And I will stand the hazard of the die: I think, there be six Richmonds in the field; A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!5 [Exeunt. Alarums. Enter King RICHARD and RICHMOND; and exeunt, fighting. Retreat, and flourish. Then enter RICHMOND, STANLEY, bearing the Crown, with divers other Lords, and Forces. Richm. God, and your arms, be prais'd, victorious friends; The day is ours, the bloody dog is dead. Stan. Courageous Richmond, well hast thou acquit thee! Lo, here, this long-usurped royalty, From the dead temples of this bloody wretch 4 Five have I slain to-day, instead of him:] Shakspeare had employed this incident with historical propriety in The First Part of King Henry IV. Steevens. Shakspeare had good ground for this poetical exaggeration. Richard, according to Polydore Virgil, was determined, if possible, to engage with Richmond in single combat. [See p. 192, 1. 3.] For this purpose he rode furiously to that quarter of the field where the Earl was; attacked his standard bearer, Sir William Brandon, and killed him; then assaulted Sir John Cheny, whom he overthrew having thus at length cleared his way to his antagonist, he engaged in single combat with him, and probably would have been victorious, but that at that instant Sir William Stanley with three thousand men joined Richmond's army, and the royal forces fled with great precipitation. Richard was soon afterwards overpowered by numbers, and fell, fighting bravely to the last moment. Malone. 5 A horse! a horse!] Some inquiry hath been made for the first performers of the capital characters of Shakspeare. We learn, that Burbage, the alter Roscius of Camden, was the original Richard, from a passage in the poems of Bishop Corbet; who introduced his host at Bosworth describing the battle: "But when he would have said king Richard died, "And call'd a horse, a horse, he Burbage cried." Farmer. 6 of this bloody wretch-] It is not necessary to suppose that Richmond points to the dead body of Richard, when he speaks of him. According to an ancient idiom in our language, the denominative pronoun is often used instead of the prepositive article. So, in King Henry IV, P. I: 66 but for these vile guns "He would himself have been a soldier." Steevens. VOL. XI. S Wear it, enjoy it, and make much of it. Richm. Great God of heaven, say, amen, to all!— And then, as we have ta'en the sacrament, 8 O, now, let Richmond and Elizabeth, (9) The true succeeders of each royal house, 7 But, tell me first, &c.] The word-first, was introduced by Sir Thomas Hanmer, to complete the verse. Steevens. 8 as we have ta'en the sacrament,] So, in Holinshed, p. 745: "The earle himselfe first tooke a corporall oth on his honor, promising that incontinent after he shuld be possessed of the crowne and dignitie of the realme of England, he would be conjoined in matrimonie with the ladie Elizabeth, daughter to king Edward the fourth " Steevens. * The father rashly slaughter'd his own son, &c.] See King Henry VI, P. III, pages 284 to 290, inclusive. Am. Ed. 9 All this divided York and Lancaster, Divided, in their dire division.] I think the passage will be somewhat improved by a slight alteration: All that divided York and Lancaster, Divided in their dire division, O now let Richmond and Elizabeth, The true succeeders of each royal house, By God's fair ordinance conjoin together! Let them unite all that York and Lancaster divided. Johnson. And let their heirs, (God, if thy will be so,) [Exeunt.3 1 Abate the edge-] To abate, is to lower, depress, subdue. So, in Coriolanus : 2 deliver you, as most "Abated captives, -." Steevens. reduce-] i. e. bring back; an obsolete sense of the word. So, in The goodly History of the moste noble and beautiful Ladye Lucres of Scene in Tuskan, and of her louer Eurialus &c. 1560: "The mornynge forsakyng the golden bed of Titan, reduced the desyred day" Steevens. 3 This is one of the most celebrated of our author's performances; yet I know not whether it has not happened to him as to others, to be praised most, when praise is not most deserved. That this play has scenes noble in themselves, and very well contrived to strike in the exhibition, cannot be denied. But some parts are trifling, others shocking, and some improbable. Johnson. I agree entirely with Dr. Johnson in thinking that this play from its first exhibition to the present hour has been estimated greatly beyond its merit. From the many allusions to it in books of that age, and the great number of editions it passed through, I suspect it was more often represented and more adinired than any of our author's tragedies. Its popularity perhaps in some measure arose from the detestation in which Richard's character was justly held, which must have operated more strongly on those whose grand-fathers might have lived near his time; and from its being patronized by the Queen on the throne, who probably was not a little pleased at seeing King Henry VII placed in the only favourable light in which he could have been exhibited on the scene. Malone. I most cordially join with Dr. Johnson and Mr. Malone in their opinions; and yet perhaps they have overlooked one cause of the success of this tragedy. The part of Richard is, perhaps, beyond all others variegated, and consequently favourable to a judicious performer. It comprehends, indeed, a trait of almost every species of character on the stage. The hero, the lover, the statesman, the buffoon, the hypocrite, the hardened and re penting sinner, &c. are to be found within its compass. No wonder, therefore, that the discriminating powers of a Burbage, a Garrick, and a Henderson, should at different periods have given it a popularity beyond other dramas of the same author. Yet the favour with which this tragedy is now received, must also in some measure be imputed to Mr. Cibber's reformation of it, which, generally considered, is judicious: for what modern audience would patiently listen to the narrative of Clarence's dream, his subsequent expostulation with the Murderers, the prattle of is children, the soliloquy of the Scrivener, the tedious dialogue of the Citizens, the ravings of Margaret, the gross terms thrown out by the Duchess of York on Richard, the repeated progress to execution, the superfluous train of spectres, and other undrama1ic incumbrances, which must have prevented the more valuable parts of the play from rising into their present effect and consequence?-The expulsion of languor, therefore, must atone for such remaining want of probability as is inseparable from an historical drama into which the events of fourteen years are irregularly compressed. Steevens. For The Life and Death of King Richard the Third.] The oldest known edition of this tragedy is printed for Andrew Wise, 1597: but Harrington, in his Apologie for Poetrie, written in 1590, and prefixed to the translation of Ariosto, says, that a tragedy of Richard the Third had been acted at Cambridge. His words are, " tragedies, to omit other famous tragedies, that which was played at St. John's in Cambridge, of Richard the Third, would move, I think, Phalaris the tyrant, and terrifie all tyrannous minded men,' &c. He most probably means Shakspeare's; and if so, we may argue, that there is some more ancient edition of this play than what I have mentioned; at least this shows how early Shakspeare's play appeared; or if some other Richard the Third is here alluded to by Harrington, that a play on this subject preceded our author's. T. Warton. 66 It appears from the following passage in the preface to Nashe's Have with you to Saffron Walden, or Gabriel Harvey's Hunt is up, 1596, that a Latin tragedy of King Richard III had been acted at Trinity College, Cambridge: -or his fellow codshead, that that in the Latine tragedie of King Richard, cried—Ad urbs ad urbs, ad urbs, when his whole part was no more than-Urbs, urbs, ad arma, ad arma.” Steevens. The play on this subject mentioned by Sir John Harrington in his Apologie for Poetrie, 1591, and sometimes mistaken for Shakspeare's, was a Latin one, written by Dr. Legge; and acted at St. John's in our university, some years before 1588, the date of the copy in the Museum. This appears from a better MS. in our library at Emmanuel, with the names of the original performers. A childish imitation of Dr. Legge's play was written by one Lacy, 1583; which had not been worth mentioning, were they not confounded by Mr. Capell. Farmer. The Latin play of King Richard III, (MSS. Harl. n. 6926,) has the author's name,-Henry Lacey, and is dated-1586. Tyrwhitt. Heywood in his Actor's Vindication, mentions the play of King Richard III," acted in St. John's, Cambridge, so essentially, that had the tyrant Phalaris beheld his bloody proceedings, it had mollified his heart, and made him relent in sight of his inhuman massacres." And in the bookes of the Stationers' Company, June 19, 1594, Thomas Creede made the following entry: "An enterlude, intitled the tragedie of Richard the Third, wherein it is shown the deathe of Edward the Fourthe, with the smotheringe of the two princes in the Tower, with the lamentable ende of Shore's wife, and the contention of the two houses of Lancaster and Yorke." This could not have been the work of Shakspeare, unless he afterwards dismissed the death of Jane Shore, as an unnecessary incident, when he revised the play. Perhaps, however, it might be some translation of Lacey's play, at the end of the first Act of which is, "The showe of the procession. 1. Tipstaffe. 2. Shore's wife in her petticote, having a taper burning in her hande. 3. The Verger. 4. Queristers. 5. Singing-men. 6. Prebendary. 7. Bishoppe of London. 8. Citizens." There is likewise a Latin song sung on this occasion, in MS. Harl. 2412. Steevens. The English King Richard III, which was entered on the Stationers' books in 1594, and which, it may be presumed, had been exhibited some years before, was probably written by the author of The Contention of the Two Houses of Yorke and Lancaster. Malone. I shall here subjoin two Dissertations, one by Dr. Warburton, and one by Mr. Upton, upon the Vice. ACT III.....SCENE I. Thus like the formal vice, Iniquity, &c.] As this corrupt reading in the common books hath occasioned our saying something of the barbarities of theatrical representations amongst us before the time of Shakspeare, it may not be improper, for a better apprehension of this whole matter, to give the reader some general account of the rise and progress of the modern stage. The first form in which the drama appeared in the west of Europe, after the destruction of learned Greece and Rome, and that a calm of dulness had finished upon letters what the rage of barbarism had begun, was that of the Mysteries. These were the fashionable and favourite diversions of all ranks of people in France, Spain, and England. In which last place, as we learn by Stow, they were in use about the time of Richard the second and Henry the fourth. As to Italy, by what I can find, the first rudiments of their stage, with regard to the matter, were prophane subjects, and, with regard to the form, a corruption of the ancient mimes and attellanes: by which means they got sooner into the right road than their neighbours; having had regular plays amongst them wrote as early as the fifteenth century. As to these mysteries, they were, as their name speaks them, a representation of some scripture-story, to the life: as may be seen from the following passage in an old French history, intitled, |