Did Shakespeare Use a Manuscript of Samuel Daniel's Civil Wars to Write Richard II? (HLQ Summer 2020) - P

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Did Shakespeare Use a Manuscript of Samuel Daniel's Civil Wars to Write Richard II? (HLQ Summer 2020) - p. 1

Article in Huntington Library Quarterly · November 2020 DOI: 10.1353/hlq.2020.0009

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David Weiss Georgia Gwinnett College

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ABSTRACT Evidence indicates that Shakespeare may have used a scribal version of Samuel Daniel’s The Civil Wars, rather than the first printed edition, while writing Richard II. There are two extant manuscripts of portions of Daniel’s epic poem. A never-printed stanza in one manuscript employs imagery similar to Shakespeare’s to describe the same invented episode. To investigate possible influence, this essay assesses the dates of the manuscripts, analyzes variants from the printed edition, evaluates the shared imagery, and considers how Shakespeare’s possible use of a manuscript impacts the dating of Richard II. It also identifies social connections between the authors that explain how the playwright could have obtained access to an early version of the poet’s work. Keywords: Shakespearean printed and manuscript sources; sixteenth-century manuscript culture; Henry Wriothesley; Fulke Greville; John Florio; dating of Shakespeare’s plays

• Shakespeare scholars generally agree that the playwright used Samuel Daniel’s The First Four Books of the Civil Wars as a source for Richard II.1 Critical editions of Richard II cite the 1595 publication of the initial installment of Daniel’s epic poem, The Civil Wars, as determining the earliest possible date of the play, implying that Shakespeare referred to the first printed edition of Daniel’s work while writing

1. Samuel Daniel, The First Fowre Bookes of the ciuile warres betweene the two houses of Lancaster and Yorke (London, 1595; ESTC S108821). I use modernized spelling when referring to titles, unless I am designating a specific edition. I also use the title The Civil Warsgeneri - cally to refer to all editions of the poem, which Daniel revised and supplemented three times between 1595 and 1609. For the relationship between The Civil Wars and Richard II, see Samuel Daniel, The Civil Wars, ed. Laurence Michel (New Haven, Conn., 1958), 7–21; George M. Logan, “Lucan—Daniel—Shakespeare: New Light on the Relation between The Civil Wars and Richard II,” Shakespeare Studies 9 (1976): 121–40; and William Shakespeare, King Richard II, ed. Charles Forker, Arden Shakespeare, 3rd ser. (London, 2002), 140–44.

huntington library quarterly | vol. 83, no. 2 • 235 Pp. 235–267. © 2020 by Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery. issn 0018-7895 | e-issn 1544-399x. All rights reserved. For permission to photocopy or reproduce article content, consult the University of Pennsylvania Press Rights and Permissions website, http://journals.pennpress.org/rights-and-permissions-policy/.

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