PERSONS REPRESENTED. King Richard the Second. Edmund of Langley, Duke of York; uncles to the King. John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster; Henry, surnamed Bolingbroke, Duke of Hereford, son to John of Gaunt; afterwards King Henry IV. Allamqula com to the Dube of Der Queen to King Richard. - Dutchess of York. Lady attending on the Queen. Lords, Heralds, Officers, Soldiers, two Gardeners, Keeper, Messenger, Groom, and other Attendants. SCENE, dispersedly in England, and Wales. OBSERVATIONS ON THE FABLE AND COMPOSITION OF THE LIFE AND DEATH OF KING RICHARD II. THIS history comprises little more than the two last years of this prince. The action of this drama begins with Bolingbroke's appealing the duke of Norfolk, on an accusation of high treason, which fell out in the year 1398; and it closes with the murder of King Richard at Pomfret-castle towards the end of the year 1400, or the beginning of the ensuing year. THEOBALD It is evident from a passage in Cambden's Annals, that there was an old play on the subject of Richard the Second; but I know not in what language. Sir Gillie Merick, who was concerned in the hare-brained business of the Earl of Essex, and was hanged for it, with the ingenious Cuffe, in 1601, is accused, amongst other things, "quod exoletam tragoediam de tragicà abdicatione regis Ricardi Secundi in publico theatro coram conjuratis datâ pecuniâ agi curasset." I have since met with a passage in my Lord Bacon, which proves this play to have been in English. It is in the arraignments of Cuffe and Merick, Vol. IV, p. 412. of Mallet's edition: "The afternoon before the rebellion, Merick, with a great company of others, that afterwards were all in the action, had procured to be played before them the play of deposing King Richard the Second; when it was told him by one of the players, that the play was old, and they should have loss in playing it, because few would VOL. IV. b ii come to it, there was forty shillings extraordinary given to play, and so thereupon played it was." It may be worth enquiry, whether some of the rhyming parts of the present play, which Mr. Pope thought of a different hand, might not be borrowed from the old one. Certainly however, the general tendency of it must have been very different; since, as Dr. Johnson observes, there are some expressions in this of Shakspeare, which strongly inculcate the doctrine of indefeasible right. FARMER. The Life and Death of King Richard II. by Shakspeare was entered at Stationers' Hall by Andrew Wise, Aug. 29, 1597. STEEVENS. This play is extracted from the Chronicle of Holinsked, in which many passages may be found which Shakspeare has, with very little alteration, transplanted into his scenes; particularly a speech of the Bishop of Carlisle, in defence of King Richard's unalienable right, and immunity from human jurisdiction. Jonson, who, in his Catiline and Sejanus, has inserted many speeches from the Roman historians, was perhaps induced to that practice by the example of Shakspeare, who had condescended sometimes to copy more ignoble writers. But Shakspeare had more of his own than Jonson; and, if he sometimes was willing to spare his labour, showed by what he performed at other times, that his extracts were made by choice or idleness rather than necessity. King Richard II. is one of those which Shakspeare has apparently revised; but as success in works of invention is not always proportionate to labour, it is not finished at last with the happy force of some other of his tragedies, nor can be said much to affect the passions, or enlarge the understanding. JOHNSON. The notion that Shakspeare revised this play, though it has long prevailed, appears to me extremely doubtful; or, to speak more plainly, I do not believe it. See further on this subject in An Attempt to ascertain the Order of his Plays, vol. ix. It was written, I imagine, in 1597. MALONE. MALONE. |