stage and into print in Queen Elizabeth's time." During her reign there were at least three plays written upon the closing events of Richard II.'s; and the greater part of the first three books of Daniel's Civil Wars between the two Houses of Lancaster and York, first published in 1595, is also devoted to the same

occurrences.

Shakespeare did not fail to take advantage of such a tendency of the public mind, and so produced his historical play Richard the Second, which is one of the three above mentioned. At least one of the others preceded his; but both were so unlike it in structure that neither of them could have been used by him as the basis of his own play; and therefore, although the facts known in relation to them may justly have some interest in the eyes of the literary antiquarian, they have no relation to the subject in hand.* Shakespeare went to Holinshed for the material upon which to work, as his habit was when engaged upon English subjects; and he made no additions to the incidents which he found recorded by the old chronicles, and no material change in the order of their occurrence.

The date of the composition of Richard the Second has not hitherto been determined. Malone first thought that it was written in 1597, but afterwards attributed it to the year 1593, without giving reasons for either notion; and Mr. Dyce, in his recent edition, says that the date in question is "quite uncertain." The publication of the quarto of 1597 fixes, of course, the hither limit of the period of Shakespeare's life in which he produced this play; but a contemporary of Shakespeare- Daniel - has left evidence which circumscribes that period within the revolution of a very few months. Daniel published in 1595 The First Foure Bookes of the ciuile warres betweene the two houses of Lancaster and Yorke, the first three books of which chiefly relate to the events of Richard II.'s reign. A certain resemblance was inevitable between a play and a poem which

One of them was so obsolete in 1601 that a partisan of Essex who procured its performance on the afternoon preceding the outbreak of the insurrection headed by that nobleman, was obliged to pay forty shillings in advance to the players, to secure them in the event of loss. This play représented the deposition of Richard. The other was based upon the earlier events of Richard's reign,— chiefly, Wat Tyler's rebellion. It was performed at the Globe Theatre as late as A. D. 1611. The reader who is curious in such matters may consult the Variorum Shakespeare of 1821, Vol. II. p. 325, and Mr. Collier's, Vol. IV. p. 107.

celebrated the same historical incidents; but they contain a few passages of a likeness nearer than that which was the necessary result of the identity of their subjects. This has been noticed before, but hitherto without such an examination of the original edition of Daniel's poem as to make the resemblance, which is obvious to every reader of both authors, of any value as contemporary testimony to the date when Shakespeare's play was written.*

The first edition of Daniel's Civil Wars was published, as we have already seen, in 1595; but in the same year a second edition came out; and this was not a mere reimpression of the former, as appears by a comparison of the two. The poem had been carefully revised for the second edition, though it was of the same date as the first: comparatively few stanzas were left untouched; many were rewritten; several were omitted; and some stanzas which appeared in this edition were then printed for the first time. Now it is only in those parts of the poem which had been rewritten for this second edition of 1595, or which were newly written for it, that there appears any resemblance to Shakespeare's play which might not be justly ascribed to chance in the case of two men writing in the language of the same period upon the same subject, and going for their facts to the same authority. The first instance in point refers to the mutual accusation of treason between Bolingbroke and Norfolk. Holinshed makes Bolingbroke the first accuser: in Froissart's version Norfolk takes the initiative; but neither chronicler says aught of the motive of the accusation. Shakespeare followed Holinshed; Daniel, Froissart; - which shows, by the way, that at first neither thought of imitating the other on this point. But while Daniel in his adherence to the chroniclers made no allusion to any personal ill feeling between the appellants,

* Mr. Knight, in 1839, pointed out certain passages in the play and the poem the likeness between which could hardly be fortuitous; but the conclusion that he drew was, that Shakespeare "took up Daniel's Civil Warres as he took up Hall's, or Holinshed's, or Froissart's Chronicles, and transfused into his play, perhaps unconsciously, a few of the circumstances and images that belong to Daniel in his character of poet." Mr. Hudson, in 1852, referring to the same passages, and to another, which will be particularly noticed hereafter, remarks: "The poem and the play in question have several passages so similar in thought and language as to argue that one of the authors must have drawn from the other; though this of itself will by no means conclude which way the obligation ran."

Shakespeare does suggest such a motive on the part of one of them. Daniel, after recounting Bolingbroke's conference with Norfolk upon the excesses of Richard, in the hope that the latter might counsel the King to a better life, says,

"The faithless Duke [Norfolk] that presentlie takes hold
Of such advantage to insinuate,

Hastes to the king, perverting what was told
And what came of good minde he makes it hate.
The king that might not now be so controld
Or censur'd in his course, much frets thereat;
Sends for the Duke, who doth such wordes deny
And craues the combat of his enemy."

Book I. St. 62.

Here is no malice mentioned, except that which Norfolk insinuates that Bolingbroke bore to the King. But Shakespeare in the first lines of Richard the Second makes the King ask of Gaunt, ·

"Tell me, moreover, hast thou sounded him
If he appeal the Duke on ancient malice?"

and again, in the scene of the interrupted combat, to say, -
"And for we think the eagle winged pride

Of sky aspiring and ambitious thoughts,
With rival-hating envy set on you," &c.

-

Upon which ensues in the second edition (1595) of Daniel's poem, the following remarkable change in the stanza just quoted:

"Hereof doth Norfolk presentlie take hold,
And to the King the whole discourse relate;
Who not conceiting it as it was told,
But judging it proceeded out of hate,
Disdaining deeply to be so controll'd,
That others should his rule prejudicate,
Charg'd Her'ford therewithal: who reaccus'd
Norfolk for words of treason he had us'd."

Here is not a mere polishing of verse, but a change in the subject of the verse: for Norfolk, (who, be it observed, is no longer "the faithless Duke,") we have the King; and for hatred of the King attributed by one appellant to the other, we have a suspicion by the King of hatred of one appellant by the other. Not only so however. In the first edition of the Civil

Wars this stanza is followed immediately by one that records the granting of the combat, the preparation for it, and its prevention by the King. But Shakespeare having exhibited the recrimination and mutual defiance of the two Dukes, (Act I. Sc. 1,) the following new stanza appears in the second edition of the Civil Wars, interposed between that in which the accusation is made and that which has the combat for its subject:

"Norfolk denies them [the "words of treason"] peremptorily; Her'ford recharged, and supplicates the King

To have the combat of his enemy,

That by his sword he might approve the thing.
Norfolk denies the same as earnestly:

And both with equal courage menacing

Revenge of wrong, that none knew which was free,

For times of faction times of slander be."

Thus the parallel passages, as unlike as it was possible for them to be in their first condition, were brought into conformity of spirit and incident by alteration and addition on the part of Daniel. Again in the last Scene of Richard the Second the following lines are spoken by Bolingbroke, in reply to Pierce of Exton's plea that his murder of Richard was in compliance with Bolingbroke's own wish:

66

They love not poison that do poison need,
Nor do I thee: though I did wish him dead
I hate the murtherer, love him murthered.
The guilt of conscience take thou for thy labour,
But neither my good word nor princely favour:
With Cain go wander through the shade of night,
And never show thy head by day or light."

Now, neither Holinshed nor Froissart furnish authority for any such disavowal; and in the first edition of the Civil Wars, no corresponding passage appears; but in the second we have the following lines, the first half stanza being substituted for four lines which merely upbraid the murderer, and the succeeding stanza being entirely new :

"What great advancement hast thou hereby won?

By being the instrument to perpetrate

So foul a deed? Where is thy grace at Court
For such a service acted in such a sort?

66

First, he for whom thou dost this villainy,
Though pleas'd therewith will not avouch thy fact,
But let the weight of thine own infamy

Fall on thee unsupported and unback'd.
Then all men else will loathe thy treachery,
And thou thyself abhor thy proper act.

So th' wolf, in hope the lion's grace to win,
Betraying other beasts, lost his own skin."

There are other variations of the same nature, though of much less consequence. These, however, appear all sufficient to warrant the conclusion that when Daniel first published the Civil Wars in 1595 Shakespeare's Richard the Second had not been produced; but that previous to the publication of the second edition of the former in the same year, the historical play had made its appearance, and left a deep impression upon the mind of Daniel. We may therefore safely place the composition of Richard the Second in the latter part of the year 1594 or the beginning of 1595. This period accords entirely with the indications of the play itself, the style of which and the cast of thought belong to a time when Shakespeare had not yet attained the fulness of his powers either as a dramatist or a poet, and yet was rapidly approaching that rich middle period of his productive life, which gave us the two parts of Henry the Fourth, As You Like It, Much Ado about Nothing, Hamlet, and Troilus and Cressida. On its own evidence Richard the Second preceded King John, and perhaps The Merchant of Venice.

After two quarto editions of this History had appeared in 1597 and 1598, a third was published in 1608 with "new additions of the Parliament Sceane and the deposing of King Richard." Why the arraignment and deposition of Richard II. were omitted in the performance and in the published text in 1598, when Elizabeth was still alive, and not in 1608, when James had reigned for five quiet years, the reader of the first part of these remarks need not be here informed. The question has naturally arisen whether this Parliament Scene, which was first printed in 1608, was a part of the play as originally written, or an addition made some time after the death of Elizabeth. The point has hitherto been left to be the subject of fluctuating opinion, though it might have been decided by an examination of the quarto versions. The quartos of 1597 and 1598 present