From The Library of Literary Criticism of English and American Authors, ed. Charles Wells Moulton, 8 vols. (London: Moulton Publishing, 1901), 1: 476-77.
RICHARD II.
1598
THE | TRAGEDIE OF KING RI | CHARD THE SE | COND. | As it hath beene publikely acted | by the right Honourable the | Lorde Chamberlaine his Ser | uants. | LONDON | Printed by Valentine Simmes for Andrew Wise, and | are to be sold at his | shop in Paules church yard at | the signe of the Angel. | 1597. -- TITLE PAGE OF FIRST EDITION, 1597.
This play is one of those which Shakspeare has apparently revised; but as success in works of invention is not always proportionate to labour, it is not finished at last with the happy force of some other of his tragedies, nor can be said much to affect the passions, or enlarge the understanding. -- JOHNSON, SAMUEL, 1768, General Observations on Shakspeare's Plays.
We cannot suppose a more awful and affecting transaction, than a prince brought before his subjects, compelled to deprive himself of his royalty, and to resign his crown to the popular claimant, his near relation. This is a subject worthy the genius of Shakspeare: and yet it must be confessed, he has fallen infinitely short of his usual powers to excite that tumult of passion which the action merited; he was ever too fond of quibble and conceit, but here he has indulged himself beyond his usual predilection for them; and I cannot help thinking, from this circumstance alone, that "Richard II" was written and acted much earlier than the date in the stationers books of 1597. -- DAVIES, THOMAS, 1784, Dramatic Miscellanies, vol. I, p. 169.
Certainly we cannot trace in it his usual force, either as to the characters or the language. The probability is that it was written in a hurry, which by the way is no excuse, and, as the circumstances are wholly taken from the historians and chroniclers of that day, many passages may have been literally transplanted from the history to the play. This having been done, the subject was found so unproductive that the author never thought it worth his while to finish it; and then the utmost we can say is that Shakespear was to blame for letting a play come forward unworthy of his reputation. -- DIBDIN, CHARLES, 1796, A Complete History of the Stage, vol. III, p. 68.
In itself, and for the closet, I feel no hesitation in placing it as the first and most admirable of all Shakspere's purely historical plays. -- COLERIDGE, SAMUEL TAYLOR, 1818, Lectures and Notes on Shakspere, ed. Ashe, p. 256.
He who had given old Lear, in his misery, so many noble and faithful friends, could not find one for Richard; the king had fallen, stripped and naked, into the hands of the poet, as he fell from his throne; and in himself alone the poet has been obliged to seek all his resources; the character of Richard II. is, therefore, one of the profoundest conceptions of Shakspeare. -- GUIZOT, FRANCOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME, 1821-52, Shakspeare and His Times, p. 308.
It is this wonderful subjection of the poetical power to the higher law of truth to the poetical truth, which is the highest truth, comprehending and expounding the historical truth -- which must furnish the clue to the proper understanding of the drama of "Richard II." It appears to us that, when the poet first undertook
"to ope
The purple testament of bleeding war." --
to unfold the roll of the causes and consequences of that usurpation of the house of Lancaster which plunged three or four generations of Englishmen in bloodshed and misery -- he approached the subject with an inflexibility of purpose as totally removed as it was possible to be from the levity of a partisan. -- KNIGHT, CHARLES, 1849, Studies of Shakspere, bk. iv, ch. I, p. 152.
Beyond the scattered touches and the insinuations which denote the inability of the king, and his wavering between unseasonable power and weakness, the poet has chosen only one event for greater dramatic prominence, and with this the catastrophe of Richard's fate is united, namely, the knightly quarrel between Bolingbroke and Norfolk with which the play begins. . . . Shakespeare writes here an immortal lesson upon the royalty of God's grace and the law of inviolability. -- GERVINUS, G. G., 1849-62, Shakespeare Commentaries, tr. Bunnett, pp. 284, 288.
"Richard II." is one of those plays of Shakespeare's which have never taken firm hold of the stage. Its exclusively political action and its lack of female characters are mainly to blame for this. But it is exceedingly interesting as his first attempt at independent treatment of a historical theme, and it rises far above the play which served as its model. -- BRANDES GEORGE, 1898, William Shakespeare, A Critical Study, vol. I. p. 143.
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