From the publication of the first volumes in 1984 the General Editor of the New Cambridge Shakespeare was Philip Brockbank and the Associate General Editors were Brian Gibbons and Robin Hood. From 1990 to 1994 the General Editor was Brian Gibbons and the Associate General Editors were A. R. Braunmuller and Robin Hood.
Is a major new addition to the Shakespearean canon. Presenting this fully annotated, modern-spelling text of Edward Ⅲ, Giorgio Melchiori does not claim that Shakespeare is the sole author, but author of a significant part of the play, the extent of which is discussed in detail.
The Introduction explores the historical background and the genesis of the play in the context of contemporary theatrical practice and of Shakespeare’s own early cycle of history plays. It stresses the original ideological stance and the theatrical qualities of the play as a whole. The Commentary examines in depth the play’s linguistic and poetical features, while an extensive appendix on the use of sources explains the stages of its composition.
All’s Well That Ends Well, edited by Russell Fraser
Antony and Cleopatra, edited by David Bevington
As You Like It, edited by Michael Hattaway
The Comedy of Errors, edited by T. S. Dorsch
Coriolanus, edited by Lee Bliss
Cymberline, edited by Martin Butler
Hamlet, edited by Philip Edwards
Julius Caesar, edited by Marvin Spevack
King Edward Ⅲ, edited by Giorgio Melchiori
The First Part of King Henry IV, edited by Herbert Weil and Judith Weil
The Second Part of King Henry IV, edited by Giorgio Melchiori
King Henry Ⅴ, edited by Andrew Gurr
The First Part of King Henry Ⅵ, edited by Michael Hattaway
The Second Part of King Henry Ⅵ, edited by Michael Hattaway
The Third Part of King Henry Ⅵ, edited by Michael Hattaway
King Henry Ⅷ, edited by John Margeson
King John, edited by L. A. Beaurline
The Tragedy of King Lear, edited by Jay L. Halio
King Richard Ⅱ, edited by Andrew Gurr
King Richard III, edited by Janis Lull
Love’s Labour’s Lost, edited by William C. Carroll
Macbeth, edited by A. R. Braunmuller
Measure for Measure, edited by Brian Gibbons
The Merchant of Venice, edited by M. M. Mahood
The Merry Wives of Windsor, edited by David Crane
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, edited by R. A. Foakes
Much Ado About Nothing, edited by F. H. Mares
Othello, edited by Norman Sanders
Pericles, edited by Doreen DelVecchio and Antony Hammond
The Poems, edited by John Roe
Romeo and Juliet, edited by G. Blakemore Evans
The Sonnets, edited by G. Blakemore Evans
The Taming of the Shrew, edited by Ann Thompson
Timon of Athens, edited by Karl Klein
Titus Andronicus, edited by Alan Hughes
Twelfth Night, edited by Elizabeth Story Donno
The Two Gentlemen of Verona, edited by Kurt Schlueter
The Two Noble Kinsmen, edited by Robert Kean Turner and Patricia Tatspaugh
The Winter’s Tale, edited by Susan Snyder and Deborah T. Curren-Aquino
The First Quarto of Hamlet, edited by Kathleen O. Irace
The First Quarto of King Henry V, edited by Andrew Gurr
The First Quarto of King Lear, edited by Jay L. Halio
The First Quarto of King Richard III, edited by Peter Davison
The First Quarto of Othello, edited by Scott McMillin
The First Quarto of Romeo and Juliet, edited by Lukas Erne
The Taming of a Shrew: The 1594 Quarto, edited by Stephen Roy Miller
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© Cambridge University Press 1998
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First published 1990
9th printing 2012
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List of illustrations
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vii |
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Preface
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ix |
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List of abbreviations and conventions
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xi |
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Introduction
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1 |
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Date and destination
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3 |
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Authorship
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9 |
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The genesis of Edward Ⅲ: a Garter Play
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17 |
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From sources to structure
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25 |
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The final version of the Countess scenes: ideological ambiguity
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36 |
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The play in the context of the histories
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39 |
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The play on the stage
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45 |
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Note on the text
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52 |
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List of characters
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56 |
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The Play
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59 |
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Textual analysis
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171 |
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The use of sources
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178 |
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Act 1
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178 |
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Act 2
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188 |
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Act 3
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199 |
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Acts 4 and 5
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207 |
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The Reign of King Edward Ⅲ rearranged according to historical chronology
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216 |
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Reading list
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217 |
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1 A battle at sea. From BL Royal MS. 14 e Ⅳ fo.276r (by courtesy of the British Library Board)
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4 |
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2 The coronation of King Edward Ⅲ. From MS. 20 fo.68r (c. 1330) in the Parker Library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge (by
permission of the Master and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge)
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18 |
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3 King Edward Ⅲ in full regalia. From BL Stowe MS. 594 fo.7v (by courtesy of the British Library Board)
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20 |
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4 Table: Intermarriages between the Houses of England and France.
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26 |
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5 English troops embarking for France. From BL Royal MS. 18 ei fo.103v (by courtesy of the British Library Board)
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29 |
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6 Gold noble first minted in 1344. From a copy of the 1351 issue in the British Museum (by courtesy of the Trustees of the British
Museum)
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30 |
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7 Map of the English campaigns in France, 1346 and 1356 (based on H. J. Hewitt The Organization of War under Edward Ⅲ, 1966, and Michael Prestwich, The Three Edward, 1980)
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31 |
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8 Map of the battle of Crécy (based on John Laffin, Brassey’s Battles (Brassey’s Defence Publishers, 1986), p. 131)
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32 |
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9 Map of the battle of Poitiers (based on John Laffin, Brassey’s Battles (Brassey’s Defence Publishers, 1986), p. 339)
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34 |
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10 The surrender of the burghers of Calais. From MS. 6, fo.218v in Lambeth Palace Library (by courtesy of the Archbishop of Canterbury
and the Trustees of the Lambeth Palace Library)
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40 |
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11 The arms of England, from c. 1337
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42 |
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12 The arms of the Pelham family, from c. 1357
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43 |
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13 The Pelican emblem, in Geoffrey Whitney, A Choice of Emblemes and other Deuises (Leyden, 1586), p. 87. From a copy in Cambridge University Library, class-mark sss-22.24 (Cambridge University Library Photographic Service)
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44 |
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14 Act 2, Scene 2. Ian McCulloch as King Edward and Annabel Leventon as the Countess in Toby Robertson’s 1987 Theatr Clwyd production
(photo: Phil Cutts)
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47 |
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15 Act 4, Scene 7. Colin Hurley as Prince Edward, Jonathan Burn as King John, Sam Howard as Philip in the 1987 production (photo:
Phil Cutts)
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49 |
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16 Act 5, Scene 1. Zoë Hicks as Queen Philippa and Ian McCulloch as the king in the 1987 production (photo: Phil Cutts)
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50 |
The Reign of King Edward the third appeared only once in a collected edition of Shakespeare’s works: it happened about one hundred and twenty years ago, when F. J. Furnivall included in his Leopold Shakespeare (London: Cassell, 1877) the text edited by Nicolaus Delius as the first in his collection of Pseudo-Shakespere’sche Dramen (1854). In this edition for the New Cambridge Shakespeare Edward Ⅲ could therefore be presented as ‘[a]n early play restored to the canon’ – a claim appearing on the dust-jacket of a book published when the present volume had already been handed in to Cambridge University Press: Shakespeare’s Edward Ⅲ, edited by Eric Sams (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1996). I regret that Sams’s edition came too late for me to take it into account in my Introduction and Commentary; but his many articles and papers, and especially his The Real Shakespeare: Retrieving the Early Years (1564–94) (Yale, 1995) had made me familiar with the substance of his arguments, claiming not only Edward Ⅲ, but also Edmund Ironside and the so-called ‘bad’ quarto versions of the Folio plays as ‘Shakespeare’s own, unaided work’. Sams implies that the greatness of a writer consists in being the sole author of the works assigned to him. In fact the greatness of a man of the theatre like Shakespeare consists in his being able to coordinate and impose his personal imprint onto the work and the language of a number of collaborators in the creation of that everchanging event: a play on the stage.
This is why, when in 1975 I was asked to submit a plan for an Italian edition of Shakespeare’s complete plays, I decided that, besides the thirty-six Folio plays, Pericles, and The Two Noble Kinsmen, accepted in all recent editions of the Collected Works, the last volume of my Teatro completo di Shakespeare (comprising the histories that were not part of the traditional tetralogies) should include full texts of two plays in which Shakespeare had surely had a hand: Sir Thomas More and Edward Ⅲ. The Shakespearean contributions should be presented in their natural context, rather than as mere excerpts (as happens, in the case of More, in several modern editions). The volume (I Drammi Storici, Tomo Terzo) appeared in 1991, and in the meantime I had edited, with Vittorio Gabrieli, Sir Thomas More for the Revels Plays (Manchester University Press, 1990), presenting it as a play by Anthony Munday revised by several other dramatists including Shakespeare. But the work done in preparing my Italian version of Edward Ⅲ convinced me that the extent and the quality of Shakespeare’s contribution to the creation of this collaborative play gave it as much right to ‘canonical’ status as that enjoyed not only by Pericles or The Two Noble Kinsmen, but also by some of the Folio plays, such as on the one hand the early 1 Henry Ⅵ and on the other the late Henry Ⅷ.
My first debt is to the staff of the publishing house Mondadori, particularly to the late Luciano De Maria, who made my undertaking of editing a bilingual version of Shakespeare’s plays possible, and to Richard Proudfoot who, as soon as he heard of my intention of including Edward Ⅲ in it, provided photocopies of both early editions of the play as well as his notes for a collation of the different copies of the 1596 quarto. I feel deeply the loss of my old friends Muriel Bradbrook and John Margeson, to whom I had turned so many times for advice and encouragement, and I shall never forget the indomitable spirit with which the first general editor of the New Cambridge Shakespeare, Philip Brockbank, pursued his task till the end. I am grateful to his successor Brian Gibbons for agreeing to include Edward Ⅲ in the series, and to Albert Braunmuller, who devoted so much time, patience and scholarship to editing my manuscript, correcting my mistakes and making a number of new suggestions. It goes without saying that the remaining faults are all of my own making.
It is with great pleasure that I acknowledge the generosity of many scholars who, upon learning that I was engaged in this edition, not only helped me with suggestions and advice, but let me see in advance (as in the case of Jonathan Hope, Roger Prior, G. Blakemore Evans) the relevant parts of their works in progress or just completed. My only regret is that I saw the proofs of the valuable new edition of Edward Ⅲ for the revised and enlarged Riverside Shakespeare too late for me to take it into account. To Miss Maire Jean Steadman I am deeply indebted: she provided, through the kindness of director Raymond Raikes, the original script of his remarkable 1963 radio production of the play. Director Toby Robertson was most helpful in providing photographs of his Theatr Clwyd production which I had had the privilege of seeing in 1983 in the improbable Mediterranean setting of Taormina.
As always, the staff of the University Library and of the English Faculty Library in Cambridge, where I did most of my work, with occasional forays into the British Library, helped me at all stages, and so did Sarah Stanton at the Press; I am also thankful to Margaret Berrill for the last and most delicate stage of all: the final copyediting of the typescript. None of this could have been possible without the generous hospitality of our old friend Doreen Brockbank in Stratford, and the constant welcome, summer after summer, of the President, members and staff of Clare Hall, Cambridge – though on our last visit we sadly missed the companionship of John Garrod, for many years the college Bursar.
At the 1996 Shakespeare Conference in Stratford I was able to tell Kenneth Muir, whose treatment of Edward Ⅲ in his Shakespeare as Collaborator (1960) had provided the basic approach to my edition of the play, that I had completed a work to which he repeatedly lent his help. I dedicate it to his memory.
G.M.