Collins' School and College Classics. SHAKESPEARE'S TRAGEDY OF KING RICHARD II. With Explanatory, Grammatical, and philological Notes; BY THE REV. D. MORRIS, B.A., CLASSICAL MASTER IN LIVERPOOL COLLEGE, AUTHOR OF 'CLASS-BOOK INTRODUCTION. STATE OF THE TEXT, AND CHRONOLOGY OF RICHARD II. THE play of Richard II. was first published in small quarto in the year 1597, under the title of 'The Tragedie of King Richard the Second, as it hath been publikely acted by the Right Honourable the Lord Chamberlaine his Servants.' A second edition appeared in 1598, bearing the name of its author, 'William Shakespeare;' a third in 1608; and a fourth in 1615. In the third edition the play was enlarged, as its title-page tells us, 'with new additions of the Parliament sceane and the deposing of King Richard.' These 'new additions' occur in Act IV. Scene I., and amount to 165 lines, viz. lines 154– 318 inclusive from 'May it please you, lords,' to 'That rise thus nimbly,' etc. This part of the play, therefore, was never printed during the life of Queen Elizabeth; but there can be little doubt that it formed part of the original composition, for it entirely agrees in style and rhythm with the rest of the play, and forms the only fitting prelude to the Abbot's speech (line 321): ‘A woeful pageant have we here beheld.' These lines were omitted in the first two editions, most probably for fear of offending Elizabeth, who, on account of the numerous attempts against her own throne, was very sensitive upon the subject of the deposition of an English sovereign. She herself, on one occasion, in a conversation with Lambarde, the historian of Kent and keeper of the records in the Tower, when going over a pandect of the Rolls which he had prepared, and coming to the reign of Richard II., said, 'I am Richard II.; know ye not that?' Any allusion to that unhappy monarch was a cause of great jealousy. 5 |