PREFACE By ISRAEL GOLLANCZ, M.A. THE EDITIONS The Tragedy of King Richard the Third was first printed in 1597, with the following title page:-"The Tragedy of King Richard the Third. | Containing, His treacherous Plots against his brother Clarence: the pittiefull murther of his innocent nephewes: | his tyrannicall vsurpation: with the whole course of his detested life, and most deserved death. As it hath been lately Acted by the Right honourable the Lord Chamber- | laine his servants. AT LONDON | Printed by Valentine Sims, for Andrew Wise, dwelling in Paules Church-yard, at the | Sign of the Angell. 1597. " This Edition, known as Q. 1, was reprinted more or less correctly in subsequent Quartos issued in the years 1598 (Q. 2), 1602 (Q. 3), 1605 (Q. 4), 1612 (Q. 5), 1622 (Q. 6), 1629 (Q. 7), 1634 (Q. 8); each of these issues followed its immediate predecessor, except in the case of the 1612-edition, which was printed from the Quarto of 1602: in the second and subsequent Quartos the name of the author (By William Shakespeare) was added. The First and Second Folios give the title of the play as follows: : "The Tragedy of Richard the Third: with the Landing of Earle Richmond, and the Battell at Bosworth Field." THE TEXT The textual problems connected with Richard the Third are of a complicated nature, owing to the many differences between the Quarto version and that of the Folio. The main differences may be grouped under the following heads: (1) The Folio contains nearly 200 lines which are not found in the Quarto,1 while the Quarto contains at least one notable passage not found in the Folio (IV, ii. 103–120); (2) it gives alterations of the Quarto, which could not have been intended by Shakespeare; 2 (3) in a great many cases it removes (a) gross and obvious metrical defects,3 (b) imaginary metrical irregularities of the Quarto; (4) it introduces a number of alterations to avoid repeating the same word;5 (5) it often modifies "certain terms of phrase and use of words," which had evidently become obsolete, e.g. which is changed to that; betwixt to between; thou wert to thou wast; yea to I (aye); moe to more, or other; you to thou; (6) there are besides certain minute verbal changes in the Folio, the reason for which is not so clear as in the previous cases, but probably 1 Viz..-I. ii. 16, 25, 155–167; iii. 116, 167-169; iv. 36, 37, 69–72, 115, 116, 222, 266-269, 273, 275; II. i. 67; ii. 89-100, 123-140; III. i. 172174; iii. 7, 8, 15; iv. 104-107; v. 7, 103-105; vii. 5, 6, 37, 98, 99, 120, 127, 144-153, 202, 245; IV. i. 2-6, 37, 98-104; iv. 20, 21, 28, 32, 53, 103, 159, 172, 179, 221-234, 276, 277, 288-342, 400; V. iii. 27, 28, 43. 2 E. g. "Unmannered dog, standst thou when I command" (I. ii. 39). "Or let me die, to look on earth no more" (II. iv. 65). 3 E. g. "And when my uncle told me so he wept, And pitied me, and kindly kissed my cheek; Bade me rely on him as on my father" (II. ii. 23–25). Cp. the Quarto version: "And when he told me so, he wept And hugg'd me in his arm, and kindly kiss'd my cheek 4 E. g. "I do remember me, Henry the Sixth," instead of “As I remember, Henry the Sixth" (IV. ii. 98); ( i. e. Henery the Sixth). 5 E. g. "Methought that Gloucester stumbled; and in stumbling (Ff., falling) Struck me, that thought to stay him, overboard” (I. iv. 18). "By heaven my heart (Ff., soul) is purged from grudging hate And with my hand I seal my true heart's love" (II. i. 9). 1 in most instances they are due to euphony; 1 (7) the stagedirections in the Folio are fuller and more accurate than those in the Quarto. WHICH IS THE BEST AUTHORITY? Critics are divided on this point, some championing the cause of the Quartos, others of the Folios; the chief representatives of the former party are the Cambridge Editors; of the latter James Spedding, Delius, Daniel, etc. (i.) According to the Cambridge Editors some such scheme as the following will best account for the phenomena of the text: 1 Where A1 is the Author's original MS.; B1 a transcript by another hand with some accidental omissions and, of course, slips of the pen. From this transcript was printed the Quarto of 1597, while A, is the Author's original MS. revised by himself, with corrections and additions, interlinear, marginal, and on inserted leaves; B2 a copy of this revised MS., made by another hand, probably after the death of the Author, and perhaps a very short time before 1623. From B2 the Folio text was printed; the writer of B2 had perhaps occasionally recourse to the Quarto of 1602 to supplement passages which, by its being frayed or stained, had become illegible in A2 (v. page x., Camb. ed.). Assuming the truth of this hypothesis," the Cambridge Editors conclude, "the object of an Editor must be to give 1 E. g. "To bring (Ff., bear) this tidings to the bloody King," IV. iii. 22. 66 2 "The imperial metal circling now thy brow" (Ff., head); IV. iv. 382. in the text as near an approximation as possible to A2, rejecting from F1 all that is due to the unknown writer of B2 and supplying its place from Q1, which, errors of pen and press apart, certainly came from the hand of Shakespeare. In the construction of our text we have steadily borne this principle in mind, only deviating from it in a few instances where we have retained the expanded version of the Folio in preference to the briefer version of the Quarto, even when we incline to think that the earlier form is more terse, and therefore not likely to have been altered by its author. Cæteris paribus, we have adopted the reading of the Quarto." (ii.) James Spedding, in an exhaustive essay on the subject,1 contested this view, maintaining "that the text of the Folio (errors being corrected or allowed for) represents the result of Shakespeare's own latest version, and approaches nearest to the form in which he wished it to stand," that the First Quarto was printed without preparation for the press or superintendence by himself, and that he began to prepare a corrected and amended copy, but had not leisure to complete this new version.2 Delius anticipated Spedding in his inquiry and came to an even more determined conclusion as regards the superiority of the Folio; according to him a nameless corrector had tampered with the original MS. before it went to the printer in 1597, while the true text appears in the Folio version. Mr. Daniel (Facsimile Reprint of Q. 1) is also in favor of the Folio "as the basis of the text"; after a careful analysis of the early Quartos he comes to the conclusion that the Folio version was printed from a copy of Q. 6, altered "in accordance with the theatrical MS. which the transcriber had before him." 1 On the corrected edition of Richard III, pp. 1-75, New Shakspere Society's Transactions, 1875–6. 2 Ibid. v. p. 190, where Spedding summed up his views, after considering Mr. Pickersgill's objections (pp. 77–124). 3 v. German Shakespeare Society's Year Book, Vol. VII. 1 (iii.) Surveying all the evidence, the present writer thinks it possible to take a somewhat neutral position; the partisanship of the two schools seems too determined in its devotion to the one text or the other. Whatever may be the history of the First Quarto it certainly goes back to the author's MS., probably abridged for acting purposes; but on the whole it is a careless piece of printing; whatever may be the history of the First Folio version, one can certainly trace in it the touch of a hand other than Shakespeare's; 1 the editor did his work with insufficient caution, though comparatively few changes for the worse are intentionally his; he probably had a Third or Sixth Quarto collated with an unabridged MS., ordering an untrustworthy assistant to correct the printed copy, and to add the omitted passages; subsequently he probably read through the whole, amending here and there, and not troubling to consult the MS. too often. Hence the genuineness of most of the added passages, and the doubtful character of so many of the smaller changes. THE DATE OF COMPOSITION Authorities are agreed in assigning Richard III to 1594 er thereabouts, relying mainly on the internal evidence of style, especially the manifest influence of Marlowe; in considering this influence it must be borne in mind that the play belongs naturally to the group of history plays dealing with the House of York, and links itself intimately to 2 Henry VI, and 3 Henry VI. Noteworthy Marlowan characteristics are the following:-(a) Richard, like Tam 1 E. g. "My Lady Grey, his wife, Clarence 'tis she That tempts him to this harsh extremity” (I. i. 64). Spedding held there is nothing to choose between the two lines, but there seems all the difference in the world between the Folio and Quarto reading. |