Page:Richard III (1927) Yale.djvu/192



The date of composition of the play, from internal critical evidence, is about the year 1593. The first Quarto appeared in 1597, and editions were frequent thereafter.

The popularity of Richard III on the Elizabethan stage appears to have been great, judging from the number of contemporary references and the frequent parodies of the line "A horse! a horse! My kingdom for a horse!" Richard Burbage (c. 1567–1619) probably was the creator of the rôle; in any event there are important contemporary references to his interpretation of Richard. In the Return from Parnassus (1601), Pt. 2, IV. iii. Burbage is portrayed as examining a Cambridge student in the art of acting, making him declaim the opening soliloquy of Richard III. Manningham's Diary for March 13, 1602, refers to an anecdote "vpon a tyme when Burbidge played Richard III." Bishop Corbet's Iter Boreale (written before 1635) particularly notes the fame of Burbage's Richard:

In 1619 a Funeral Elegy on Burbage came out, a poem extant in more than one version, containing a reference to his Richard.