All the unsigned footnotes in this volume are by the writer of the article to which they are appended. The interpretation of the initials signed to the others is: I. G.

=

Israel Gollancz, M.A.; H. N. H. Henry Norman Hudson, A.M.; C. H. H. C. H. Herford, Litt.D.

Queen. "'Tis well that thou hast cause;

But thou shouldst please me better, wouldst thou weep.

King Richard II.

Act 3, Scene 4.

PREFACE

By ISRAEL GOLLANCZ, M.A.

THE EARLY EDITIONS

Richard II was first published, in quarto, in 1597, in which year it was entered on the Register of the Stationers' Company. The title-page of the First Quarto was as follows:

:

"The Tragedie of King Richard the Second, As it hath been publikely acted by the Right Honourable the Lord Chamberlaine his Servants, London. Printed by Valentine Simmes for Andrew Wise, and are to be sold at his shop in Paules Church Yard at the Signe of the Angel. 1597."

A Second Quarto, with Shakespeare's name on the titlepage, was published in 1597.

In the year 1608 a third Quarto appeared, "with new additions of the Parliament Sceane, and the deposing of King Richard, as it hath been lately acted by the Kinges Majesties servantes, at the Globe." The Fourth Quarto, a mere reprint of this, appeared in 1615.

The text of the play in the 1623 Folio was evidently derived from the Fourth Quarto, "corrected with some care, and prepared for stage representation.

In the 'new additions of the Parliament Sceane,' it would appear that the defective text of the Quarto had been corrected from the author's MS. For this part, therefore, the First Folio is our highest authority; for all the rest of the play the First Quarto affords the best text" (Cambridge Editors).

A Fifth Quarto was published in 1634, based for the 1 Cp. Facsimile editions of this and other Quartos by Messrs. Griggs and Prætorius.

most part on the text of the Second Folio (1633); its readings "in a few cases are entirely independent of previous editions.”

THE NEW ADDITIONS

The subject of "the deposition of Richard II" was regarded with considerable suspicion towards the end of Queen Elizabeth's reign,1 and the suppression of lines 154– 318 in the first scene of the fourth act in the two editions of the play published during the Queen's lifetime must be taken in connection with certain well-known incidents :(i.) in 1599 Sir John Hayward was imprisoned for publishing his History of the Life and Raigne of Henry the Fourth, i.e. the story of the deposition of Richard II; (ii.) in 1601, on the afternoon before the rebellion of Essex, Merrick, one of his adherents, "with a great company of others that afterwards were all in the action, had procured to be played before them the Play of Deposing of King Richard the Second. Neither was it casual, but a play bespoken by Merrick"; 2 (iii.) it is recorded how the Queen on one occasion, probably soon after the revolt of Essex, when Lambarde, the Keeper of the Records in the Tower, was showing her his rolls, suddenly exclaimed, on coming to the reign of Richard II:-"I am Richard II; know ye not that," and she told Lambarde how "this tragedy was played forty times in open streets and houses." 3

PLAYS ON THE SUBJECT OF RICHARD II

(i.) Merrick's play was in all probability not Shakespeare's, though it is singular that the actor who provided the play was a member of the Globe Theater, Augustine Philipps; the piece in question is described as "an obsolete

1 In 1596 a Papal Bull was issued against the Queen, inciting her subjects to rebellion.

2 Bacon's “Declaration of the practices and treasons attempted and committed by Robert, late Earl of Essex, and his complices against her Majesty and her kingdom." Cp. also State Trials, p. 1445 (ed. 1809).

3 Nichol's Progresses of Queen Elizabeth.