INTRODUCTION

SIX quarto editions of The Life and Death of Richard III. were published before the appearance of the folio of 1623. The title of the first quarto is: THE TRAGEDY OF | King Richard the third. Containing, | His treacherous Plots against his brother Clarence: | the pittiefull murther of his innocent nephewes | his tyrannicall vsurpation: with the whole course | of his detested life, and most deserued death. | As it hath beene lately Acted by the | Right honourable the Lord Chamber- | laine his seruants. | AT LONDON | [Pri]nted by Valentine Sims, for Andrew Wise, | dwelling in Paules Chuch-yard [sic], at the Signe of the Angell. | 1597.

In the title of the second quarto (1 598), printed for Wise by Thomas Creede, the words " By William Shake-speare" occupy a new line after "seruants." The fourth, fifth, and sixth quartos also spell the author's name with a hyphen. The third quarto (1602), also printed by Creede, gives it as "Shakespeare," and adds, in a line above, the words "Newly augmented" followed by a comma, which appear in the titles of the remaining quartos. The fourth (1605) and the fifth (1612) were printed by Creede for "Mathew Lawe, dwelling in Paules Church-yard, at the Signe of the Foxe, neare S. Austin's Gate." The title of the fifth alters the title of the actors to "the Kings Maiesties seruants." As the licence by virtue of which the Lord Chamberlain's players became the King's bears date 19 May, 1603, this alteration probably should have appeared in the previous quarto. It occurs in the rest. The sixth quarto (1622) was printed for Law by Thomas Purfoot; the seventh (1629) and eighth (1634) by John Norton.

The title of the play in the first folio (1623) is: The

Tragedy of Richard the Third: | with the Landing of Earle Richmond, and the | Battell at Bosworth Field. The pages are headed: The Life and Death of Richard the Third. The play is divided into acts and scenes. The fourth scene of Act III. includes scenes iv.-vii. as at present arranged. In Act IV. there are four scenes instead of five, scenes ii. and iii. being treated as one. The second scene of Act v. embraces scenes ii.-v. of the modern editions.

While the quarto editions present many internal variations, they form one text of the play which was derived originally from QI, and in the remaining editions underwent steady degeneration. QI is the basis of the text of Q 2; Q 2 supplies a basis for Q 3, and transmits to it, as a general rule, its own characteristic errors and variations. The rest of the quartos, with one possible exception, follow the same plan of reprinting the most recent edition, so that, in each, the accumulation of printer's errors and alterations grows. The Cambridge editors hold that Q 5 was printed, not from Q 4, but from Q3. For the present edition a minute examination has been made of Qq 1-4 and Q 6; but for Q 5 the editor has relied upon the Cambridge collation. But his impression is that of Mr. P. A. Daniel, who thinks that the Cambridge collation "suggests that Q 5 was printed from a copy made up of Q 3 and Q 4." It is sufficient to refer to the first scene of the play, where, at lines 8, 14, 39, 48, 71, the debt of Q5 to the errors of Q 4 is perfectly manifest. Very probably, as the play advanced, the printer realised that he had been guilty of heinous mistakes in Q4, and, to avoid them, consulted the copy which in 1602 he had printed for another bookseller. He may have referred, as at I. i. 65, to Q 2, which he also had printed, to correct an error shared by Q 3 and Q 4. But the assumption that Q 5 was not, in the first place, printed from Q 4, involves a number of undesigned coincidences in error between the two editions, which are quite improbable.

A point of greater textual importance is the statement, in Q3 and its successors, that the play had been "newly augmented." The possible bearing of these words on its authorship will be discussed later. As a matter of fact, the text received no

augmentation in the later quartos. Q 3 is indeed responsible for numerous variations from its predecessors: many of these, where they happen to agree with readings in the folios, have taken their place in both the established versions of the text; and it has been a very general opinion that Q 3 was used as one of the authorities for the first folio. But, even if we allow the highest importance to these readings, they cannot be described as "augmentations." It seems unjust to conclude that the printer wished to attract fresh customers by false pretences. Nor have we any evidence that the author, having guaranteed some additions, failed to make good his promise, and that the title - page, printed in anticipation of the fulfilment of that promise, could not be cancelled. The most probable sense which the words can be made to bear is, that the Q text in all its forms is an augmentation of some earlier play, and that these words should have appeared on the title-pages of QI and Q 2, as well as of the later quartos.

The F text, which is common to all the folios, leaves the general form of the play unaltered; but the variations from the Q text which it contains are so many and important, that the question of its derivation and independent value becomes a most intricate problem. The discrepancies between F and Q (as it is convenient, for the sake of brevity, to call the two versions of which F 1 and Q I are the original forms) may be summed up under the following general heads :

(1) Lines or passages peculiar to F;

(2) Lines or passages peculiar to Q;

(3) Variations in lines, phrases, or single words, pointing to a possible revision of one version by the other;

(4) Variations in stage-directions.

The problem which these points raise is concerned with the priority of the texts. Is F a revised and lengthened form of Q; or is Q a revised and shortened form of F? Or, supposing them to be independent revisions of a common original, which should we prefer as the basis for a modern text of the play?

(1) There are in F about 196 lines of ordinary length, 15 short lines, and 17 half-lines or parts of lines, which are additions to the text as represented by Q. In some cases the omission

of these passages from Q can be accounted for quite simply, eg. at I. iv. 36, 37, where the first printer of Q evidently has united the beginning of one line to the end of the next, by a careless, but quite intelligible mistake, which the printer of F has not made. But there are many passages which, if they existed in the original text, cannot have been overlooked accidentally by the original editor or printer of Q. At I. ii. 155-66, II. ii. 89100, III. vii. 144-53, IV. i. 97-103, IV. iv. 222-35, the F additions are of some length and importance; while at IV. iv. 291-345 the new matter amounts to 55 lines. It is obvious that, at the first appearance of Q in 1597, these passages either did not exist, or were omitted deliberately by the editor. In the first case, they must be later additions, forming part of a revision the result of which was F; in the second case, they must have formed part of the original text, and, as such, establish a claim for F to represent the play as written by the author.

(2) On the other hand, Q contains twenty-three ordinary and nineteen short lines which are not to be found in F. Of these, fourteen ordinary and four short lines occur in a single passage, viz. IV. ii. 98-115. When this is deducted from the rest, the matter peculiar to Q is seen to be inconsiderable. Either the editor of F omitted these lines, in some cases wilfully, in others perhaps accidentally; or he had access to a text of the play which supplied the authority for their omission. That text, it is clear, either was revised by Q, or was itself a revision of Q. On the first supposition, these additions are easily explained: on the second, it is hard to see on what principle the reviser, while adding so much, cut out so little, and that little so unimportant; while it is impossible to account for his omission of the one important passage in IV. ii.

(3) The numerous minor differences between Q and F are recorded in the collation which accompanies this text. No attempt at their classification can be wholly satisfactory. In general, they are variations on words and phrases, and indicate that a very minute revision has been exercised, either on Q by the editor of F, or by the editor of Q on the text of which F is representative. Certain systematic differences may be noticed. For "which" in Q, we usually find “that” in F.