Richard II Read Online Free PDF Page A

procedure is intended as a reminder to the reader and the actor that Shakespearean stage directions are often dependent upon editorial inference alone and are not set in stone. We also depart from editorial tradition in sometimes admitting uncertainty and thus printing permissive stage directions, such as an Aside? (often a line may be equally effective as an aside or as a direct address—it is for each production or reading to make its own decision) or a may exit or a piece of business placed between arrows to indicate that it may occur at various different moments within a scene.
    Explanatory Notes explain allusions and gloss obsolete and difficult words, confusing phraseology, occasional major textual cruces, and so on. Particular attention is given to non-standard usage, bawdy innuendo, and technical terms (e.g. legal and military language). Where more than one sense is given, commas indicate shades of related meaning, slashes alternative or double meanings.
    Textual Notes at the end of the play indicate major departures from the Folio. They take the following form: the reading of our text is given in bold and its source given after an equals sign, with “Q” indicating that it derives from the First Quarto of 1597, “F” from the First Folio of 1623, “F2” a correction introduced in the Second Folio of 1632, and “Ed” from the subsequent editorial tradition. The rejected Folio (“F”) reading is then given. We have also included noteworthy rejected readings, for example Act 5 Scene 5 line 31: “ 5.5.31 prison = F. Q = person.” This indicates that we have preferred the Folio reading “prison” but noted the frequently adopted and interestingly different Quarto reading “person.”

KEY FACTS
    MAJOR PARTS (
with percentage of lines/number of speeches/scenes on stage
): King Richard II (27%/98/9), Henry Bullingbrook (15%/90/8), Duke of York (10%/54/8), John of Gaunt (7%/28/4), Northumberland (5%/38/6), Mowbray (5%/13/2), Queen (4%/25/4), Aumerle (3%/38/7), Duchess of York (3%/28/2), Bishop of Carlisle (2%/6/2), Duchess of Gloucester (2%/4/1), Gardener (2%/6/1).
    LINGUISTIC MEDIUM: 100% verse, with high proportion of rhyme.
    DATE: 1595–96. Registered for publication August 1597. Written after Samuel Daniel’s
First Four Books of the Civil Wars
(registered October 1594, apparently published 1595); perhaps postdates renowned Accession Day tilts of November 1595. Described in February 1601 as “old and long out of use.”
    SOURCES: Primary source is the account of the last two years of Richard’s reign in Raphael Holinshed’s
Chronicles
(1587 edition), supplemented—especially for various details in the final act—by Samuel Daniel’s
First Four Books of the Civil Wars Between the Two Houses of Lancaster and York
(1594–95). Christopher Marlowe’s
Edward II
(1592?) was a major dramatic influence, both structurally (the fall of a weak king and the rise of his rival) and thematically (flatterers, Irish wars, a marginalized queen). Some scholars also detect the influence of the anonymous chronicle play of
Woodstock
: as well as verbal parallels, there are resemblances between Shakespeare’s John of Gaunt and this play’s Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester, but recent scholarship suggests that Shakespeare’s play precedes
Woodstock
, not vice versa. The garden scene is apparentlywithout source, though the comparison between a disordered state and an overgrown garden was traditional.
    TEXT: First printed in Quarto in 1597, with text deriving from Shakespeare’s working manuscript or a transcription of it; the deposition scene was, however, omitted for reasons of censorship. The First Quarto was reprinted several times (Second and Third Quartos, 1598; Fourth Quarto, 1608; Fifth Quarto, 1615). These later Quartos correct a few obvious errors in the First Quarto, but introduce many misprints. The Second Quarto was one of the first printed play texts to include Shakespeare’s name on the title page.