Since I must lose the use of all deceit ? Why should I then be false, since it is true That I must die here and live hence by truth? I say again, if Lewis do win the day, Faul-He is forsworn if e'er those eyes of Behold another day break in the east ; But even this night, whose black contagious breath

34

THE LIFE AND DEATH OF RICHARD THE SECOND

RICHARD II was first published in an anonymous quarto in 1597. A second quarto, printed from the first, but with Shakespeare's name on the title-page, appeared in 1598. Neither of these editions contained the abdication scene (IV. i. 154–318), which is supposed to have been suppressed owing to Queen Elizabeth's sensitiveness on such subjects, but it appears in the Third Quarto (1608), and is found in all the later editions. The Fourth Quarto, printed from the third, as the third was from the second, is dated 1615, and was the main source of the text of the First Folio. But in addition to some corrections, alterations, and omissions for acting purposes, the First Folio has been thought to show that its editors had access to a manuscript of the abdication scene from which they amended the imperfect text of that part of the Fourth Quarto. Thus for the main part of the play the best authority is the First Quarto; for the abdication scene, the First Folio; and on these the present text is accordingly based.

Apart from the date of publication we have only internal evidence as to date of production. The subject may have been suggested by Marlowe's Edward II; but the style shows a marked departure from the Marlowesque rhetoric of Richard III, and takes it out of the period when Shakespeare was most under the influence of his great predecessor. Taking into consideration the frequency of rime on the one hand, and the absence of prose on the other, we may conclude that the drama was composed within a year of 1594.

The main source of the action is Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland, supplemented by Stowe's Annals, but the chief interest lies in those elements that are due to the dramatist's imagination. The parts played and the speeches uttered by the female characters are entirely Shakespeare's. Historically, the Queen was only eleven years old at the date of her husband's deposition; and the Duchess of York was only the stepmother of Aumerle. The scene at the deathbed of John of Gaunt is represented in the chronicle by the bare statement of the fact of his death; and there is no hint of the great speech on the glory of England. This speech, with others, such as the closing lines of King John, point to the inference that Shakespeare deliberately used the opportunity given in the historical plays to appeal to the patriotic enthusiasm of his contemporaries.

But the greatest achievement in the play is in the creation, or interpretation, of the character of Richard himself. The chronicle supplied the outline of his action, but little characterization beyond charges of self-indulgence and subjection to unworthy favorites. Richard's love of the spectacular and his enjoyment of his own emotions even of misery and despair, along with his tendency to substitute fluent and poetical utterance for action, are all the conception of the dramatist. The resignation of the crown actually took place in the presence of a few lords in Richard's chamber in the Tower, so that the amazing exhibition of sentimental vanity in the abdication scene is purely Shakespearean. The hints of the character of Bolingbroke are also mainly invented. Holinshed speaks of his popularity, but gives nothing of such causes of it as are indicated in the description of his courtship of the common people in 1. iv. Throughout, even when the details of the episode are borrowed from the chronicle, as in the conspiracy in which Aumerle is involved, the speeches are purely imaginary, hardly any hint of the diction being derived from the sources.

It is at least probable that this was the "play of the deposing of Richard II" which Essex and his associates procured to be performed in the streets of London on the eve of his attempted revolt in 1601. It is clear that it is not the Richard II seen by Forman at the Globe in 1611, since that play dealt chiefly with the earlier events of Richard's reign.

or

The spellings "Bullingbroke," "Herford," "Barkly," "Callice," and "Cotshall "Coltshold" (Cotswold) in the old copies, indicate the Elizabethan pronunciation of these names.