Edition: True Tragedy of Richard IIIThe Rising to the Crown of Richard the Third. Written by Himself.
This modernized text of
The Rising to the Crown of Richard the Third. Written by Himself.was prepared from Licia, and Other Love-Poems, and Rising to the Crown of Richard the Third (Fletcher)
The stage is set, for stately matter fit,
Three parts are past, which prince-like acted were,
To play the fourth, requires a kingly wit,
Else shall my muse, their muses not come near.
Sorrow sit down, and help my muse to sing,
For weep he may not, that was called a king.
Shore’s wife, a subject, though a prince’s mate,
Had little cause her fortune to lament.
Her birth was mean, and yet she lived with state,
The king was dead before her honor went.
Shore’s wife might fall, and none can justly wonder,
To see her fall, that useth to lie under.
Rosamond1 was fair, and far more fair than she:
Her fall was great, and but a woman’s fall.
Trifles2 are these, compare them but with me,
My fortunes far, were higher than they all.
I left this land possessed with civil strife,
And lost a crown, mine honor, and my life.
Elstred3 I pity, for she was a queen,
But for myself, to sigh I sorrow want;
Her fall was great, but greater falls have been;
Some falls they have, that use the court to haunt.
A toy did happen, and this queen dismayed,
But yet I see not why she was afraid.
Fortune and I (for so the match began)
Two games we played and tennis for a crown:
I played right well, and so the first I won:
She scorned the loss, whereat she straight did frown.
We played again, and then I caught my fall,
England the court, and Richard was the ball.
Nor weep I now, as children that have lost,
But smile to see the poets of this age:
Like sely4 boats in shallow rivers tossed,
Losing their pains, and lacking still their wage.
To write of women, and of women’s falls,
Who are too light, for to be Fortune’s balls.
A king I was, and Richard was my name,
Born to a crown, when first my life began.
My thoughts ambitious, ventured for the same,
And from my nephews I the kingdom won.
Nor do I think that this my honor stained,
A crown I sought, and I a kingdom gained.
Time-tyrant fate, did fit me for a crown,
My father’s fall did teach me to aspire:
He meant by force his brother to put down,
That so himself might hap to rise the higher.
And what he lost by fortune, I have won,
A duke the father, yet a king the son.
My father Richard, duke of York was called;
Three sons he had, all matchless at that time,
I Richard youngest, to them both was thrilled,
Yet two of us unto the crown did climb.
Edward and I think realm as kings did hold,
But George of Clarence, could not, though he would.
Sad Muse set down in terms not heard before,
My sable fortunes, and my mournful tale:
Say what thou canst, and wish thou could say more,
My bliss was great, but greater was my bale.5
I rose with speed, and so did fall as fast,
Great was my glory, but it would not last.
My brother George did plot for to be king,
Sparks of ambition did possess us all:
His thoughts were wise, but did not profit bring,
I feared his rising, and did make him fall.
My reaching6 brain did doubt what might ensue,
I scorned his life, and so he found it anew.
My brother George, men say, was slain by me,
A brother’s part, to give his brother wine,
And for a crown I would his butcher be,
(For crowns with blood the brighter they will shine)
To gain a kingdom still it me behooved:7
That all my lets8 full soundly were removed.
Henry the Sixth deprived of his crown,
Fame doth report I put him to the death,
Thus Fortune smiled, though after she did frown.
A dagger’s stab, men say, did stop his breath.
I careless was both how, and who were slain,
So that thereby a kingdom I could gain.
Clusters of grapes full ripened with the heat,
Nor smaller timber builded up on height,
Fall not so fast as persons that are great:
Losing their honors, bruised with their weight.
But fewer means, the faster I did rise,
And to be king, I fortune did despise.
My thoughts ambitious spread, began to fly,
And I a crown did follow with full wing,
My hope was small, but yet I thought to try,
I had no right, yet longed to be a king.
Fear or respect amazed me not at all,
If I were crossed, the worst was but to fall.
The lion fierce despoiled9 of his prey,
Runs not with speed so fast as did my thought
My doubtful mind, forbade me long to stay;
For why a kingdom was the thing I sought.
Now was the time when this was to be done,
Or blame my thoughts, because they it begun.
My brother died, and left two sons behind,
Both underage, unfit to guide the land,
This right fell out according to my mind,
For not these two were ruled with my hand.
England’s great lord the subjects did me call,
And I was made protector over all.
But as the wolf defends the harmless sheep
Whose bloody mouth can hardly be content
Until he spoil what he was set to keep,
And sely beast be all to pieces rent.
So still a crown did hammer in my head,
Full of mistrust, till both these two were dead.
The elder son with speed to London came,
And walls forsook where he had lived before:
London, the place of greatest strength and fame,
The island’s treasure and the English store.
For him lord Rivers was appointed guide,
The king’s own uncle by the mother’s side.
Rivers was wise, but him I could not brook10,
I well foresaw what harm there might ensue,
This to prevent with speed I counsel took,
And as I thought, so did I find it true.
For if that Rivers should obtain his mind,
My heart’s desire, then hardly could I find.
Rivers and Grey of treason I accused,
And told the prince, what both they did intend.
My tale was false, and I the king abused:
Thus both their lives unjustly did I end.
The king was young, the greater was the grief,
And needs my words did urge him to belief.
Not long this past, but hasting11 to the queen,
A post was sent to show what did befall,
And who the actors of this fact had been:
That Lord Protector was the cause of all.
The queen, amazed, did wonder at this news,
And scarce did think it, yet she could not choose.
Possessed with fear, four daughters and her son
She then conveyed into a sacred place:
Supposing true, the harm but now begun,
And that I thought to murder all her race.
She York’s archbishop did entreat for aid,
Who in the Abbey not far distant laid.
The bishop came, and mourning found the queen
Who did lament the fortune of her son:
The realm’s distress, the like before not seen,
Her own misfortune, and the state undone.
Thus sighed the queen, and wished her state were less,
And prayed that heavens would give the king success.
My lord (she said), my thoughts presage some ill,
And mournful sorrow siezeth on my heart:
This sudden news with grief my soul doth fill,
And I for fear do quake in every part.
In this distress we cannot hope to live,
Except this sacred place some safety give.
He then replied: dread sovereign, do not faint,
A causeless fear, in wisdom do withstand:
Yield not too soon, with grief to make complaint,
When no such cause approaching is at hand.
For feeble minds through weakness coin new fears,
When stronger hearts true grief more wisely bears.
And if they crown some other, not your son,
A thing unlike (yet fear what may befall)
Then shall the same unto this child be done,
Whom brother’s right by due a king shall call:
But tyrant’s force will hardly be so bold,
During the time the other is in hold.
Then more advised, he told her what he thought
She and her son some causes had to fear:
And England’s seal12 he therefore with him brought,
Which by his place he ’customed was to bear.
Thus he resolved to leave the seal behind,
Till wiser thoughts straight altered had his mind.
The bishop home returned in all haste,
And sadly sat, suspecting what might fall.
But then my coming made them all aghast,
And for the bishop I did straightway call.
I knew his deed, and blamed him to his face,
And for the seal, another had his place.
Thus tyrant hate possessed me for a crown,
My mind the anvil of a thousand harms.
I raised my friends, my foes I cast them down.
This made the subjects flock to me in swarms.
My will was strong, I made it for a law,
For basest minds are ruled best by awe.
I called the council, and did straight persuade
From mother’s side to fetch the other son.
My drift was further than they well could wade;
I gave them reasons why it must be done.
The king a playmate wanted for his years,
And could not well be fitted with his peers.
The cardinal went on message to the queen
And used persuasions for her other child,
He plainly said, her fear had causeless been,
Nor need she doubt by me to be beguiled,
I was Protector, chosen by consent,
With council grade all treason to prevent.
And I protest (quote cardinal) on my life,
(For so indeed the cardinal did suppose)
Your son with safety shall cut off this strife,
And you, nor place, nor land, nor son shall lose.
Dread sovereign grant, and let your son be free,
If he have harm, then set the fault on me.
The queen was moved and quaking did reply,
A mother’s love doth breed a mother’s fear,
And loath I am those mischiefs for to try,
With doubtful hazard of a thing so dear,
I doubt (my lord) the nearest of his blood,
In true intent scarce wisheth any good.
The laws do make my son his mother’s ward,
Religion bids I should not slack my care,
And nature binds mine own for to regard,
These and his health (my lord) good reasons are,
To make my fear no smaller than it is,
Whilst fear persuades what harm may come of this.
Yet take my son, and with my son take all.
Come kiss me (son), thy mother’s last farewell
Thy years (sweet boy) suspect not what may fall:
Not can my tongue for tears thy fortune tell.
But hardly crowns their kindred will discern,
As you (sweet child) I fear yet long shall learn.
God bless thee, son, and I my son thee bless,
Thy mother’s comfort, and thy brother’s life.
Nay weep not, son, God send thee good success,
And safe defend thee from that tyrant’s knife.
Cardinal, farewell, be careful of my son,
For once I vowed, this never to have done.
I and the council in Star Chamber were,
To whom the cardinal did in haste resort,
Who brought the child which ended all my fear,
The mother’s care he briefly did report.
I kissed the child, and took it in my arm,
Thus none did think I meant it any harm.
Then as the wolf half famished for his prey,
Or hungry lion that a lamb hath got,
My thirsty mind, I meant his blood should stay
And yet the wisest not perceive my plot.
To the Tower in haste I sent him to his brother,
And there with speed, I both at once did smother.
Now two there was but living in my way:
Buckingham and Hastings both, to cross my mind,
The one was headed straight without delay,
The other, favors did unto me bind.
To match our children, I did him persuade,
And earl of Hereford he did himself be made.
Now as the sea before a storm doth swell,
Or fumes arise before we see the flame;
So whispering bruit13 began my drifts to tell,
And all imparted unto babbling fame.
I deemed it danger, speech for to despise,
For after this I knew a storm would rise.
London’s Lord Mayor, I used for my turn,
And caused him speak what treason had been done,
I by these means the people’s hearts did turn,
And made them eye me as the rising sun.
Thus whilst I meant the island to bring under,
The people’s heads on news I set to wonder.
Then at the cross I caused a doctor14 preach,
To tell the subjects what I wished them know;
The man was cunning, and had skill to teach,
Out of my brain I made his sermon flow.
Thus everywhere I did such notice give,
As all did cry, Heavens let king Richard live!
So did I live, and called was a king,
Friends swarmed so fast, as bees until the hive,
Thus basest means the highest fortunes bring.
The crown obtained did cause my thoughts revive:
I scorned my friends, and those did most despise
That were the means, by which I did arise.
Blood and revenge did hammer in my head,
Unquiet thoughts did gallop in my brain:
I had no rest till all my friends were dead,
Whose help I used the kingdom to obtain.
My dearest friend I thought not safe to trust,
Nor scarce myself, but that perforce I must.
Nor speak I now, as if I did repent,
Unless for this a crown I bought so cheap.
For meaner things men wits and lives have spent,
Which blood have sown, and crowns could never reap.
Live Richard long, the honor of thy name,
And scorn all such as do thy fortune blame.
Thus have I told how I a crown did win,
Which now torments me that I cannot sleep.
Where I do end, my sorrow did begin,
Because I got which long I could not keep.
My verse is harsh, yet (reader) do not frown,
I wore no garland but a golden crown.
Notes
1.Rosamund Clifford (c.1150-c.1176), mistress to Henry II, who was famed for her beauty.
Contemporary readers would have been familiar with Samuel Daniel’s poem
The Complaint of Rosamond,which described her beauty.↑
6.Ambitious.↑
12.The Great Seal of the Realm, indicating the authority of the monarch. Thomas Rotherham,
Archbishop of York, carried the seal in his separate role as Lord Chancellor and Lord
Keeper of the Seal.↑
14.Doctor of Theology, Ralph Shaw, who preached a poorly-received sermon espousing Richard’s
claim to the throne.↑
Prosopography
Anonymous
Giles Fletcher
Helen Ostovich
Helen Ostovich, professor emerita of English at McMaster University, is the founder
and general editor of Queen’s Men Editions. She is a general editor of The Revels Plays (Manchester University Press); Series
Editor of Studies in Performance and Early Modern Drama (Ashgate, now Routledge),
and series co-editor of Late Tudor and Stuart Drama (MIP); play-editor of several
works by Ben Jonson, in Four Comedies: Ben Jonson (1997); Every Man Out of his Humour (Revels 2001); and The Magnetic Lady (Cambridge 2012). She has also edited the Norton Shakespeare 3 The Merry Wives of Windsor Q1602 and F1623 (2015); The Late Lancashire Witches and A Jovial Crew for Richard Brome Online, revised for a 4-volume set from OUP 2021; The Ball, for the Oxford Complete Works of James Shirley (2021); The Merry Wives of Windsor for Internet Shakespeare Editions, and The Dutch Courtesan (with Erin Julian) for the Complete Works of John Marston, OUP 2022. She has published
many articles and book chapters on Jonson, Shakespeare, and others, and several book
collections, most recently Magical Transformations of the Early Modern English Stage with Lisa Hopkins (2014), and the equivalent to book website, Performance as Research in Early English Theatre Studies: The Three Ladies of London in Context containing scripts, glossary, almost fifty conference papers edited and updated to
essays; video; link to Queen’s Mens Ediitons and YouTube: http://threeladiesoflondon.mcmaster.ca/contexts/index.htm, 2015. Recently, she was guest editor of Strangers and Aliens in London ca 1605,
Special Issue on Marston, Early Theatre 23.1 (June 2020). She can be contacted at ostovich@mcmaster.ca.
Janelle Jenstad
Janelle Jenstad is a Professor of English at the University of Victoria, Director
of The Map of Early Modern London, and Director of Linked Early Modern Drama Online. With Jennifer Roberts-Smith and Mark Beatrice Kaethler, she co-edited Shakespeare’s Language in Digital Media: Old Words, New Tools (Routledge). She has edited John Stow’s A Survey of London (1598 text) for MoEML and is currently editing The Merchant of Venice (with Stephen Wittek) and Heywood’s 2 If You Know Not Me You Know Nobody for DRE. Her articles have appeared in Digital Humanities Quarterly, Elizabethan Theatre, Early Modern Literary Studies, Shakespeare Bulletin, Renaissance and Reformation, and The Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies. She contributed chapters to Approaches to Teaching Othello (MLA); Teaching Early Modern Literature from the Archives (MLA); Institutional Culture in Early Modern England (Brill); Shakespeare, Language, and the Stage (Arden); Performing Maternity in Early Modern England (Ashgate); New Directions in the Geohumanities (Routledge); Early Modern Studies and the Digital Turn (Iter); Placing Names: Enriching and Integrating Gazetteers (Indiana); Making Things and Drawing Boundaries (Minnesota); Rethinking Shakespeare Source Study: Audiences, Authors, and Digital Technologies (Routledge); and Civic Performance: Pageantry and Entertainments in Early Modern London (Routledge). For more details, see janellejenstad.com.
Jennifer Parr
Jennifer Parr holds a Masters degree in European and Renaissance Drama from the University
of Warwick. She is an independent scholar and professional director and dramaturge
based in Toronto. As an undergraduate at the University of Toronto she became involved
as an actor with the P.L.S. Medieval and Renaissance Players’ productions of the Medieval
Mystery Cycles returning later to direct an all female company in the York Cycle Fall
of the Angels for the international full cycle production in 1998. Her recent productions
as director and dramaturge include an all female Julius Caesar and an experimental all female adaptation of Richard III: RIchard 3, Queens 4. Her ongoing research into the historical Richard III and the various theatrical
interpretations led to her joining the company of TTR3 as an observer and historical
resource for the cast. She also writes a monthly column on music theatre and dance
for The WholeNote magazine.
Jennifer Roberts-Smith
Jennifer Roberts-Smith is an associate professor of theatre and performance at the
University of Waterloo. Her interdisciplinary work in early modern performance editing
combines textual scholarship, performance as research, archival theatre history, and
design in the development of live and virtual renderings of early modern performance
texts, venues, and practices. With Janelle Jenstad and Mark Beatrice Kaethler, she
is co-editor of Shakespeare’s Language in Digital Media: Old Words New Tools (2018). Her most recent work has focused on methods for design research that deepen
interdisciplinary understanding and take a relational approach. She is currently managing
director of the qCollaborative (the critical feminist design research lab housed in the University of Waterloo’s Games Institute, and leads the SSHRC-funded Theatre for Relationality and Design for Peace projects.
She is also creative director and virtual reality development cluster lead for the
Digital Oral Histories for Reconciliation (DOHR) project. She can be contacted at
jennifer.roberts-smith@uwaterloo.ca.
Joey Takeda
Joey Takeda is LEMDO’s Consulting Programmer and Designer, a role he assumed in 2020
after three years as the Lead Developer on LEMDO.
Kate LeBere
Project Manager, 2020–2021. Assistant Project Manager, 2019–2020. Textual Remediator
and Encoder, 2019–2021. Kate LeBere completed her BA (Hons.) in History and English
at the University of Victoria in 2020. During her degree she published papers in The Corvette (2018), The Albatross (2019), and PLVS VLTRA (2020) and presented at the English Undergraduate Conference (2019), Qualicum History
Conference (2020), and the Digital Humanities Summer Institute’s Project Management
in the Humanities Conference (2021). While her primary research focus was sixteenth
and seventeenth century England, she completed her honours thesis on Soviet ballet
during the Russian Cultural Revolution. She is currently a student at the University
of British Columbia’s iSchool, working on her masters in library and information science.
Mahayla Galliford
Project manager, 2025-present; research assistant, 2021-present. Mahayla Galliford
(she/her) graduated with a BA (Hons with distinction) from the University of Victoria
in 2024. Mahayla’s undergraduate research explored early modern stage directions and
civic water pageantry. Mahayla continues her studies through UVic’s English MA program
and her SSHRC-funded thesis project focuses on editing and encoding girls’ manuscripts,
specifically Lady Rachel Fane’s dramatic entertainments, in collaboration with LEMDO.
Martin Holmes
Martin Holmes has worked as a developer in the UVic’s Humanities Computing and Media
Centre for over two decades, and has been involved with dozens of Digital Humanities
projects. He has served on the TEI Technical Council and as Managing Editor of the
Journal of the TEI. He took over from Joey Takeda as lead developer on LEMDO in 2020.
He is a collaborator on the SSHRC Partnership Grant led by Janelle Jenstad.
Nicole Vatcher
Technical Documentation Writer, 2020–2022. Nicole Vatcher completed her BA (Hons.)
in English at the University of Victoria in 2021. Her primary research focus was women’s
writing in the modernist period.
Peter Cockett
Peter Cockett is an associate professor in the Theatre and Film Studies at McMaster
University. He is the general editor (performance), and technical co-ordinating editor
of Queen’s Men Editions. He was the stage director for the Shakespeare and the Queen’s Men project (SQM),
directing King Leir, The Famous Victories of Henry V, and Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay (2006) and he is the performance editor for our editions of those plays. The process
behind those productions is documented in depth on his website Performing the Queen’s Men. Also featured on this site are his PAR productions of Clyomon and Clamydes (2009) and Three Ladies of London (2014). For the PLS, the University of Toronto’s Medieval and Renaissance Players,
he has directed the Digby Mary Magdalene (2003) and the double bill of George Peele’s The Old Wives Tale and the Chester Antichrist (2004). He also directed An Experiment in Elizabethan Comedy (2005) for the SQM project and Inside Out: The Persistence of Allegory (2008) in collaboration with Alan Dessen. Peter is a professional actor and director
with numerous stage and screen credits. He can be contacted at cockett@mcmaster.ca.
Sam Seaberg
Samuel Seaberg, a University of Victoria English undergrad, enjoys riding his bike.
During the summer of 2025, he began working with LEMDO as a recipient of the Valerie
Kuehne Undergraduate Research Award (VKURA). Unfortunately, due to his summer being
spent primarily in working to establish an edition of Thomas Heywood’s If You Know Not Me, You Know Nobody, Part 2 and consequently working out how to represent multi-text works in a digital space,
his bike has suffered severely of sheltered seclusion from the sun.
Toby Malone
Toby Malone is an Australian/Canadian academic, dramaturg, and librarian. He is a
graduate of the University of Toronto (PhD, 2009) and the University of Western Australia
(BA Hons, 2001), and the University of Western Ontario (MLIS, 2023). He has worked
as a theatre artist across the world, with companies including the Stratford Festival,
Canadian Stage, Soulpepper, Driftwood Theatre Group, the Shaw Festival, Poorboy Theatre
Scotland, Pittsburgh Public Theatre, Arizona Theatre Company, CBC, BT/A, and Kill
Shakespeare Entertainment. He has published in Shakespeare Survey, Literature/Film Quarterly, Canadian Theatre Review, Borrowers and Lenders, Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature, appears in published collections with Routledge, Cambridge, and Oxford. Publications
include two monographs: dapting War Horse (Palgrave McMillan) and Cutting Plays for Performance: A Practical and Accessible Guide (Routledge), and is currently co-writing an updated version of Shakespeare in Performance: Romeo and Juliet with Jill L. Levenson for Manchester UP. Toby has previously taught at the University
of Waterloo and the State University of New York at Oswego, is currently Research
Impact Librarian at Toronto Metropolitan University.
Tracey El Hajj
Junior Programmer 2019–2020. Research Associate 2020–2021. Tracey received her PhD
from the Department of English at the University of Victoria in the field of Science
and Technology Studies. Her research focuses on the algorhythmics of networked communications. She was a 2019–2020 President’s Fellow in Research-Enriched
Teaching at UVic, where she taught an advanced course on
Artificial Intelligence and Everyday Life.Tracey was also a member of the Map of Early Modern London team, between 2018 and 2021. Between 2020 and 2021, she was a fellow in residence at the Praxis Studio for Comparative Media Studies, where she investigated the relationships between artificial intelligence, creativity, health, and justice. As of July 2021, Tracey has moved into the alt-ac world for a term position, while also teaching in the English Department at the University of Victoria.
Bibliography
Fletcher, Giles.
The Rising to the Crown of Richard the Third. Written by Himself.Licia, and Other Love-Poems, and Rising to the Crown of Richard the Third. Cambridge: 1593. L2r–M3v. STC: 11055.
OED: The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989.
Orgography
LEMDO Team (LEMD1)
The LEMDO Team is based at the University of Victoria and normally comprises the project
director, the lead developer, project manager, junior developers(s), remediators,
encoders, and remediating editors.
Queen’s Men Editions (QME1)
The Queen’s Men Editions anthology is led by Helen Ostovich, General Editor; Peter
Cockett, General Editor (Performance); and Andrew Griffin, General Editor (Text).
University of Victoria (UVIC1)
https://www.uvic.ca/Metadata
| Authority title | The Rising to the Crown of Richard the Third. Written by Himself. |
| Type of text | Primary Source |
| Publisher | University of Victoria on the Linked Early Modern Drama Online Platform |
| Series | |
| Source |
This file has been converted from IML, the SGML markup language of the Internet Shakespeare
Editions platform. IML files do not indicate the copy or copytext transcribed. LEMDO
acknowledges that we are not the main source of transcription, and that we do not
know the witness transcribed in this transcription. As time permits, we will compare
this transcription to an open-access digital surrogate and align the transcription
that surrogate. If you have worked on ISE and/or may have an idea as to the source
of this file, please contact lemdo@uvic.ca.
|
| Editorial declaration | Prepared by Toby Malone for the Queen’s Men Editions. |
| Edition | Released with LEMDO Classroom 0.3.5 |
| Sponsor(s) |
Queen’s Men EditionsThe Queen’s Men Editions anthology is led by Helen Ostovich, General Editor; Peter
Cockett, General Editor (Performance); and Andrew Griffin, General Editor (Text).
|
| Encoding description | |
| Document status | published |
| License/availability |
Intellectual copyright in this edition is held by the editor, Toby Malone. The critical paratexts, including this
Annotation,are licensed under a CC BY-NC_ND 4.0 license, which means that they are freely downloadable without permission under the following conditions: (1) credit must be given to the editor, QME, and LEMDO in any subsequent use of the files and/or data; (2) the content cannot be adapted or repurposed (except for quotations for the purposes of academic review and citation); and (3) commercial uses are not permitted without the knowledge and consent of QME, the editor, and LEMDO. This license allows for pedagogical use of the critical paratexts in the classroom. Production photographs and videos on this site may not be downloaded. They appear
freely on this site with the permission of the actors and the ACTRA union. They may
be used within the context of university courses, within the classroom, and for reference
within research contexts, including conferences, when credit is given to the producing
company and to the actors. Commercial use of videos and photographs is forbidden.
|