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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
The chief source of Shakespeare's tragedy of Richard the Third has long been acknowledged to be either Hall's or Holinshed's prose Chronicle. In addition, some echoes have been discovered in it of the Latin tragedy, Richardus Tertius, of the anonymous English True Tragedie of Richard the Third, and of Marlowe's play, Edward the Second. But for one of the longest and most impressive scenes in Shakespeare's drama, that in which Clarence in prison meets his death at the hands of two ruffians hired for the deed by his brother, the Duke of Gloucester, no source is generally known. For the basis of the entire scene, Hall's Chronicle, which is so close akin to most situations in the play, contains of Clarence's death merely the statement that “attainted was he by parliament and iudged to death, and there vpon hastely drowned in a butte of malmesey within the towre of London.” Mr. P. A. Daniel expresses the common opinion of Shakespearian scholars to-day in saying, “Shakespeare seems to have been indebted to his own imagination only, for the scene of Clarence in prison, his beautiful narrative of his dream, and the less happy dialogue of the murderers.”
page 117 note 1 The whole subject of sources has been minutely examined by Professor G. B. Churchill in his volume, Richard III up to Shakespeare, Palaestra, No. 10, Berlin, 1900. “Source of the Plot” likewise occupies almost a hundred fine-print pages of the Appendix in Furness's Variorum Richard the Third, Philadelphia, 1908.
page 118 note 1 Quoted by Furness, p. 465. Holinshed at this point uses practically the same words. It should be added that Churchill shows that Shakespeare was not the first to charge Gloucester with responsibility for this murder, but that popular tradition had already fixed the crime on him.
page 118 note 2 Introduction to Griggs's Facsimile Edition, p. xv, quoted by Furness, p. 117.
page 118 note 3 I am not aware that the matter has been discussed in print save by two scholars. Thirty-five years ago, H. F. von Friesen, writing of the older Leir in his Shakespeare-Studien, iii, p. 86, declared: “In der Scene, wo beide der von Ragan gedungene Mörder findet, wird man zwar oberflächlich an die Scene zwischen Clarence und den Mördern in Richard III erinnert, aber es kommt nicht im Entferntesten zu einer ähnlichen Erschütterung.” Much more recently Dr. Wilfrid Perrett in The Story of King Lear from Geoffrey of Monmouth to Shakespeare (Palaestra, No. 35, Berlin, 1904, pp. 113-114), pointed out some of the verbal parallels noted below, and stated that he was “inclined to think” Shakespeare met with the Leir previously to writing Richard the Third. But neither von Friesen nor Perrett is mentioned by Furness. Even Dr. Sidney Lee in his modern text of Leir, which shows so much debt to Perrett, ignores the subject of Richard III. My own evidence was collected before I saw the observations of either of my forerunners.
Dr. Alice I. P. Wood in her Stage History of King Richard the Third (Columbia University Studies in English, New York, 1909), pp. 34-5, classes the scene as an imitation of Edward the Second, and speaks of “the strange introduction of the grotesquely humorous conversation of the murderers before the deed, a touch entirely lacking in any of the similar scenes in other plays.” It is not lacking in the King Leir.
page 119 note 1 So Ff. Qq. have “Brokenbury.” I am following Neilson's text of Richard III, which is based on the Folio.
page 124 note 1 In Dr. Sidney Lee's recent modernized text, which is here followed, it is Act IV, Scene vii. In the Malone Society reprint of the play, it is Scene xix, 11. 1431 ff.
page 132 note 1 Cf. a later allusion to this scene (v, 10, 93):
“But never wake more till the latter day.”
page 134 note 1 Shakespeare Jahrbuch, vii, p. 158. Perrett, op. cit., p. 144, though he notes the parallel from Leir, is apparently ignorant of the Quarto reading; for it would strengthen his cause much more than does the Folio, which he quotes.
page 136 note 1 In reviewing Lee's edition of King Leir, Modern Language Review, v, p. 516.
page 139 note 1 Given in Thoms's Early English Prose Romances, Revised and Enlarged Edition, Early Novelists, ed. E. A. Baker, London, pp. 311-2.