Richard II, Part I
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Richard the Second Part One and Thomas of Woodstock are two common names for an untitled, anonymous and incomplete manuscript of an Elizabethan play depicting events in the reign of King Richard II. Its main claim to fame is a suggestion by some scholars that its author was William Shakespeare.
Contents |
[edit] Text
The play survives only as an anonymous, untitled and incomplete manuscript now stored in the Egerton Manuscript Collection, in the British Library. A transcript of the text was published by the Malone Society in 1929, and in fully edited texts by A. P. Rossiter in 1946, Peter Corbin and Douglas Sedge in 2002 and Michael Egan in 2003.
[edit] Title and subject matter
The manuscript has no title. Most scholars who have worked on the play call it by some variation on Richard II, Part One[citation needed], because the play has a close correlation with Shakespeare's Richard II, describing events immediately prior to that play, and providing explanations for the behavior of many of its characters. This title has been criticized as "going too far" because it makes the play's relationship with Shakespeare's play seem definitive, when it is only speculative.[1] A.P. Rossitter prefers to call it Woodstock on the grounds that Woodstock is the hero of the play, not Richard.[2]
[edit] Authorship
Given the play's closeness to the subject matter of Richard II, Shakespeare's authorship has sometimes been suggested, although few of the play's editors support this speculation. The Malone Society editor makes no reference to the Shakespeare theory.[3] A.P. Rossitter states ""There is not the smallest chance that he was Shakespeare", citing the drabness of the verse, while acknowledging that the play's aspirations indicate that "There is something of a simplified Shakespeare" in the author.[4]
Other authors have been suggested. Corbin and Sedge make a case for Samuel Rowley.[5] Louis Ule and John Baker, whose stylometric studies were first to analyze the entire play, rather than samples, claimed a close relationship with the works of Marlowe and Shakespeare and nearly no similarity to the known work of Rowley.[citation needed]
Recently, one editor of the play, Michael Egan has made a case for Shakespeare and not Rowley.[6] Ian Robinson supports the attribution to Shakespeare.[citation needed] However, Ward Elliott has performed stylometric analysis on the manuscript's text that he claims discount Egan's assertion.[citation needed]
[edit] Date
Suggestions about the play's date often depend on the postulated author. The 1929 Malone Society editor states that most scholars place it between 1591 and 1595 composition.[7] Ule and Baker put it more precisely as c. 1582; they believe it was written at Cambridge while Marlowe was there, shortly after he had completed other plays they attribute to him, such as Timon, and The Famous Victories of Henry V[8] Egan dates the play to 1592-1593, while dating the manuscript to 1605.
[edit] Performances
The Hampshire Shakespeare Company, a non-professional theatre in Amherst, Massachusetts, staged the first known American production of "Thomas of Woodstock" in 1999. Local scholar Frederick Carrigg supplied an ending to cover the missing manuscript page(s). Their copy of the script can be found here.
Royal Blood: The Rise and Fall of Kings was a play series of Shakespeare's Wars of the Roses plays staged chronologically over four seasons by Pacific Repertory Theatre from 2001-2004, which included the American professional premieres of both Edward and Richard II, Part 1. They titled the latter Thomas of Woodstock and proposed Shakespeare as its author in their first arc in 2001, consisting of Edward III, Thomas of Woodstock, and Richard II. The next season featured Henry IV (I & II) and Henry V; the third season consisted of Henry VI, (I and II); with the last season consisting of Henry VI, Part III and Richard III. The proposal was controversial, made even more so by the theatre's allegiance to the Oxfordian side of the Shakespeare authorship question.[9]
[edit] References
- ^ Wilhelmina P. Frijlinck, ed. The First Part of the Reign of King Richard II or Thomas of Woodstock. Malone Society, 1929, p.v.
- ^ A.P. Rossitter, Woodstock: A Moral History (London: Chatto & Windus, 1946), p. 26
- ^ Frijlinck, First Part.
- ^ Rossitter, Woodstock, p. 73
- ^ Peter Corbin and Douglas Sedge, Thomas of Woodstock: or, Richard II, Part One (Manchester University Press, 2002).
- ^ Michael Egan, The Tragedy of Richard II: A Newly Authenticated Play by William Shakespeare (Edwin Mellen Press, 2006)
- ^ Frijlinck, First Part., p. xxiii
- ^ Ule, A Concordance to the Shakespeare Apocrypha, which contains an edition of the play and a discussion of its authorship.
- ^ http://www.shaksper.net/archives/2001/2171.html
