to betray him, with 300 men; but having privy warning thereof, kept his gates fast, and would not suffer the enemy to enter, which went back again with a fly in his ear, and after was slain by the Earl of Arundel in the battle. Remember also, when the Duke (i. e. of Gloucester) and Arundel came to London with their army, King Richard came forth to them, and met them, and gave them fair words, and promised them pardon, and that all should be well, if they would discharge their army; upon whose promises and fair speeches they did it: and after, the king bid them all to a banquet, and so betrayed them, and cut off their heads, &c. because they had not his pardon under his hand and seal before, but his word. Remember therein, also, how the Duke of Lancaster privily contrived all villainy to set them altogether by the ears, and to make the nobility to envy the king, and mislike him and his government; by which means he made his own son king, which was Henry Bolingbroke. Remember, also, how the Duke of Lancaster asked a wise man whether himself should ever be king; and he told him no, but his son should be a king: and when he had told him, he hanged him up for his labour, because he should not bruit abroad, or speak thereof to others. This was a policy in the Commonwealth's opinion, but I say it was a villain's part, and a Judas's kiss to hang the man for telling him the truth. Beware by this example of noblemen and their fair words, and say little to them, lest they do the like to thee for thy good will."

This play may have contained the close of the reign of Richard and his deposition, and, as Mr. Collier suggests, was probably one of the plays which the adherents of Essex caused to be performed.

"It may seem strange," says Malone, "that this old play should have been represented after Shakespeare's drama on the same subject had been printed: the reason undoubtedly was, that in the old play the deposing of King Richard II. made a part of the exhibition: but in the first edition of Shakespeare's play, one hundred and fifty-four lines, describing a kind of trial of the king, and his actual deposition in parliament, were omitted: nor was it probably represented on the stage. Merrick, Cuffe, and the rest of Essex's train, naturally preferred the play in which his deposition was represented, their plot not aiming at the life of the queen. It is, I know, commonly thought that the parliament scene, as it is called, which was first printed in the quarto of 1608, was an addition made by Shakespeare to this play after its first representation: but it seems to me more probable that it was written with the rest, and suppressed in the printed copy of 1597, from the fear of offending Elizabeth; against whom the Pope had published a bull in the preceding year, exhorting her subjects to take up arms against her. In 1599 Hayward published his History of the first year of King Henry IV. which is in fact nothing more than a history of the deposing King Richard II. The

displeasure which that book excited at court sufficiently accounts for the omitted lines not being inserted in the copy of this play, which was published in 1602 [1598?]. Hayward was heavily censured in the Star Chamber, and committed to prison. In 1608, when James was quietly and firmly settled on the throne, and the fear of internal commotion, or foreign invasion, no longer subsisted, neither the author, the managers of the theatre, nor the bookseller, could entertain any apprehension of giving offence to the sovereign; the rejected scene was therefore restored without scruple, and from some playhouse copy probably found its way to the press *."

Malone places the date of its composition in 1593; Mr. Chalmers in 1596. The play was first entered on the Stationers' books by Andrew Wise, August 29, 1597; and Meres mentions it in 1598 in enumerating the poet's works. There were four quarto editions published during the life of Shakespeare, viz. in 1597, 1598, 1608, and 1615. Of these by far the most accurate is the first of 1597. The folio appears to have followed for the most part the quarto of 1615; but it has a few variations and additional words.

This play may be considered the first link in the chain of Shakespeare's historical dramas, which Schlegel thinks the poet designed to form one great whole, "as it were an historical heroic poem, of which the separate plays constitute the rhapsodies."

"In King Richard the Second the poet exhibits to us a noble kingly nature, at first obscured by levity and the errors of unbridled youth, and afterwards purified by misfortune, and rendered more highly splendid and illustrious. When he has lost the love and reverence of his subjects, and is on the point of losing also his throne, he then feels with painful inspiration the elevated vocation of the kingly dignity, and its prerogatives over personal merit and changeable institutions. When the earthly crown has fallen from off his head, he first appears as a king whose innate nobility no humiliation can annihilate. This is felt by a poor groom: he is shocked that his master's favourite horse should have carried the proud Bolingbroke at his coronation; he visits the captive king in his prison, and shames the desertion of the great. The political history of the deposition is represented with extraordinary knowledge of the world ;-the ebb of fortune on the one hand, and the swelling tide on the other, which carries every thing along with it, while Bolingbroke acts as a king, and his adherents behave towards him as if he really were so, he still continues to give out that he comes with an armed band, merely for the sake of demanding his birthright and the removal of abuses. The usurpation has been long completed before the word

* Malone's Chronology of Shakespeare's plays.

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is pronounced, and the thing publicly avowed. John of Gaunt is a model of chivalrous truth: he stands there like a pillar of the olden time which he had outlived."*

This drama abounds in passages of eminent poetical beauty; among which every reader will recollect the pathetic description of Richard's entrance into London with Bolingbroke, of which Dryden said that "he knew nothing comparable to it in any other language," John of Gaunt's praise of England,

"Dear for her reputation through the world," and Mowbray's complaint at being banished for life.

* Schlegel's Lectures on Dramatic Literature, vol. ii. p. 224.

365

PERSONS REPRESENTED.

KING RICHARD THE SECOND.

EDMUND of Langley, Duke of York,

JOHN of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster,

Uncles to the King.

HENRY, surnamed BOLINGBROKE, Duke of Hereford, Son
to John of Gaunt; afterwards King Henry IV.
Duke of Aumerle, Son to the Duke of York.
MOWBRAY, Duke of Norfolk.

Duke of Surrey.

Earl of Salisbury. Earl Berkley.

BUSHY,

Lord Ross.

Lord Willoughby. Lord Fitzwater.

Bishop of Carlisle. Abbot of Westminster.

Lord Marshal; and another Lord.

SIR PIERCE of Exton. SIR STEPHEN SCROOP.

Captain of a Band of Welshmen.

Queen to King Richard.

Duchess of Gloster.

Duchess 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.