Shakespeare’s King Richard II as Prequel.

Standard Citation: Purdy, Gilbert Wesley. “Shakespeare’s King Richard II as Prequel.”. Virtual Grub Street, http://gilbertwesleypurdy.blogspot.com/2018/08/shakespeares-king-richard-ii-as-prequel.html [state date accessed].

The primary differences between The Famous Victories of Henry V and The Chronicle History of Henry V (generally referred to as Henry V) are 1) that the chronicles of Hall and Holinshed have been consulted in the latter play, and 2) that the history of Henry V when Prince Hal is left out of the latter.  As I have pointed out in my Edward de Vere’s Retainer Thomas Churchyard: the Man Who Was Falstaff, the Prince Hal story in 1&2 Henry IV is a much more mature production than Henry V:

Shakespeare’s Henry plays, as we find them in the earliest quarto versions of 1599 and 1600, are written in a combination of blank verse and prose.  The quality of Henry V, as displayed in the first published quarto, was a marked improvement over The Famous Victories but still primitive for Shakespeare.  The most beloved portions are just that: portions.  They are not aspects of a consistently mature Shakespearean whole.  The blank verse is frequently irregular with too short and too long lines.  The maintenance of iambics is constantly ignored or substituted.  Both irregularities are indulged simply in order to get through the given line and on to the next.[1]

Traditionally, the more mature quality of the Henry IV plays are declared to be due to the Henry V quarto being a corrupt transcription by an audience member.  The evidence for this is that Shakespeare was too young to write the play in the period suggested by the text of the quarto (the late 1580s or very early 1590s).  There is not a stitch of evidence beyond that.  But, of course, the text of the quarto should argue when Shakespeare wrote the play rather than the Stratford Shakespeare’s age in the 1580s arguing that the play had to be written later than otherwise indicated.

It is for the same reason, more or less, that we must accept that Richard II was written before Henry V.  When the players replied to the Essex conspirators' request to play Richard II, in the year 1600, speaking of “King Richard as being so old and so long out of use” that it would not attract an audience, they were indeed referring to Shakespeare’s Richard II.  And they knew what they were talking about.

There are several pieces of evidence that indicate Richard II, as we have it, was written around 1588.[2]  First, it is so new to the habit of gleaning the details of history from Holinshed that it varies far less from the chronicle than the other history plays (other than the King John of 1589-90 which was based upon George Peele’s original rather than chronicles).  Shakespeare, at that early point, did not yet know how to do anything more with the chronicles than to obey them closely.  There are no added fictional characters.  There is no comic relief.  He did not know how to make a history play more compelling than the underlying chronicles.  Second, it is entirely in verse, a brief phase that Shakespeare went through with the two plays (and some part of Pericles?) following the example of Peele.[3]  Third, both the first version of King John (only minor touches by Shakespeare) and Richard II show unmistakable signs of having been co-written with George Peele.  Neither shows signs of Robert Greene or Christopher Marlowe.  Greene and Marlowe together with Shakespeare and Peele mark publication dates between 1589 and Greene’s death in 1592 (i.e. the Contention plays, The True Tragedy of Richard the Third, Titus Andronicus, possibly 1&2 Henry VI).

The fourth reason that Richard II was written around 1588 is a shocking one.  It is written as a prequel to The Famous Victories.  The  reason it was also referred to by the Essex players as Henry IV is because it is the story of Henry IV as much as Richard II.  Not only that but it introduced the idea of the young Prince Hal (the future Henry V) as a rakish, swaggering, cursing, denizen of the stews:

Percy. His answer was,—he would unto the stews,

And from the common'st creature pluck a glove,

And wear it as a favour; and with that

He would unhorse the lustiest challenger.[4]

This Prince Hal bears only a distant relationship to the version in the Henry IV plays (written circa 1596).[5]  He’s a much cruder guy.  In fact, he is as crude as the Prince Hal depicted at the beginning of The Famous Victories.  The end of Richard II dovetails into the beginning of The Famous Victories.  It is a perfect fit.

But what of the Folio version of The Chronicle History of Henry V with its hotly debated choruses at the beginning of each act?  The expanded text is the text we have come to respect so highly, to consider one of the great plays of the language.  But choruses were outdated even by the 1580s.  How do the pieces fit together with a Henry V written in 1589-90?

Henry V was the great hero of the English people.  The topic was perfect for the opening day of the Globe Theater.[6]  Shakespeare had no time and/or inclination, it would seem, to rewrite the entire old play, in order to updated it and back-fit a full storyline for Falstaff.  Instead he revised key scenes that we have come to think of as having always been part of the play and added the choruses in order to cover the gaps that time and revision had made in the play… and in order to give the world some of the finest poetry in the English language:

Chorus. O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend

The brightest heaven of invention,

A kingdom for a stage, princes to act

And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!

Then should the warlike Harry, like himself,

Assume the port of Mars; and at his heels,

Leash'd in like hounds, should famine, sword and fire

Crouch for employment. But pardon, gentles all,

The flat unraised spirits that have dared

On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth

So great an object: can this cockpit hold

The vasty fields of France? or may we cram

Within this wooden O the very casques

That did affright the air at Agincourt?

                        *

Suppose within the girdle of these walls

Are now confined two mighty monarchies,…

---

[1] Purdy, Gilbert Wesley. Edward de Vere’s Retainer Thomas Churchyard: the Man Who was Falstaff. 17.

[2] Rolfe, William. “Introduction,”  Shakespeare's Works, Vol. VI. King John. King Richard II. Ed. William J. Rolfe. Citing: Coleridge “Notes and Lectures upon Shakespeare.” Works (Harper's edition), vol. iv. p. 119 foll.  “I feel no hesitation in placing it as the first and most admirable of all Shakespeare's purely historical plays.”

[3] Shakespeare’s / Vere’s prose phase was considerably longer but none of the plays except for The Famous Victories (which appears to have been the last) is presently extant.

[4] Richard II. V.iii.

[5] See my Edward de Vere’s Retainer Thomas Churchyard: the Man Who Was Falstaff.

[6] It need not have been the opening day but it does seem the perfect choice.

• Stratford Shakespeare’s Undersized Grave.  July 22, 2018.  “Mr. Coll’s considers this evidence to support an old rumor that Shakspere’s head had been stolen in 1794.  But I submit that he is merely making his observation based upon a coincidence.”

• Thomas Churchyard in The Merry Wives of Windsor. June 04, 2018. “The idea of this stratagem, &c. might have been adopted from part of the entertainment prepared by Thomas Churchyard for Queen Elizabeth at Norwich:…”

• Let the sky rain potatoes! December 16, 2017. "In fact, the sweet potato had only just begun to be a delicacy within the reach of splurging poets and playwrights and members of the middle classes at the time that The Merry Wives of Windsor (the play from which Falstaff is quoted) was written.  The old soldier liked to keep abreast of the new fads."

• Check out the English Renaissance Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time and about the Shakespeare Authorship Question.