Page:Richard III (1927) Yale.djvu/193

Life and Death of Richard the Third

Other contemporary references may be found in J. Munro, The Shakespeare Allusion Book, 1909. On the other hand, we possess today no account of an Elizabethan performance of this tragedy, and but one dated reference to a performance before the closing of the theatres in 1642. In Sir Henry Herbert's Office Book for the year 1633 there is a note to the effect that Richard III was played at St. James' on November 17, before Charles I and Henrietta Maria. In a prologue prefixed to the 1641 edition of Chapman's Bussy D'Ambois, one of the actors is recommended because "as Richard he was liked."

When the theatres were reopened after the Restoration, although many of Shakespeare's plays (freely revised or adapted, it is true) were played, there is no record of Richard III. The character of Richard, however, continued to appear in plays by other dramatists, notably in John Crowne's Henry the Sixth, The Second Part, or The Misery of Civil War (1681), and John Caryl's The English Princess, or The Death of Richard the Third (1667). Thomas Betterton (c. 1685–1710), the famous actor of this period, played the Richard of The English Princess. Samuel Pepys saw this play on March 7, 1667: "a most sad, melancholy play, and pretty good; but nothing eminent in it, as some tragedys are." In Crowne's drama Betterton played the Earl of Warwick.

On July 9, 1700, Colley Cibber's famous revision of Richard III was produced at Drury Lane, a version of the tragedy destined to hold the stage until today. Cibber (1671–1757) himself played Richard in his own version at various revivals up until 1783, and once thereafter (1739). There is not space here to include an analysis of Cibber's version; the text of it may be