Of these eight editions, all except the first two purport to be "newly augmented;" which, as the text was the same in them all, would seem to infer that the publishers understood the play to have received certain additions, and wanted to have it thought that their copies included them. Accordingly, in the folio of 1623 we have the text not only augmented, but in a multitude of cases slightly altered, thus showing that the play had been carefully revised by the author. The additions, amounting in all to more than a hundred and eighty lines, and in one place to fifty-five, will be pointed out in our notes, as they occur. In the folio the heading of the play is,-The Tragedy of Richard the Third, with the Landing of Earl Richmond, and the Battle at Bosworth Field; and its running title is, The Life and Death of Richard the Third. And the text is there set forth with reasonable care and accuracy, the divisions of acts and scenes being duly marked.

The evidences of revisal presented in the folio will doubtless be held a sufficient reason for adhering mainly to the text as there printed: in doing which we shall in many cases depart, as Knight, Collier, and Verplanck have done, from the text commonly received; this having been made up from the two copies, apparently on no steadier or better principle than editorial caprice. Malone, indeed, assigns, as the reason of his proceeding herein, that "the alterations were made, not by Shakespeare, but by the players;" but as he still keeps flying off every little while from the line to which this reason would bind him, we are apt to doubt whether he fully believed it himself. Steevens, on the other hand, thought the folio gave the better text; wherein he was certainly right, though his motive probably was, as usual, to contradict Malone. To point out all the variations of the folio from the quartos, would encumber our pages overmuch with notes. In a few instances single lines, omitted apparently by accident in the folio, are retained, as being needful, or at least helpful, to the sense. And in Act iv. sc. 2, a most spirited and characteristic

piece of dialogue is wanting in the folio: why it should have been omitted is inconceivable; and the matter is such that no modern editor would think of leaving it out. As going to prove that the changes of the folio were made by Shakespeare himself, besides that the additions bear the stamp of no mind but his, it may be observed that those changes often consist but in the substitution of an epithet, of purpose, manifestly, to avoid a too frequent recurrence of the same word; which is just what one would naturally do in a cool review of what he had struck out in the full glow of inspiration. So that there need be no question about taking the folio as the standard text, and using the quartos to ascertain and rectify this, instead of using this as an occasional resort, to clear up what is dark, or fill out what is wanting in those.

The great popularity of King Richard III is amply shown in the number of editions called for, wherein it surpasses any other of the Poet's dramas. And the three later issues in quarto prove it to have been in good demand in a separate form some time after the folio collection had appeared. It was also honored above any of its fellows by the notice of contemporary writers: it is mentioned by Meres in his Palladis Tamia; Fuller, in his Church History, and Milton, in one of his political eruptions, refer to it as being already well known: and in Bishop Corbet's Iter Boreale, 1617, we have a quaint description of the author's host at Bosworth, which is exceedingly curious as witnessing both what an impression the play had made in the popular mind, and how thoroughly the character of Richard had become identified with Burbage, the great original performer of it:

"Mine host was full of ale and history;

And in the morning, when he brought us nigh
Where the two Roses join'd, you would suppose
Chaucer ne'er made the Romaunt of the Rose.
Hear him: 'See you yon wood? there Richard lay
With his whole army. Look the other way,
And, lo! where Richmond in a bed of gorse
Encamp'd himself all night, and all his force:

Upon this hill they met.'-Why, he could tell
The inch where Richmond stood, where Richard fell.
Besides what of his knowledge he could say,
He had authentic notice from the play;
Which I might guess by marking up the ghosts,
And policies not incident to hosts;

But chiefly by that one perspicuous thing,
Where he mistook a player for a king:

For when he would have said, 'King Richard died,'
And call'd, ‘A horse! a horse!' he Burbage cried."

As to when the play was written, we have no certain external notice of an earlier date than the first entry in the Stationers' Register. Touching this point, however, an inference of some probability has been gathered from a passage in Weever's Epigrams, which, it would seem, must have been written in 1595, though not published till 1599. The writer is professedly enumerating the "issue" of "honey-tongued Shakespeare:"

"Rose-cheek'd Adonis, with his amber tresses,

Fair fire-hot Venus charming him to love her;
Chaste Lucretia, virgin-like her dresses,

Proud lust-stung Tarquin seeking still to prove her;
Romeo, Richard, more whose names I know not;

Their sugar'd tongues and power-attractive beauty

Say they are saints, although that saints they show not."

In this stupid euphuism we cannot be certain whether the author is referring to the Richard III or the Richard II of Shakespeare; for, though the epithet sugar'd would seem to point out the latter, nothing can be argued thence here, the writer is so little used to keep any sort of terms between the phrase and the matter. To the best of our judgment, the internal evidence of the play makes strongly for as early a date as 1593 or 1594: the general style, though rising somewhat above that of the Second and Third Parts of Henry VI, is strictly continuous with it; while the history and the characterization show it to have been written with the scenes of those dramas fresh in the author's mind. In Clarence's account of his dream, and in Tyrrel's description of the murder of the young princes,

Shakespeare is out in his plenitude of poetical wealth; and the character of the hero is indeed a marvel of sustained vigor and concentrated activity: nevertheless, as a whole, the play evinces considerably less maturity of power, than King Richard II: in several cases there is great insubordination of the details to the general plan; as, for instance, in Richard's wooing of lady Anne and of Queen Elizabeth, which have an excess of dialogical epigram, showing indeed a prodigious fertility of resource, but betraying withal a sort of mental incontinence; and where we quite miss that watchful judgment which, in the Poet's later dramas, tempers all the parts and elements into artistic symmetry and proportion.

It is certain that the history of Richard III had been made the subject of stage performance several years before it fell into Shakespeare's hands. A Latin drama, written by one Dr. Legge, was acted at St. John's College, Cambridge, some time before 1583. Sir John Harrington, in his Apology for Poetry, 1591, refers to this play, as one which would "have moved Phalaris the tyrant, and terrified all tyrannous-minded men." Besides, there was an English play on the same subject, entered at the Stationers', June 19, 1594, and published the same year, with a title-page running thus: The True Tragedy of Richard the Third; wherein is shown the death of Edward the Fourth, with the smothering of the two young Princes in the Tower: With a lamentable end of Shore's wife, an example to all wicked women; and, lastly, the conjunction and joining of the two noble Houses, Lancaster and York. Mr. Collier says "it was evidently written several years before it came from the press." As it is unlike any other relic of the kind, some account of it probably will not be deemed out of place. The following is an abridgment of the one given by Mr. Collier:

The opening consists of a singular dialogue between Truth and Poetry; after which, the ghost of Clarence having passed over the stage, and made a short speech in its passage, Truth proceeds to deliver the argument of

the play. Thus much by way of introduction; whereupon the drama itself begins with a scene representing the death of Edward IV. Thenceforth the story is most clumsily conducted, with characters ill-sustained, and with a total disregard of dates, facts, and places, Shore's wife playing a conspicuous part, and the representation being drawn out long after the battle of Bosworth Field. Richard having been killed, Report enters, and holds a dialogue with a Page, to give information of divers things not exhibited. Then follows a long scene between Richmond, his mother, and the Princess Elizabeth; after which two Messengers come in, and reel off what is to be done and who is to reign, all the way from Richard to Queen Elizabeth, the whole winding up with an elaborate panegyric on the latter. As to the composition of this unique performance, it is written partly in prose and partly in heavy blank-verse, duly interspersed with ten-syllable rhyming couplets and stanzas, and with specimens of the long fourteen-syllable

meter.

There are but two instances wherein Shakespeare has with any likelihood been traced to the True Tragedy; and in those the resemblance is not such as to infer any more knowledge of the old play than might well enough have been caught in the hearing. Other resemblances there are indeed, but only such as would naturally result from using a common authority; as where Richard opens his breast so freely to the Page concerning the fittest person to be employed about the murdering of the princes. In all other points, whether of conception or of execution, the two plays will bear no comparison; and, save in the way of historical account, one almost had need to ask pardon for naming them together.

The closeness of connection between this play and The Third Part of Henry VI is so evident as to leave no occasion for tracing it out. At the very opening of the one we have Richard flouting and snarling in soliloquy at the "stately triumphs" and "mirthful comic shows," with which, at the close of the other, King Edward had pro