The True Tragedy of Richard III

The True Tragedy of Richard III is an anonymous Elizabethan history play on the subject of Richard III of England. It has attracted the attention of scholars of English Renaissance drama principally for the question of its relationship with William Shakespeare's Richard III.^[1]

The title spelling that appears on the cover page of the quarto is The True Tragedie of Richard the third.^[2]

The True Tragedy of Richard III should not be confused with The True Tragedy of Richard, Duke of York; the latter is the early alternative version of Shakespeare's Henry VI, Part 3.

Publication

The play was entered into the Stationers' Register on 19 June 1594; it appeared in print later that year, in a quarto printed and published by Thomas Creede and sold by the stationer William Barley, "at his shop in Newgate Market, near Christ Church door." In addition to Creede's 1594 quarto, another edition of the play was "Printed at London by W.W. for Thomas Millington and are to be sold at his shoppe under Saint Peters Church in Cornewall, 1600."^[3] This is likely Cornhill; "under' meaning below, since it is on a hill. No further editions are known prior to the nineteenth century.^[4]

Only three copies of the play are known to have survived, all of which are now in the US.^[5] One copy can be found in the Carl Pforzheimer library at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas,^[6] one is at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C.,^[7] and the third can be found in the Huntington Library in California.^[8]

W. W. Greg prepared a modern edition of the play for the Malone Society; it was published in 1929 primarily from the Pforzheimer copy.

Date

"The question of date is confused and unsettled."^[9] Most scholars and critics, relying on internal clues in the text, have estimated a date of authorship within a year or two of 1590, though dates as early as c. 1585 have also been posited.^[10]

The title page of the 1594 quarto states that the play was acted by The Queen Majesties Players. The title page of the 1600 quarto states that the play was acted "sundry" times by the "Right Honourable the Earle of Pembrooke his servantes". Any date of authorship for The True Tragedy in the mid-to-late 1580s to the early 1590s would be compatible with performance by the Queen's Men.

Critics generally judge the author of The True Tragedy to have been influenced by Thomas Legge's Latin play Richardus Tertius (c. 1580) – though that relationship is of little help in dating the True Tragedy.

Sources and Genre

Apart from the question of Richardus Tertius, the author of The True Tragedy relied upon the standard historical sources of his generation for the story of Richard – principally Edward Hall's chronicle on the Wars of the Roses, and the chronicle by John Hardyng later continued by Richard Grafton.

While The True Tragedy clearly belongs to the genre of the Elizabethan history play, some critics have also pointed out its relationship with the revenge tragedy.

Authorship

There is no external attribution of authorship for The True Tragedy; and the question of authorship is complicated by the fact that the single text of the play, the 1594 quarto, is notably inferior. Modern critics have tended to treat it as a bad quarto and a "reported text." Individual commentators have nominated Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Lodge, George Peele, and Thomas Kyd, among other writers of their generation, as possible authors or revisers of the play; but no scholarly consensus in favour of any single candidate or hypothesis has evolved.^[11]

Characters

Truth
Poetry
The Ghost of George, Duke of Clarence
King Edward IV
Lord Hastings
Thomas Grey, Lord Marquess Dorset, son of the Queen
Elizabeth, daughter of Edward IV
Shore's Wife, mistress of Edward IV
Hursly, Shore's Wife's maid
Lodowick, servant to Lord Hastings
Morton, a serving man
Richard, Duke of Gloucester, later King Richard the Third
Sir William Catesby, Richard's follower
Percival, a messenger from Buckingham
Edward, Prince of Wales, briefly King Edward V
Richard, Duke of York, brother of Edward V
Anthony Woodville, Earl Rivers, brother to Queen Elizabeth

Lord Grey, brother to Queen Elizabeth
Sir Richard Haute
Sir Thomas Vaughan
Elizabeth Woodville, the Queen Mother, widow of Edward IV
The Duke of Buckingham
Sir Robert Brakenbury, Lieutenant of the Tower
James Tyrrell, a follower of Richard III
Myles Forrest, a keeper in the Tower
Will Slaughter, a murderer
Jack Denton, a murderer
Ralph Banistre, servant to Buckingham
Lord Stanley, stepfather of Richmond
George Stanley, son of Lord Stanley
Francis Lovell, 1st Viscount Lord Lovell
Henry, Earl of Richmond, later King Henry VII
Pierre Landais, treasurer to the Duke of Brittany
Captain Blunt

And Shakespeare

The True Tragedy bears a general resemblance to Shakespeare's Richard III, as any play on the same subject would. Critics are not unanimous on the view that Shakespeare used The True Tragedy as a source for his play, though the majority tend to favour this judgement. Geoffrey Bullough treats The True Tragedy as a "probable source" for Richard III, citing several commonalities (as when, in both plays, Richard calls for a horse on Bosworth Field (1485), yet refuses to flee the battle) – though Bullough admits that the nature of the plays' relationship is "not clear."^[12]

The uncertainty in dating has allowed a few commentators to propose a reversed priority, and to argue that the author (or reviser) of The True Tragedy may have borrowed from Shakespeare's play.^[13]

Shakespeare appears to have known of The True Tragedy, since he paraphrases it in Hamlet, III, ii, 254, "the croaking raven doth bellow for revenge." Line 1892 in The True Tragedy reads "The screeking raven sits croking for revenge."

Unlike Shakespeare, "The True Tragedy" has no act or scene division.

In Performance

In 2021 the Beyond Shakespeare Company released on line a play-reading and discussion of The True Tragedy of Richard III^[14]

References

^ Logan, Terence P.; Smith, Denzell S., eds. (1973). The Predecessors of Shakespeare: A Survey and Bibliography of Recent Studies in English Renaissance Drama. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press. pp. 274-7. ISBN 9780803207752.
^ The True Tragedy of Richard III. London, England: The Malone Society Reprints. 1929 [1594]. p. xiii. ISBN 9780469098732.
^ FacsimilePublisher.com
^ E. K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, 4 Volumes, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1923; Vol. 4, p. 43.
^ WW Greg, The True Tragedy of Richard III, Great Britain, The Malone Society Reprints, 1929; pp. v
^ Richard (1 January 1594). The true tragedie of Richard the third: wherein is shownethe death of Edward the fourth, with the smothering of thetwo yoong princes in the Tower: with a lamentable ende of Shores wife, an example for all wicked women. And lastly, the coniunction and ioyning of the two noble houses, Lancaster and Yorke. As it was playd by the Queenes Maiesties Players. London: printed by Thomas Creede, and are to be sold by William Barley, at his shop in Newgate Market, neare Christ Church doore.
^ Barley, William, ed. (1 January 1594). The true tragedie of Richard the third: wherein is showne the death of Edward the fourth, with the smothering of the two yoong princes in the Tower: with a lamentable ende of Shores wife, an example for all wicked women. And lastly, the coniunction and ioyning of the two noble houses, Lancaster and Yorke. As it was playd by the Queenes Maiesties Players. London: Printed by Thomas Creede, and are to be sold by William Barley, at his shop in Newgate Market, neare Christ Church doore.
^ Creede, Thomas; Barley, William, eds. (1 January 1594). The true tragedie of Richard the third: wherein is shownethe death of Edward the fourth, with the smothering of thetwo yoong princes in the Tower: with a lamentable ende of Shores wife, an example for all wicked women. And lastly, the coniunction and ioyning of the two noble houses, Lancaster and Yorke. As it was playd by the Queenes Maiesties Players. London: printed by Thomas Creede, and are to be sold by William Barley, at his shop in Newgate Market, neare Christ Church doore.
^ Logan and Smith, p. 273.
^ Chambers, Vol. 4, pp. 43–4; Logan and Smith, pp. 273–4.
^ Logan and Smith, pp. 272–3; Chambers, Vol. 4, p. 44.
^ Geoffrey Bullough, ed., Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare, Vol. 3; New York, Columbia University Press, 1960; pp. 237–9, 317–45.
^ Logan and Smith, p. 276.
^ The True Tragedy of Richard III | Second Look, part 1 (Beyond Shakespeare Exploring Session). YouTube. Archived from the original on 11 December 2021.

External links

[1] Logan, Terence P.; Smith, Denzell S., eds. (1973). The Predecessors of Shakespeare: A Survey and Bibliography of Recent Studies in English Renaissance Drama. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press. pp. 274-7. ISBN 9780803207752.

[2] The True Tragedy of Richard III. London, England: The Malone Society Reprints. 1929 [1594]. p. xiii. ISBN 9780469098732.

[3] FacsimilePublisher.com

[4] E. K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, 4 Volumes, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1923; Vol. 4, p. 43.

[5] WW Greg, The True Tragedy of Richard III, Great Britain, The Malone Society Reprints, 1929; pp. v

[6] Richard (1 January 1594). The true tragedie of Richard the third: wherein is shownethe death of Edward the fourth, with the smothering of thetwo yoong princes in the Tower: with a lamentable ende of Shores wife, an example for all wicked women. And lastly, the coniunction and ioyning of the two noble houses, Lancaster and Yorke. As it was playd by the Queenes Maiesties Players. London: printed by Thomas Creede, and are to be sold by William Barley, at his shop in Newgate Market, neare Christ Church doore.

[7] Barley, William, ed. (1 January 1594). The true tragedie of Richard the third: wherein is showne the death of Edward the fourth, with the smothering of the two yoong princes in the Tower: with a lamentable ende of Shores wife, an example for all wicked women. And lastly, the coniunction and ioyning of the two noble houses, Lancaster and Yorke. As it was playd by the Queenes Maiesties Players. London: Printed by Thomas Creede, and are to be sold by William Barley, at his shop in Newgate Market, neare Christ Church doore.

[8] Creede, Thomas; Barley, William, eds. (1 January 1594). The true tragedie of Richard the third: wherein is shownethe death of Edward the fourth, with the smothering of thetwo yoong princes in the Tower: with a lamentable ende of Shores wife, an example for all wicked women. And lastly, the coniunction and ioyning of the two noble houses, Lancaster and Yorke. As it was playd by the Queenes Maiesties Players. London: printed by Thomas Creede, and are to be sold by William Barley, at his shop in Newgate Market, neare Christ Church doore.

[9] Logan and Smith, p. 273.

[10] Chambers, Vol. 4, pp. 43–4; Logan and Smith, pp. 273–4.

[11] Logan and Smith, pp. 272–3; Chambers, Vol. 4, p. 44.

[12] Geoffrey Bullough, ed., Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare, Vol. 3; New York, Columbia University Press, 1960; pp. 237–9, 317–45.

[13] Logan and Smith, p. 276.

[14] The True Tragedy of Richard III | Second Look, part 1 (Beyond Shakespeare Exploring Session). YouTube. Archived from the original on 11 December 2021.

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