Alarum. Enter King RICHARD. K. RICH. A horse! a horse !5 my kingdom for a horse! CATE. Withdraw, my lord, I'll help you to a horse. K. RICH. Slave, I have set my life upon a cast, And I will stand the hazard of the die: I think, there be six Richmonds in the field; A horse! a horse!] In The Battle of Alcazar, 1594, the Moor calls out in the same manner: "A horse, a horse, villain a horse! "That I may take the river straight, and fly! 66 Here is a horse, my lord, "As swiftly pac'd as Pegasus." This passage in Shakspeare appears to have been imitated by several of the old writers, if not stolen. So, Heywood, in the Second Part of his Iron Age, 1632: 66 a horse, a horse! "Ten kingdoms for a horse to enter Troy." STEEVens. Marston seems to have imitated this line in his Satires, 1599: "A man, a man, a kingdom for a man!" MALONE. This line is introduced into Marston's What you will, Act II. sc. i. 4to. 1607: "Ha! he mounts Chirall on the wings of fame. "A horse! a horse! my kingdome for a horse! "Five have I slain to-day, instead of him :] Shakspeare had employed this incident with historical propriety in The First Part of King Henry IV. STEEvens. Shakspeare had good ground for this poetical exaggeration ; Richard, according to Polydore Virgil, was determined, if possible, to engage with Richmond in single combat. [See p.521, 1.5.] For this purpose he rode furiously to that quarter of the field where the Earl was; attacked his standard-bearer, Sir William Brandon, and killed him; then assaulted Sir John Cheny, whom he overthrew having thus at length cleared his way to his an A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!" [Exeunt. Alarums. Enter King RICHARD and RICHMOND; and exeunt, fighting. Retreat, and flourish. Then enter RICHMOND, STANLEY, bearing the Crown, with divers other Lords, and Forces. RICHM. God, and your arms, be prais'd, victorious friends; The day is ours, the bloody dog is dead. STAN. Courageous Richmond, well hast thou acquit thee! Lo, here, this long-usurped royalty, From the dead temples of this bloody wretch tagonist, he engaged in single combat with him, and probably would have been victorious, but that at that instant Sir William Stanley with three thousand men joined Richmond's army, and the royal forces fled with great precipitation. Richard was soon afterwards overpowered by numbers, and fell, fighting bravely to the last moment. MALONE. "A horse! a horse!] Some inquiry hath been made for the first performers of the capital characters of Shakspeare. We learn, that Burbage, the alter Roscius of Camden, was the original Richard, from a passage in the poems of Bishop Corbet; who introduced his host at Bosworth describing the battle: "But when he would have said king Richard died, FARMER. of this bloody wretch-] It is not necessary to suppose that Richmond points to the dead body of Richard, when he speaks of him. According to an ancient idiom in our language, the demonstrative pronoun is often used instead of the prepositive article. So, in King Henry IV. P. I : 66 but for these vile guns "He would himself have been a soldier." STEEVENS. RICHM. Great God of heaven, say, amen, to all! But, tell me first,' is young George Stanley living? STAN. He is, my lord, and safe in Leicester town; Whither, if it please you, we may now withdraw us. RICHM. What men of name are slain on either side? STAN. John duke of Norfolk, Walter lord Ferrers, Sir Robert Brakenbury, and sir William Brandon. RICHM. Inter their bodies as becomes their births. Proclaim a pardon to the soldiers fled, And then, as we have ta'en the sacrament,1 9 But, tell me first, &c.] The word-first, was introduced by Sir Thomas Hanmer, to complete the verse. 1 STEEVENS. as we have ta'en the sacrament,] So, in Holinshed, p. 745: “The earle himselfe first tooke a corporall oth on his honor, promising that incontinent after he shuld be possessed of the crowne and dignitie of the realme of England, he would be conjoined in matrimonie with the ladie Elizabeth, daughter to king Edward the fourth." STEEVENS. * All this divided York and Lancaster, Divided, in their dire division.] I think the passage will be somewhat improved by a slight alteration: O, now, let Richmond and Elizabeth, peace! Now civil wounds are stopp'd, peace lives again; That she may long live here, God say-Amen! Exeunt.5 All that divided York and Lancaster, O now let Richmond and Elizabeth, The true succeeders of each royal house, By God's fair ordinance conjoin together! Let them unite all that York and Lancaster divided. JOHNSON. * Abate the edge-] To abate, is to lower, depress, subdue. So, in Coriolanus: 66 deliver you, as most "Abated captives,-." STEEVEns. reduce-] i. e. bring back; an obsolete sense of the word. So, in The goodly History of the moste noble and beautiful Ladye Lucres of Scene in Tuskan, and of her louer Eurialus &c. 1560: "The mornynge forsakyng the golden bed of Titan, reduced the desyred day-." STEEVENS. 5 This is one of the most celebrated of our author's performances; yet I know not whether it has not happened to him as to others, to be praised most, when praise is not most deserved. That this play has scenes noble in themselves, and very well contrived to strike in the exhibition, cannot be denied. But some parts are trifling, others shocking, and some improbable. JOHNSON. I agree entirely with Dr. Johnson in thinking that this play from its first exhibition to the present hour has been estimated greatly beyond its merit. From the many allusions to it in books of that age, and the great number of editions it passed through, I suspect it was more often represented and more admired than any of our author's tragedies. Its popularity perhaps in some measure arose from the detestation in which Richard's character was justly held, which must have operated more strongly on those whose grand-fathers might have lived near his time; and from its being patronized by the Queen on the throne, who probably was not a little pleased at seeing King Henry VII. placed in the only favourable light in which he could have been exhibited on the scene. MALONE. I most cordially join with Dr. Johnson and Mr. Malone in their opinions; and yet perhaps they have overlooked one cause of the success of this tragedy. The part of Richard is, perhaps, beyond all others variegated, and consequently favourable to a judicious performer. It comprehends, indeed, a trait of almost every species of character on the stage. The hero, the lover, the statesman, the buffoon, the hypocrite, the hardened and repenting sinner, &c. are to be found within its compass. No wonder, therefore, that the discriminating powers of a Burbage, a Garrick, and a Henderson, should at different periods have given it a popularity beyond other dramas of the same author. Yet the favour with which this tragedy is now received, must also in some measure be imputed to Mr. Cibber's reformation of it, which, generally considered, is judicious: for what modern audience would patiently listen to the narrative of Clarence's dream, his subsequent expostulation with the Murderers, the prattle of his children, the soliloquy of the Scrivener, the tedious dialogue of the Citizens, the ravings of Margaret, the gross terms thrown out by the Duchess of York on Richard, the repeated progress to execution, the superfluous train of spectres, and other undramatick incumbrances, which must have prevented the more valuable parts of the play from rising into their present effect and consequence ?-The expulsion of languor, therefore, must atone for such remaining want of probability as is inseparable from an historical drama into which the events of fourteen years are irregularly compressed. STEEVENS. The Life and Death of King Richard the Third.] The oldest known edition of this tragedy is printed for Andrew Wise, 1597: but Harrington, in his Apologie for Poetrie, written in 1590, and prefixed to the translation of Ariosto, says, that a tragedy of Richard the Third had been acted at Cambridge. His words are, "For tragedies, to omit other famous tragedies, that which was played at St. John's in Cambridge, of Richard the Third, |