The Tragedy of Richard the Third:

with the Landing of Earle Richmond, and the Battell at Bofworth Field.

Actus Primus. Scœna Prima.

Enter Richard Duke of Glofter, folus.

Now is the Winter of our Discontent,

4. Actus Primus. Scœna Prima.] Act I. Scene i. Rowe.

The Court. Pope, +. London. A Street. Cap.

5. Glofter,] Glocefter, Q,Q3-8, Pope

5

ii, Theob. i. Glo'ster, Rowe. Gloucester, Pope i,+, Cam. +. Richard, Cap.

5. folus.] Om. Cap.

6. our] Om. Q3-8. sour Strutt ap. Seymour.

1. The Tragedy] THEOBALD: This tragedy, though it is called the Life and Death of this Prince, comprises, at most, but the last eight years of his time; for it opens with George, Duke of Clarence, being clapped up in the Tower; which happened in the beginning of the year 1477; and closes with the death of Richard at Bosworth, which battle was fought on the 22nd of August, 1485.-STEEVENS: It appears that several dramas on the present subject had been written before Shakespeare attempted it. The date of Q, is 1597, but before this, viz., August 15, 1586, was entered at the Stationers' A tragical Report of King Richard the Third, a Ballad. It may be necessary to remark that the words song, ballad, enterlude, and play were often synonymously used.-WARTON: Harington, Apologie for Poetrie, prefixed to his Ariosto, 1590, says: 'For Tragedies, to omit other famous Tragedies, that which was played at St. Iohn's in Cambridge, of Richard the third, would move (I think), Phalaris the tyrant, and terrifie all tyrannous minded men.' [Sig¶4, recto; ed. 1634.] He most probably means Shakespeare's; and if so, we may argue that there is some more ancient edition of this play than Q1; at least this shows how early Shakespeare's play appeared; or if some other Richard the Third is here alluded to by Harington, that a play on this subject preceded our author's.-FARMER: The play mentioned by Harington was a Latin one, written by Dr. Legge, and acted at St. John's College, some years before 1588, the date of the copy in the Museum. A childish imitation of Legge's play was written by one Lacy, 1583; which had not been worth mentioning were they not confounded by Capell.-TYRWHITT: The Latin play of King Richard III. (MSS Harl. n. 6926) has the author's name, Henry Lacey, and is dated 1586.-Steevens: Heywood, in his Actor's Vindication, mentions the play of King Richard III. acted at St. John's Cambridge, and in the Stationers' Registers, June 19, 1594, Thomas Creede made the following entry: 'An enterlude, intituled

[1. The Tragedy of Richard the Third.]

the tragedie of Richard the Third, wherein is showen the death of Edward the ffourthe, with the smotheringe of the twoo princes in the Tower with a lamentable end of Shores wife, and the coniunction of the two houses of Lancaster and Yorke.' This could not have been the work of Shakespeare, unless he afterwards dismissed the death of Jane Shore, as an unnecessary incident, when he revised the play. Perhaps, however, it might be some translation of Lacey's play, at the end of the first Act of which is: "The showe of the procession. 1. Tipstaffe. 2. Shore's wife in her petticote, having a taper burning in her hand,' etc.-MALONE: At the end of a rare poetical miscellany, without either printer's name or date, entitled: Licia, or Poems of Love, is subjoined a poem with this title: The rising to the Crowne of Richard the Thirde, written by himselfe; but whether it preceded or followed our author's historical drama, I have not been able to ascertain. I conceive, however, that this poem, which consists of three hundred verses in six-line stanzas, preceded Shakespeare's Richard III. He, however, took nothing from it. But the true origin of this play was doubtless that piece which was entered in the Stationers' Registers on June 19, 1594, which I suspect was then printed, and may perhaps be hereafter discovered. In this, as in several other instances, the bookseller, I believe, was induced to publish the old play in consequence of the success of the new one, and before it had yet got into print. This piece was probably written by either Marlowe or Greene, and doubtless had been exhibited some years before. ... The real length of time in this piece is fourteen years (not eight, as Theobald supposed); for I, ii, commences with the funeral of Henry VI., who is said to have been murdered on the 21st of May, 1471. The imprisonment of Clarence, which is shown in I, i, did not, in fact, take place till 1477-'78.-Wright (Introd., vii): It was no part of the business of the dramatist to follow the historian too closely, or to observe the unities of place and time. The play opens in 1471, and before the end of Act I. we are hurried forward six years to the death of Clarence, which is made to be nearly contemporary with the death of Edward six years later still. In this way, however, the interval of Edward's reign, uneventful for dramatic purposes, is bridged over, and the catastrophe of the struggle of the rival houses is reached.-S. T. COLERIDGE: This play should be contrasted with Richard II. Pride of intellect is the characteristic of Richard, carried to the extent of even boasting to his own mind of his villany, whilst others are present to feed his pride of superiority; as in his first speech, II, i. Shakespeare here, as in all his great parts, develops in a tone of sublime morality the dreadful consequences of placing the moral, in subordination to the mere intellectual, being. In Richard there is a predominance of irony, accompanied with apparently blunt manners to those immediately about him, but formalized into a more set hypocrisy towards the people as represented by their magistrates.-HARTLEY COLERIDGE (ii, 172): In quantity and proportion, Richard II. is a more regular tragedy than Richard III.; in quality, there never was a profounder tragedy than that which commences on this page-an absolute destiny involved in a human will—an instrument of fate self-chosen, self-condemned, excommunicated by nature, yet with an intellect concentrated by frost, works in the misshaped shape of Richard—a thing far more to be pitied than abhorred. It is not tragic, it is tragedy.—SCHLEGEL (p. 437): Shakespeare intended that terror rather than compassion should prevail throughout this tragedy: he has rather avoided than sought the pathetic scenes which he had at command. Of all the sacrifices to Richard's lust of power, Clarence

[1. The Tragedy of Richard the Third.]

alone is put to death on the stage: his dream excites a deep horror, and proves the omnipotence of the poet's fancy; his conversation with the murderers is powerfully agitating; but the earlier crimes of Clarence merited death, although not from his brother's hand. The most innocent and unspotted sacrifices are the two princes: we see but little of them, and their murder is merely related. Anne disappears without our learning anything further respecting her: in marrying the murderer of her husband she had shown a weakness almost incredible. The parts of Lord Rivers, and other friends of the Queen, are of too secondary a nature to excite a powerful sympathy; Hastings, from his triumph at the fall of his friend, forfeits all title to compassion; Buckingham is the satellite of the tyrant, who is afterwards consigned by him to the axe of the executioner. In the background the widowed Queen Margaret appears as the fury of the past, who invokes a curse on the future: every calamity which her enemies draw down on each other is a cordial to her revengeful heart. Other female voices join from time to time in the lamentations and imprecations. But Richard is the soul, or rather the demon, of the whole tragedy. He fulfils the promise which he formerly made of leading the murderous Machiavel to school. Notwithstanding the uniform aversion with which he inspires us, he still engages us in the greatest variety of ways by his profound skill in dissimulation, his wit, his prudence, his presence of mind, his quick activity, and his valour. He fights at last like a desperado, and dies the honourable death of a hero on the field of battle. Shakespeare could not change this historical issue, and yet it is by no means satisfactory to our moral feelings. 5. Enter Richard] WRIGHT: Henry's murder by Richard took place in the Tower on the night of Tuesday, 21st May, 1471 (Warkworth Chronicle, p. 21, Camden Soc.); his body was brought to St. Paul's on the eve of Ascension Day, and on the following morning he was conveyed to Chertsey to be buried there. The play, therefore, opens on Ascension Day, 23d May, 1471; unless we suppose the First and Second Scenes were on different days, in which case the play begins on May 22nd. The scene is probably near the Tower.-ORDISH (p. 60): When Richard III. was produced at the Lyceum Theatre, in 1887, the stage represented the end of a street, a corner-gable casting a shadow, a sun-dial in the foreground. Bells were ringing-characteristic of Plantagenet and early Tudor London-the sun was shining brightly in the street beyond the gable-end and in the foreground; presently a shadow was cast on the wall of the street, a moving shadow, and Richard, passing through the shadow of the gable, steps out into the sunlight as he comes towards the dial, and then the bells cease. figure of the Duke, not ignoble though deformed, and the flashing eye from a pale, intellectual face athwart a cluster of dark locks, emerging from this street of ancient London, formed a living picture of history never to be forgotten.

The

6. Now, etc.] RICHARDSON (p. 12): In this first scene we have the loathsome deformity of Richard displayed, with such indications of mind as altogether suppress our aversion. Indeed, Shakespeare, in the beginning of Richard's soliloquy, keeps that deformity, to which he would reconcile us, out of view; nor mentions it till he throws discredit upon its opposite: this he does indirectly. Richard treats the sports and pastimes of a peaceful court with irony: he scoffs at them; does not blame, but despises them. By thus throwing discredit on the usual attendants of grace and beauty, he lessens our esteem for those qualities, and proceeds with less reluctance to mention his own hideous appearance. Here, too, with great

[6. Now is the Winter of our Discontent, etc.] judgement on the part of the poet, the speech is ironical. To have justified or apologised for deformity with serious argument would have been no less ineffectual than a serious charge against beauty. The intention of Shakespeare is not to make us admire the deformity of Richard, but to make us endure it. His contempt of external appearance, and the easy manner in which he considers his own defects, impress us strongly with the apprehension of his superior understanding. His resolution, too, of not acquiescing tamely in the misfortune of his form, but of making it a motive for him to exert his other abilities, gives us an idea of his possessing great vigour and strength of mind. Not dispirited with his deformity, it moves him to high exertion. Add to this that our wonder and astonishment are excited at the declaration he makes of an atrocious character; of his total insensibility; and resolution to perpetrate the blackest crimes.-SKOTTOWE (i, 191): So well was the poet pleased with the principles on which the character of Gloucester [in the True Tragedy of Richard Duke of York] was constructed that his Richard exhibits a continuation of their development. He is fierce and bloody and his bold designs are unchecked by any moral curb. If his character were to be estimated only from this opening soliloquy, it might be contended that the foundation of his ambition was laid in repinings at a deformity repulsive to love and effeminate delights of peace; but it is evident from 3 Henry VI. that ambition in the general sense and common form of that passion was his characteristic, and that it was strengthened, not created, by the malicious desire of the power of revenging himself on men better graced by nature. He is morose and savage when disappointed or opposed, but in the flood of prosperity he unbends; his wit is brilliant, sometimes playful, though generally distinguished by bitter irony, sarcastic levity, and wanton insult.—HUNTER (ii, 79): This long soliloquy is a kind of prologue to the ensuing tragedy; and it seems as if Shakespeare had formed the intention of making Richard a theatrical character, without being very solicitous whether he caught the real features of the real Richard. It is manifest that when the poet introduces him as saying 'I am determined to prove a villain,' the audience must have been prepossessed, and the subsequent events must be made to correspond with the image the Poet had at the outset presented before them. A man who, owing to personal defects, has no pleasure in the gentle arts of peace, with a capacity for business and enterprise, able and eloquent, with no limits to his ambition, wading through slaughter to a throne, uneasy there, and dying at last in battle, is a fine character for a dramatic writer, preparing not a tragedy, but a history.-H. REED (p. 320): The peculiar significancy of the opening scenes of Shakespeare's plays has been often noticed, and it may now be observed that of them all, Richard III. is the only one that opens with a soliloquy, as if to indicate the moral solitariness of the character. He is represented as feeling himself marked by nature to stand apart from his fellow men; and as all social feeling is extinguished, the humanity of his nature dies with it, and all that is left is an almost supernatural selfishness, proud and self-assured-This word love which grey-beards call divine, Be resident in men like one another, And not in me. I am myself alone.'-3 Henry VI: V, vi, 81–83. -HUDSON (Sh. His Life, etc., p. 150): From the outset the utmost care is taken by Shakespeare that in our first impression of the full-grown Richard his thoughtswarming head may have the start of his bloody hand. Which order, by the way, is clean reversed in Cibber's patch-work preparation of the play; the murder of the sainted Henry being there foisted in at the opening, so that admiration of