Para1The textual history of The True Tragedy of Richard the Third is based on a small sample size, which includes four surviving quarto editions, from which all subsequent editions are drawn. Those subsequent editions include three nineteenth century editions, a twentieth century facsimile, and one non-peer-reviewed digital edition published in 2005. The twentieth century facsimile, edited by W.W. Greg, offers important insights on the state of the quarto texts and their disagreements.

Para2The True Tragedy of Richard the Third was entered into the Stationers’ Register on June 19, 1594, with the following commentary:

Entred for his copie vnder mr warden Cawoods hand an enterlude intituled. The Tragedie of Richard the Third wherein is showen the death of Edward the ffourthe, wth the smotheringe of the twoo princes in the tower. with a lamentable end of Shores wife and the Coniunction of the twoo houses of Lancaster and yorke (Stationer’s Register Register B, fol. 309b)

This sole Q text, printed by Thomas Creede to be sold by William Barley, at his shop in Newgate Market, neare Christ Church doore (link), survives in copies currently held at the Folger Shakespeare Library (Washington, DC), the Huntington Library (San Marino, CA), Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library (New Haven, CT) and at the University of Texas at Austin’s Harry Ransom Center (Austin, TX). The Ransom Center text (hereafter Ransom) serves as copy-text for both Greg’s facsimile edition and for this QME modern edition; the Ransom text is the most complete extant copy.

Para3Of the other extant quartos, the Huntington text has served as the copytext for some previous editions. This text was previously property of one Mr. Rhodes of Lyons Inn (Singer 379), and James Boswell used it to produce his edition. Later, the text was housed in the Devonshire Collection in the Chatsworth Library before it was acquired by the Huntington (Greg v). Greg notes that this text is missing the title page and first leaf (A2–A3), and several following leaves are somewhat damaged, while the two missing leaves of print have been supplied in remarkably fine pen-drawn facsimile, presumably the work of nineteenth-century British Museum facsimilist John Harris (Greg v). Furthermore, as Greg notes, the Huntington text features an uncorrected outer forme in sheet B (Greg v); these corrections appear in the Ransom copy, but not the Folger.

Para4The Folger copy traces its provenance to a Mr. Charles H. Kalbfleisch, from whom the text was purchased by Henry Clay Folger in 1902. This text is a copy of the Huntington, with some minor variations and damage (Greg v).

Para5The Ransom text was formerly owned by Carl Howard Pforzheimer Senior, and was purchased in 1986 by the University of Texas at Austin as part of a larger collection, now held in the Carl H. Pforzheimer Library at the Harry Ransom Center. The Ransom catalogue notes that the first leaf of the edition is blank but aside from that, this edition is complete. Greg consulted this edition when it was still owned by Pforzheimer, and refers to interpolations from this text as coming from The Pforzheimer Copy.

Para6The Yale University Beinecke Library edition is not listed by Greg as one of the extant copies of this play, but is identical to the Ransom text.

Para7The play was reproduced in three distinct editions in the nineteenth century, edited by James Boswell the Younger, Barron Field, and William Hazlitt respectively.

Para8Boswell’s 1821 edition was based on the copy of Mr. Rhodes of Lyon’s Inn, which is now the Huntington text. Boswell, editorial successor to Edmond Malone, published a New Variorum edition, minus title page and first leaf, which indicates that he worked from an incomplete copy. Boswell notes this elision with ellipses and begins 64 lines into the play, with Truth’s Full two and twenty years (Boswell). Boswell offers his edition without emendation or gloss, and faithfully reproduces his copy text (Greg vii). At the close of the edition he presents brief commentary which notes the likelihood of Shakespeare’s familiarity with The True Tragedy and suggests it was written by the same playwright as Locrine (Boswell 299).

Para9Field’s 1844 edition for the Shakespeare Society was, like Boswell’s, based on the copy in the Devonshire Collection (now the Huntington copy). Unlike Boswell’s, Field’s text includes title page and prologue, so the missing text was gleaned from facsimile pages (Greg viii). Field’s was the most detailed edition of The True Tragedy when it was published, with periodic glossing and suggested emendations, all of which are considered in this edition’s collation. Field notes in his introduction that he has refrained from enforcing the play’s meter, given Q’s frequent substitution of prose for verse (Field vi); he essentially presents a supplemented Huntington transcription. This fidelity to the Huntington copy also means that Field, like Boswell, does not propose scene breaks or numbering. Field questions Boswell’s theory of a shared author with Locrine, but suggests no alternative theory of authorship (Field viii).

Para10Hazlitt’s 1875 edition was part of an anthology expanding on John Payne Collier’s 1843 Shakespeare’s Library. This series anthologized texts that were thought to be peripheral to or sources for Shakespeare’s plays, and The True Tragedy was proposed as a potential volume in Shakespeare’s personal library, or at least as something he may have known. Hazlitt presents this edition with a brief introduction to justify its inclusion, and reproduces Field’s preface, edition, and glosses. Hazlitt offers minor editorial intervention, including proposed solutions to line readings Field annotated as unintelligible (Field 63-64). Hazlitt further accepts an emendation that Bosworth conjectures and Field notes but does not incorporate (But time permits not now Sc7 Sp6).

Para11In 1929, Greg produced the only 20th-century edition of the play as a reprint for the Malone Society. This reproduction of the Ransom text is the most exhaustive available collection of collation notes between the various editions. Greg’s text publishes three pages in facsimile (A3r, C3v, I2r) from the Ransom text, and notes variance between Ransom and Huntington. Greg also offers a useful list of Irregular and Doubtful Readings which considers conjectures from Boswell, Field, and Hazlitt (Greg ix).

Para12Modern editions of The True Tragedy have been non-existent, and no critical edition has been produced before the current text. One modern-spelling, non-peer-reviewed online edition exists as part of the ElizabethanAuthors.org collection. This edition, published in 2005, was transcribed by Ramon Jimenez and edited for the internet by the late Robert Brazil, sparingly glossed. Some emendations, such as Boswell’s suggestion for the substitution of Stygian for studient are noted in the commentary (Brazil), but are not incorporated into Brazil’s text.

Para13The copy text for this edition is, of necessity, the only early publication: the 1594 quarto (STC 21009). There are four known surviving copies¹, of which this edition takes the Harry Ransom Center copy as the basis for the old-spelling transcription². Roberts-Smith and Senyshyn propose scene breaks and numbering in the old-spelling edition, which has been followed for the most part. One major divergence from these proposals has been to specifically designate the section previously called Scene 1 in Roberts-Smith and Senyshyn as Prologue. Truth, Poetry, and the Ghost of Clarence do not appear again, and it is logical to treat this intervention as a framing device, even if they do not appear again in those guises at the play’s close. By separating this scene from the remainder of the play, this edition works to highlight the function of these allegorical characters as external to the historical figures. Similarly, the shift in tone that occurs after Richmond’s acclamation recommends a further emendation. Four characters speak in the final 60 lines of the play—two messengers, the Mother Queen, and princess Elizabeth—and if we follow Roberts-Smith’s suggestion that the messengers are portrayed by the same boys who played Truth and Poetry (Roberts-Smith and Senyshyn 198), it makes sense to designate this section as an Epilogue. Roberts-Smith and Senyshyn maintain the epilogue content as part of their scene 23. By adopting an epilogue, this edition is structured differently from the old-spelling transcription of Q on which it is based: Roberts-Smith and Senyshyn’s play covers scenes 1-23, and the current edition’s scene numbers are prologue, 1-22, epilogue. This edition’s scene 1 corresponds to scene 2 from the old-spelling edition.

Para14This edition intervenes in the text of Q most strongly in its treatment of verse and prose. This approach builds on scholarship offered by McMillan and MacLean, which suggests that throughout Edward IV’s death scene, much of its overly long, unstructured verse might be feasibly read as prose. As they note, mislineation begins on A4r and continues seriatim through B4v, over nine pages. Another burst of over a page runs from the final 21 lines on F3v through F4r, and there is another complete page on G1a, and it shifts suddenly from verse at the end of F4r and (correctly) into prose at the top of F4v, which suggests a change in compositors (McMillan and MacLean 113). This mislineation is common to both The True Tragedy and The Famous Victories, both of which were printed by Thomas Creede.

Para15While the printing error may be consistent between the two plays printed by Creede, McMillin and MacLean suggest the designation of these speeches as verse in The True Tragedy is more likely due to scribal error than printing error or authorial decision, and there is little reason to suggest that these scenes require verse. It is far easier to imagine such errors produced by an individual employed to take dictation rather than by a compositor working from the author’s copy, and—should we believe familiar stories that Q was produced from memorial reconstruction—it seems a simple matter to mishear pauses in prose as end-stops for verse (McMillin and MacLean 115). This mnemonic and aural interference would also account for minor puzzling errors, like the use of Hapc for “Haute”, Casbe for “Catesby”, and Marcus for “Marquess”. Ultimately, McMillin and MacLean’s conclusions on the text’s provenance, lineation, and versification are largely persuasive, and they inform this edition’s willingness to reformat prose and verse where such edits are thought to be necessary.

Para16This edition considers context as well as meter when reformatting verse and prose. The heightened prologue between Truth and Poetry is clearly verse, for instance, befitting the allegorical natures of these characters, and the prologue was reformatted accordingly. In subsequent scenes, however, we find ourselves less burdened by versical interpretation and consequently reformat some verse as prose. The first scene proper, for instance—Edward IV’s death scene—is arranged as verse in Q, for no purpose and with very little metrical support. If dictated prose text from this first scene was misheard by a scribe and recorded as verse, the misformatted verse makes sense. Of course, the case for reformatting is not always clear, and many segments are treated as uncertain, as in Roberts-Smith and Senyshyn’s old-spelling edition. Similarly, verse scenes that feature lines in excess of 15 syllables were also considered for restructuring, as verse lines of fourteen syllables were rare after the 1560s unless used for antique effect (as in Clyomon and Clamydes), and verse lines longer than fourteen syllables were effectively non-existent. Ultimately, the first three proper scenes were reformatted to prose: the death of Edward IV (Sc1); the introduction of Shore’s wife (Sc2); and the introduction of Richard (Sc3). After this point, with the entrance of the young king, the scribe or compositor shifted to prose and maintained greater consistency for the remainder of the play.

Para17With the general emendation of verse to prose, moments of verse remaining in the text become particularly salient, and seem to indicate significant semantic transformation. These moments of verse mark heightened emotion, (as in the young duke of York’s lamenting departure from his mother in Sc9 Sp25), moments of imperiousness (as when Richard speaks to the imprisoned Rivers in Sc7 Sp2, and Rivers’ subsequent adoption of verse in his own defense in Sc7 Sp6), or moments of status-conscious performance (as in Richard’s first crowned entrance in Sc14, and Richmond’s first speeches after arriving in England Sc15). Couplets appear periodically in these verse passages, often (as is conventional) to close a scene, and, notably, in the Mother Queen’s final epilogue speech, which begins in prose but features several couplets in its regular rhyme as she begins speaking about Queen Elizabeth I.

Para18Aside from these emendations to versification, the text here is presented with only minor textual changes. The scribal mishearings nominated above (Casbe/Hapc/Marcus) are adjusted throughout. The curious case of the archbishop of York being erroneously referenced in speech headings and stage directions as Cardinall is similarly addressed and explained in commentary. The few occasions where line readings are suggested or words substituted are outlined in the collation notes and commentary.

Para19While I have made efforts to maintain the overall tone of The True Tragedy as it appears in Q, there are several line readings that required greater attention. Each of the following emendations are noted in the collation as well as often in the commentary.

Names and Speech Headings

Foreign languages

Compositorial errors

Textual Variance

Clarifications

Summary