Of what you promised me. King. Wel, but whats a clocke? 125 Buck. Vpon the stroke of ten. King. Well let it strike. Buck. Whie let it strike? King. Because that like a Iacke thou keepst the stroke Betwixt thy begging and my meditation. 130 I am not in the giuing vein to day.' 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. A few years later, GEORGE CHALMERS published his Supplemental Apology for the Believers in the Shakespeare Papers, which was not so much an Apology for the Believers in the Ireland forgeries,' as a cloak to cover a violent attack on STEEVENS and MALONE. CHALMERS, also, made a chronological list of the plays, pointing out various errors in Malone's list, and, among other changes, assigned the date, 1595, to Richard III.; MALONE evidently felt some force in the argument of CHALMERS, and accordingly the date is changed to 1593 in the Variorum of 1821, which may be regarded as MALONE'S Second Edition, edited, after his death, by BOSWELL, the son of Johnson's biographer, and Malone's literary executor. In the Appendix, under Date of Composition, will be found, in the present volume, a list of the dates assigned by various editors and commentators, ranging from 1590 to 1597. The consensus of opinion is in favour of 1593 or 1594. It has been so frequently asserted that the Chronicles of Hall and of Holinshed are the sources whence SHAKESPEARE derives the plots of his Historical Plays, that a repetition of the assertion seems almost superfluous. Indeed, these Chronicles were the basis of all the historical plays founded on the periods which they covered. Resemblances between Richard III. and the older Latin play, Richardus Tertius, acted at Oxford, and also The True Tragedy of Richard the Third, 1594, are due, not so much to any familiarity of SHAKESPEARE with the works of his predecessors, as to the fact that they may be all referred to a common source. As an Appendix to Richard III., in the Variorum of 1821, BOSWELL reprinted a part of the older play: The True Tragedie of Richard the Third. Earlier than this, STEEVENS had called attention to the entry of this play, on the Stationers' Registers, but made no mention of having seen the play itself. At the close of his reprint, BOSWELL has the following note: 'I have not thought it necessary to point out the particular passages in which a resemblance may be traced between the foregoing drama and Richard III.; but, I think, the reader will be satisfied that SHAKESPEARE must have seen it when he sat down to the composition of his own play.' A. SKOTTOWE, in his Life of Shakespeare, a few years later, and BARRON FIELD, who edited the play for the Shakespeare Society in 1844, agree with BosWELL that there are points common to both plays, for which, their common source, the Chronicles, will not account. Field, in his Introduction, says: "The following line in the Battle-scene is, in my opinion, quite enough to show that SHAKESPEARE considered Nature, as Molière said of Wit, as his property, and that he had a right to seize it wherever he found it: "King. A horse, a horse, a fresh horse." COLLIER, on the other hand, could see no resemblances but such as were accidental and trivial. The point wherein COLLIER thought the two most nearly approached each other was the incident, just before the murder of the Princes, of Richard's taking a page into his confidence; but FIELD clearly shows that both dramatists were here evidently following either More's Life of Richard the Third, or Holinshed, who copied More. It is, I think, needless to discuss whence Holinshed derived his material. The sources of his Chronicles were, naturally, the works of his predecessors, and, for SHAKESPEARE, the question of their truth as infallible history was, doubtless, of small moment; that he regarded them but lightly is shown by the many liberties he took with them, compressing years into weeks and stretching weeks out to months, mingling characters and events which were never so placed. It must, however, be borne in mind that SHAKESPEARE wrote for the stage; and the machinery of his mimic fate must proceed in its own way and work out its own ends. An extract from an article by E. E. ROSE on Shakespeare and History is an admirable exposition of SHAKESPEARE'S attitude towards the Chronicles, and is given on p. 579 in the Appendix. It deserves the careful consideration of those who question the introduction, by the dramatist, of such scenes as the wooing of Anne by Richard, the curse of Margaret, and of Clarence's dream. The attitude of the Chroniclers themselves toward the temper of the time should be no less taken into account. At the close of the long and bitter contention of the two houses of York and Lancaster, the most dangerous of the Yorkists had been defeated and the Lancastrians held undisputed sway; what then more natural than that the character of the defeated tyrant should be blackened as much as possible, in order to flatter and extol the conqueror? The sympathy of all classes was deeply Lancastrian; hence the number of plays and poems on the subject of Richard's usurpation and of his miserable downfall. Seven versions of the story are extant, all of them antedating SHAKESPEARE'S play. Scarcely one has survived in popular remembrance. SHAKESPEARE alone has made Richard III. live; the character drawn by that mighty hand is the one which all of us remember and accept as true, in spite of all apologists. Whether or not it be Richard's true character need concern no reader of the play. Sir GEORGE BUCK made an heroic effort to clear the reputation of Richard from the many stains cast upon it by the Chroniclers, as did also HORACE WALPOLE and Miss CAROLINE HALSTED, and, in our own day, Sir CLEMENTS R. MARKHAM, but the remarks by quaint and venerable FULLER, on Buck's Life of Richard III., are so delightfully characteristic, and, at the same time, seem to apply so fitly to other apologists, that I cannot forbear quoting them in full:— 'Duke Richard was low in stature, crook-backed, with one shoulder 'higher than the other, having a prominent gobber-tooth, a warlike 'countenance which well enough became a soldier. Yet a modern ' author, in a book by him lately set forth, eveneth his shoulders, smooth'eth his back, planeth his teeth, maketh him in all points a comely and 'beautiful person. Nor stoppeth he here; but, proceeding from his 'naturals to his morals, maketh him as virtuous as handsome, which ' in some sense may be allowed to be true; concealing most, denying some, 'defending others, of his foulest facts, wherewith in all ages since he 'standeth charged on record. For mine own part, I confess it no heresy 'to maintain a paradox in history, nor am I such an enemy to wit as not 'to allow it leave harmlessly to disport itself, for its own content, and 'the delight of others. Thus Cardan hath written his Encomium 'Neronis; and others (best husbandmen who can improve the barrenest 'ground!) have by art endeavoured to praise as improbable subjects. 'But when men shall do it cordially, in sober sadness, to pervert people's 'judgments, and therein go against all received records, I say, singularity 'is the least fault can be laid to such men's charge. Besides, there are 'some birds, "sea-pies" by name, who cannot rise except it be by flying ' against the wind, as some hope to achieve their advancement by being 'contrary and paradoxical in judgment to all before them' (Church History, i, 528). I have thought it well to include the older play, The True Tragedie of Richard the Third, in the Appendix, as several references are made to it in the Commentary; it is reproduced from that edited by BARRON FIELD for the Shakespeare Society in 1844. Only those notes are retained wherein FIELD calls attention to a similarity to SHAKESPEARE'S play, or to an apparent corruption of the text. I have not thought it necessary to reprint CIBBER'S Version of Richard III., but have compiled a table, showing Cibber's additions, for which absolute completeness is not claimed; it is extremely difficult at times to decide just what shall be counted as wholly or partly CIBBER'S. Thus, in Act II, scene i, he gives these lines to Anne: 'If ever he have child, abortive be it, Whose hideous form, whose most unnatural aspect, And that be heir to his unhappiness.' The following is SHAKESPEARE'S: 'If ever he have child, abortive be it, |