KING RICHARD THE SECOND. Richard II' seems to have been composed after Samuel Daniel's (1595), a narrative poem from which the play takes several hints. In 1597 the latter was printed under the title of Tragedy of King Richard the Second.' The appearance in all of three editions (one brought to light in 1916) before the close of 1598 testifies to the interest of the reading public, an interest ex plainable on three grounds: the growing fame of Shakespeare, who was just becoming widely known; the easy florid beauty of the poetry; and the distinct novelty with which a popular dramatic type is here embellished. The material is taken chiefly from Holinshed's and deals with only the last two years of Richard's life (1398-1400). This tragedy is distinguished from Shakespeare's other history plays by the strain of imaginative fantasy that everywhere pervades it. There is much rime and no prose at all: it is not like Shakespeare to make the gardener (III, iv) do his homely moralizing in Miltonic verse, or to find no place whatever for humor. A youthful leaning toward artificiality exposes itself also in the mock chivalry of the tournament scenes (I, I and iii, IV, i, 1-.106), which read like dramatized versions of a Waverley novel. The poet's tem porary obsession with sentimental, as opposed to strictly dramatic issues, appears again, and more effectively, in his characterization of the king, The real Richard II, though infirm of purpose, was not the charming esthete here de picted: he was a man of wild and ruthless vio lence and remarkable physical courage, whose troubles were the retribution for a long period of the most treacherous misgovernment. His wild death scene,. in which Shakespeare follows history, was quite in keeping with the real king's life, but involves a reversal of the poet's psychologic values. It cannot be reasonably doubted that in fashioning his material Shakespeare was under the influence of Mar lowe's 'Edward II,' • where the reign of a genuine sentimental weakling had been magnifi cently interpreted. However, in thus rendering
a hardly legitimate homage to his model, the young poet was also yielding to a natural temp tation, evidenced also in lEtiron of
Labour's Lost> and in Romeo, to daily with the charms of emotional fancy at the peril of losing touch with the truer purposes of life. Yet the essential justice meted out, almost unwillingly, to the prosaic, efficient Bolingbioke gives the play a firmness it would otherwise lack, and argues the fundamental soundness of the author's philosophy. Editions of
II> published. before Queen Elizabeth's death in 1603 omitted the abdication scene (IV, i 154— 318) out of respect for the queen's objection to such themes. On 7 Feb. 1601, adherents of the Earl of Essex attempted to move public opinion in favor of their purposed insurrection by securing the performance of what was then an old play uof King Harry the Fourth and the killing of King Richard the Second.* This was acted at the Globe, and also, it is said, sin open streets and houses.* The play in question (which failed of its design to predispose the people toward the queen's deposition) can hardly have been any ,other than Shakespeare's