SHAKESPEARE SELECT PLAYS THE TRAGEDY OF KING RICHARD II EDITED BY W. G. CLARK, M. A. Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and Public Orator AND W. A. WRIGHT, M. A. Lior grin of inity College Cambridge Koninklijk Oxford AT THE CLARENDON PRESS MDCCCLXXIII [All Rights reserved] 206 PREFACE. SHAKESPEARE'S Richard II was first published, in quarto, in the year 1597. A second edition appeared in the following year. In the year 1608 a third edition was published, as the title-page informs us, 'With new additions of the Parliament Sceane and the deposing of King Richard.' These 'new additions' amount to 165 lines, viz. lines 154-318 in the first scene of the fourth act, from 'May it please you, lords' to ‘a true King's fall.' Were these lines in reality newly added to the play, or did they form part of it as originally written, and omitted for whatever reason in the two first editions? We incline to the latter alternative, because they agree exactly in style, diction, and rhythm with the rest of the play, and because in line 321 the Abbot says, 'A woeful pageant have we here beheld,' nothing having occurred which could be called a pageant, if the deposition were omitted. This part of the scene was probably omitted in the representation for fear of giving offence at Court, because any reference to the deposition of an English sovereign (even when, as in this case, the sympathies of the audience are enlisted on behalf of the deposed monarch), would be treading on dangerous ground at a time when the Pope and other Catholic princes were constantly exhorting the subjects of Elizabeth to depose her. The fourth quarto, printed from the third, appeared in 1615. The play, as given in the first folio [1623], was no doubt printed from a copy of the fourth quarto, corrected with some care and prepared for stage representation. Several passages have been left out with a view of shortening the b |