INTRODUCTION

THE first Quarto of Richard II. (1597) shares with that of Richard III. (1597) and the imperfect version of Romeo and Juliet (1597) the honour of being the earliest Quarto of Shakespeare's authentic plays. An entry of 1594 in the Stationers' Register points to the appearance in that year of a Quarto of Titus Andronicus; but this farrago of horrors is so doubtfully Shakespearian that even were the 1594 copy extant it would hardly be allowed to take pride of place over the two Richards, or even over the pirated Romeo and Juliet of three years later. The title page reads:

The Tragedie of King Ri- | chard the se- | cond. | As it hath beene publikely acted by the right Honourable the | Lorde Chamberlaine his Ser- | uants. | 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 appeared in the next year, and ten years later (1608) a third was issued. In this third Quarto were found for the first time the "new additions of the Parliament Sceane and the deposing of King Richard." The line that immediately follows the added portion-the Abbot of Westminster's plaintive remark, "A woeful pageant have we here beheld" (IV. i. 321)-had appeared already in the earlier quartos without much significance or coherence; it is only in the third Quarto that we are first enabled to understand its real point, and it becomes at once clear that the so-called additions form an integral part of the original play. The homogeneity of style throughout both the play in its truncated form and the "additions" would alone be sufficient evidence of the last statement.

Nor have we far to seek for the reason of the excision of the deposition scene from the first published editions. A Papal

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Bull of Excommunication and Deposition against E was secretly prepared at Rome in 1569 and published whereupon it became the duty of English Catholics to her overthrow-a duty which individual assassins carry out as a parergon to the continually renewed re of wider scope. A play centring round the only inst the deposition of an English monarch, especially wh deposition appeared to be politically justifiable, was the play to perform in Elizabeth's time; more espec the Queen herself was only too well aware of the anald might be drawn.1 Sir John Hayward was actually imp (1599-1601) for publishing the First Part of the Life an of Henrie the IIII., a work which of necessity dea Richard's deposition. Still further, when the friends revolting Essex wished to hearten themselves and attrac adherents, they persuaded the Globe people to perform of Deposing King Richard the Second. Whether this pl Shakespeare's or not is a question touched upon later.

The fourth Quarto, that of 1615, was evidently from the third, and a corrected copy seems to have bee for the version in the first Folio of 1623. The "Camb editors sum up the whole position as follows: "The p given in the first Folio [1623], was no doubt printed copy of the fourth Quarto, corrected with some car prepared for stage representation. Several passages hav left out with a view of shortening the performance. 'new additions of the Parliament Sceane' it would a that the defective text of the Quarto had been corrected the author's MS. For this part, therefore, the first F our highest authority; for all the rest of the play the first affords the best text " (Cambridge Shakespeare, vol. iv., P p. ix).

The fifth Quarto (1634) was printed from the second (1632); but curiously enough its readings sometimes with the earlier Quartos, and occasionally venture into plete independence.2

"I am Richard II.; know ye not that?" she is reported to have sai cerning Lambard's Pandecta Rotulorum, Aug. 4, 1601.

2 E.g. 1. i. 70, the king Qq 1, 5; a king Qq 2, 3, 4, Ff, where Q 5 agree QI. I. i. 56 else, all texts except Q5, which reads once.