PREFACE

It is certainly fortunate that very few of SHAKESPEARE'S plays are furnished with such a number of sources whence the text is to be drawn, or such a mosaic text, when finally obtained, as Richard the Third. It appeared in what, according to Heminge and Condell, were 'stolne and surreptitious' Quartos no less than six times before it was set forth 'cured and perfect of [its] limbes' in the Folio of 1623. And it is the differences between these multitudinous texts that present to an editor one of the gravest problems in the whole range of Shakespearian literature; a determination of the true text demands wary walking; to omit a reading in the Quarto seems sacrilege: to include every reading spells confusion. In the following pages the text of the First Folio is reprinted with all the accuracy at my command; in it is incorporated, and designated by asterisks, the additions of the Quartos, whereof the omissions and transpositions are duly recorded in the Textual Notes. Thus the present text, which, to a certain extent, is a text of shreds and patches, has at least the merit of omitting nothing which we have reason to believe was SHAKESPEARE'S own-we, like Garrick, cannot lose one drop of that immortal man.

No one familiar with that department of Shakespearian study which deals with textual problems can be at all surprised at the variety and number of theories and solutions proposed to account for the mystery of the eight Quarto versions of the present play. The field is spacious and excellently furnished with pitfalls and quagmires, wherein each critic views with pleasure his rivals caught or floundering, while he himself, in his own opinion, walks triumphant and secure; we are involuntarily reminded of Pope's well-known lines:

''Tis with our judgements as our watches; none

Go just alike, but each believes his own.'

The earliest mention of this play is to be found in the Stationer's Registers, under the date of 20th October, 1597, as follows:

Andrewe wise.-Entered for his copie vnder th andes of
master Barlowe, and master warden man
The tragedie of king Richard the Third with
the death of the Duke of Clarence. .vjd*

...

* Arber's Transcript, iii, 25.

SHAKESPEARE'S name is not here given, nor does his name appear on the title-page when, in the same year, the book was finally issued. There can be, I think, no evidence of the popularity of the play surer than the number of its editions which were issued at short intervals. Thus, the present play was reprinted, including the two Folios, ten times in thirty-seven years. Six of the eight Quartos appeared, as has just been said, before the Folio of 1623; the first five, during SHAKESPEARE'S lifetime. In the Appendix, under The Text, will be found a transcript of the title-pages of these Quartos, but to facilitate present reference the dates are here given: Q1, 1597; Q2, 1598; Q3, 1602; Q4, 1605; Q5, 1612; Q, 1622; Q7, 1629; Q8, 1634.

It follows, as of course, that any discussion of the Text increases, not only in volume and intricacy, but in theories, near or far-fetched, in direct proportion to the number of Quartos with their variations from the Folio or among themselves. Happy the editor who has before him for collation the simple text of the Folios, with no disturbing outside element!

The present play is distinguished by the extraordinary divergence of the text of the Quarto of 1597 from that of the Folio. Were this divergence confined solely to verbal changes, the editor would be guided in the task of forming a composite text either by his own personal preference or by the consensus of opinion of his predecessors; but the divergences here are so wide that no such guides avail him. There are many consecutive lines in the Folio whereof there are no traces in the Quarto, and again there are similar lines in the Quartos which are omitted in the Folio. These additions, both in the Folios and Quartos, seem, in some instances, necessary to complete the sense; and in others, mere amplifications of what has been already perhaps too concisely expressed. Take, for example, a passage in the scene between Richard and Buckingham in Act IV, scene ii, where the following lines (112131) are omitted in the Folio:

'A King perhaps.

Buck. My Lord.

King. How chance the Prophet could not at that time, Haue told me I being by, that I should kill him.

112

Buck. My lord, your promife for the Earledome.
King. Richmond, when laft I was at Exeter,

The Maior in curtefie fhowd me the Castle,

And called it Ruge-mount, at which name I started,
Becaufe a Bard of Ireland told me once

I fhould not liue long after I faw Richmond.

Buck. My Lord.

King. I, whats a clocke?

Buck. I am thus bold to put your grace in mind

115

120

123

King. Because that like a Iacke thou keepft the stroke Betwixt thy begging and my meditation.

I am not in the giuing vein to day.'

125

130

Hardly any voice will be raised, I think, in dissent from the opinion that these lines in the Quarto are an extremely valuable addition; moreover, there are certain of these lines, such as the following:

'like a Jack thou keep'st the stroke

Betwixt thy begging and my meditation.

I am not in the giving vein today.'

which are, perhaps, as familiar as any in SHAKESPEARE.

Such an omission in the Folio seems to suggest that, for dramatic purposes, scenes were here and there curtailed; but then, on the other hand, what cause can be assigned for the addition in the Folio of lines 305-359 in Act IV, scene iii? In the Quarto this scene is the longest in the play, and it is not easy to imagine the dramatic purpose to be gained by making Richard's long speech to the Queen even longer. This is not his concluding speech, and apparently it has upon her no more effect than those that precede it. And even if it be that these fifty-five lines are dramatically superfluous, who would willingly expunge them, when with them would be lost such lines as: 'Look what is done cannot be amended,' etc., or 'The liquid drops of tears that you have shed,' etc.? PICKERSGILL'S remarks on this and other omitted passages (Appendix, p. 446) are noteworthy.

These are but two instances out of many where, on the one hand, the Folio text is, both for stage purposes and as poetry, inferior to the Quarto, and, on the other, where the Quarto is as poetry inferior, but for stage purposes superior, to the Folio. On the whole, the majority of those who have grappled with the gnarled and almost unwedgeable question of the relation between Quarto and Folio regard the Quarto as the playhouse, or prompter's copy, and the Folio as the version of the play as originally written by SHAKESPEARE. This solution, however, although it will not account for all the differences between the two texts, does yet solve so many that we must, for the present at least, accept it. What solution, however, can we possibly suggest in cases such as the following: Act III, scene i (wherein the young king is received by Gloucester) consists of two hundred and twenty-five lines, and there are but forty variations between the Quarto and Folio, whereof the majority are mere verbal changes, while the two texts here

and there are identical for ten or fifteen lines at a time? Whereas Act I, scene iv (wherein Clarence converses first with the Keeper and then with the murderers) in the same number of lines, there are one hundred and twelve decided variations, not mere verbal changes, but whole lines, either altered or omitted entirely; and where the differences are for the most part apparently arbitrary and purposeless; but which a nice discrimination might possibly regard occasionally as improvements; and for stage purposes I cannot see that anything is gained by the Quarto arrangement.

It is, however, about the Third Quarto, 1602, that the conflict has been fiercest. COLLIER, in his First Edition, in 1842, was the earliest to call attention to certain agreements, between the texts of this Quarto and of the Folio, and to be found only in these two texts; he thereupon suggested that possibly this Third Quarto had been used as the copy from which the Folio had been printed. This suggestion has been adopted by several commentators, principally German.

Supposing that each text was printed from a manuscript, the question as to the text which was printed from the earlier manuscript at once assumes importance; COLLIER, however, rested content with having indicated the similarity and left to others the task of a deeper investigation.

DELIUS and SPEDDING are the staunch upholders of the Folio as the earliest and authentic text, while the CAMBRIDGE EDITORS are as zealous in championship of the First Quarto. It may be safely said, I think, that if DR WRIGHT's sagacious genealogy of the texts of the First Quarto, 1597, and the Folio be not the true solution of all their variations, it ought to be (Appendix, The Text). His conclusions may be thus summarised: the First Quarto was printed from a transcript, by another hand, of the author's original MS; the Folio was printed from a transcript of the author's MS after many revisions by the author. The stage-directions of the Folio are more in number and fuller than in the Quarto, which shows, as DR WRIGHT thinks, that this second transcript was made for the theatre's library.

Although the Third Quarto, 1602, has been claimed as that from which the Folio was printed, it does not hold its position unshared. The Sixth Quarto, 1622, according to P. A. DANIEL, has much in common with the Folio-in fact, more than any other Quarto, and, moreover, the closeness of its date to that of the Folio renders it likely that the editors would have used this Quarto for copy. The extreme rarity of this Quarto of 1622 caused Collier to doubt its actual existence.

MALONE is the earliest to assign a Date of Composition to the present play, and placed it in 1597, in the same year with the First Quarto. Thus it appears in his Chronological Order of all the plays, in 1790.

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