time of Shakespeare. The MS. is written on both sides of the paper, with only a narrow margin left, in which the stage-directions and the "calls" of the various actors are marked, exactly as we find them in the few old playhouse copies that remain to us of dramas acted in the seventeenth century. This one copy serves for the prompter and stage-manager, and from it all the parts have to be copied. It is easy to see how, in the course of the long career of a successful play which, if not acted many times in succession, would be frequently repeated at intervals, this MS. would get terribly damaged. Some of the leaves would have to be restored by the prompter, or by some copyist in the company; and it is possible that, in recopying these damaged sheets, certain lacunæ might have to be filled up from the actors' parts, or even from memory; and in this way, although the prompter may be supposed to have known nearly every line of the piece by heart, verbal errors might easily creep in; as they might also, in cases where some actor's part was used for reference, copied perhaps, in his own not too legible handwriting. It may be that some of the discrepancies in the text of Richard III. arose from the fact that the actors had made some

alterations without the sanction of the author, and, perhaps, during his temporary absence. Shakespeare assures us in Hamlet (iii. 2. 4250) that he had a very great objection to what is technically known as "gagging." But everyone, who has had any practical experience of theatres, knows how difficult it is to prevent the actors either slightly changing the words of the text, or boldly inserting words of their own. Indeed the text of some plays of comparatively modern date, notably those of Sheridan, which have held the stage for some time, have suffered considerably from these unauthorized alterations. If we bear in mind these circumstances, and remember at the same time that Richard III. was, undoubtedly, one of Shakespeare's earliest plays, and had, perhaps, longer and more continued popularity than any other of his dramatic works; that it must have been revised and amended by him from time to time; and that these revisions and amendments were not to be obtained, otherwise than surreptitiously, by the printer of any of the Quartos, we shall cease to wonder at the very numerous discrepancies which occur between the texts of Q. 1 and F. 1. After examining the analysis of these discrepancies we must come to the conclusion, in the absence of any direct evidence to the contrary, that the text published by the editor of F. 1 bears a closer resemblance to the real text of Shakespeare than the copy which the enterprising Mr. Andrew Wise managed to get hold of in the year 1597.

To sum up the suggestions here put forward: (1) It will be seen, from what is said further on as to the date of this play, that it is uncertain how long before 1597 it was acted, but that it was one of Shakespeare's earliest plays. We know it to have been Shakespeare's custom to revise his earliest plays when he considered it worth the trouble. He revised and made additions to Love's Labour's Lost, The Taming of the Shrew, and Romeo and Juliet. We may therefore be pretty certain that, in the case of so popular a play as Richard III., he would revise and, perhaps, re-revise it. (2) Neither Q.1 nor F. I represents the original play of Richard III.; but both represent amended versions; the alterations and additions, in both cases, having,

to a very great extent, been made by the author himself. (3) The publishers of the various Quartos before 1623 could not obtain the greater portion of the amendments and alterations made from time to time by the author. These were to be found only in the theatrecopy of the play-what we should call the stage-manager's copy-and F. 1 was, substantially, transcribed from this last copy with a few mistakes of the transcriber and of the printer. (4) The tattered condition into which the playhouse copy fell, owing to constant use, necessitating as it did portions of the MS. being recopied from time to time, accounts for some of the errors in F. 1.

As to the sources from which Shakespeare derived Richard III., it may be said that he owed nothing to the old play of Richardus Tertius, and very little if anything to The True Tragedy of Richard III. (See note 204.) For his historical material Shakespeare was indebted to Holinshed, who, in his turn, copied almost word for word from Hall; and he, on his part, "conveyed" the history of the greater part of the reign of Richard III. from that written by Sir Thomas More. We have, as a rule, given the quotations from the original source, viz. the last-mentioned history. Shakespeare himself appears to have used the second edition of Holinshed, as he has copied a mistake which occurs only in that edition. (See note 647.) He also, very probably, referred to The Mirror for Magistrates; but he does not seem to have derived thence any particular incidents or expressions.

What is supposed to be the earliest allusion to Richard III. occurs in a collection of epigrams by John Weever, the title-page of which says that it was "Printed by V. S. for Thomas Bushell, and are to be sold at his shop at the great north doore | of Paules 1599 | (See Shakspere Allusion-Books, Pt I. 1874, pp. 181, 182). This is described by the editor (ut supra, p. 181) as a second edition; but there is nothing to indicate this fact on the original title-page, nor is the existence of any earlier edition known. As Drake points out (vol. ii. p. 371): "The book in question, in the collection of Mr. Comb, of Henley, and supposed to be a unique, was published in 1599,

at which period, according to the date of the print of him prefixed by Cecill, the author was twenty-three years old; but Weever tells us, in some introductory stanzas, that when he wrote the poems which compose this volume, he was not twenty years old; that he was one That twenty twelve months yet did never know, consequently, these Epigrams must have been written in 1595, though not printed before 1599." The epigram contains fourteen lines, of which we give the following:

THE FOURTH WEEKE.

Epig. 22. Ad Gulielmum Shakespeare. Honie-tong'd Shakespeare, when I saw thine issue, I swore Apollo got them and none other,

Rose-checkt Adonis with his amber tresses,
Faire fire-hot l'enus charming him to loue her,
Chaste Lucretia virgine-like her dresses,

Prowd lust-stung Tarquine seeking still to proue her;
Romea Richard; more, whose names I know not,
Their sugred tongues, and power attractiue beuty
Say they are Saints, althogh that Sts they shew not,
For thousands vowes to them subiectiue dutie.

It will be observed that this is no direct evidence of the fact of Richard III. having been played at this time; for though the allusion most probably is to that play, still it might be to Richard II. The first Quarto of this play was entered at Stationers' Hall, 20th October, 1597; while Richard II. was registered on 29th August of the same year. Another early reference to Richard III. has been pointed out by Simpson in his Introduction to A Warning for Fair Women. In the Induction to that play Comedy has a speech beginning:

How some damn'd tyrant to obtain a crown
Stabs, hangs, impoisons, smothers, cutteth throats.

-Simpson's School of Shakspere, vol. ii. p. 242. This is the more curious, as occurring in a play acted by the company to which Shakespeare himself belonged, viz. The Lord Chamberlain's Servants. The Warning to Fair Women was printed in 1599. We do not know how long it had been acted before. As to other references, there are five quotations

from this play in England's Parnassus, 1600.1 There are other contemporary allusions, but none which need be mentioned here.

As far then as direct external evidence goes, we know that this play must have been produced before 1597, or at least early in that year; the title-page of Q. 1 not containing any statement which implies that it had been acted for any length of time previous to its publication.

On the question of the date of this play Mr. Collier, in his Bibliographical Account of English Literature (vol. ii. pp. 262, 263), has pointed out an allusion which seems indirectly to show that Shakespeare's play of Richard III. was not in existence in 1593. The article is on a rare book, the title-page of which is "LICIA | or | POEMES OF LOVE, IN HO- | nour of the admirable | and singular vertues of his Lady, to the imitation of the best | Latin poets, and others. | Whereunto is added the Rising to the Croune of RICHARD | the third." There are only two copies of this work known. It has been reprinted in Grosart's Miscellanies of the Fuller's Worthies' Library (vol. iii. pp. 76–145), and is by him attributed to Giles Fletcher, whether rightly or wrongly it is not for us here to inquire. There is no date on the title-page of the work; but the letter "to Ladie Mollineux," which precedes the poem, is dated 8th September, 1593. The poem on Richard III. by the same author (ut supra, pp. 146-159) is absolutely devoid of any poetic merit, and does not contain a single passage or phrase which would seem to have been suggested by Shakespeare's play. Richard, who is supposed to speak in his own person, complains that whereas Shore's wife, Fair Rosamond and Elstred (see Locrine) have all had their sorrows treated on the stage, he and his reverse of fortune have been neglected. The first four lines are: The Stage is set, for Stately matter fitte, Three partes are past, which Prince-like acted were, To play the fourth, requires a kingly witte, Els shall my muse, their muses not come nere.

1 Except in one passage, in which there is a mistake of the printer, these passages seem to be quoted from Q. 1 or Q. 2, though in two of the quotations there are important variations in the text from those both of Qq. and Ff.