Chapter 11 - The Origins of Richard Duke of York

Summary

Randall Martin and others have argued that Shakespeare revised 3 Henry VI after his composition of Richard III to consolidate the early history plays as a sequence. Meanwhile, recent attribution studies argue that Shakespeare originally wrote 3 Henry VI in collaboration with one or more other dramatists, making little or no contribution to Acts 1 and 4. If these arguments are correct, the older hypothesis that the first edition issued in 1595 as The True Tragedy of Richard Duke of York is a memorial reconstruction begins to look vulnerable. If it is shorter and less Shakespearean, some possible reasons for these characteristics other than derivative reconstruction are now evident. This chapter will agree with the arguments for collaboration in both versions, and for revision in one. But it will reassert the necessity of regarding Richard Duke of York as a derivative text with a tenuous line of transmission from an authorial script.