Edward III (play)

Title page of the first quarto (1596)

The Reign of King Edward the Third is an Elizabethan play printed anonymously in 1596. It has frequently been claimed that it was at least partly written by William Shakespeare, a view that Shakespeare scholars have increasingly endorsed. The rest of the play was probably written by Thomas Kyd. The play contains many gibes at Scotland and the Scottish people, which has led some critics to think that it is the work that incited George Nicolson, Queen Elizabeth's agent in Edinburgh, to protest against the portrayal of Scots on the London stage in a 1598 letter to William Cecil, Lord Burghley. This would explain why the play was not included in the First Folio of Shakespeare's works, which was published after the Scottish King James had succeeded to the English throne in 1603.

Characters

Alex Peckman as the Earl of Warrick and Julie Hughett as Countess of Salisbury in the Carmel Shakespeare Festival production of Edward III, August, 2001.

The English

• King Edward III
• Queen Philippa, his wife, pregnant with John of Gaunt (usually referred to by the two-syllable French "Philippe" for scansion purposes)
• Edward, the Black Prince of Wales, their son
• The Earl of Salisbury (doing many things Sir Walter de Manny did in real life, as he was deceased by the events of the second half of the play),
• The Countess of Salisbury, his wife
• The Earl of Warwick, her father (fictitiously)
• William Montague, Salisbury's nephew
• The Earl of Derby
• Lord Audley (portrayed as an old man, though he was historically no older than 30 at the time of the play)
• Lord Percy
• John Copland, an esquire, later Sir John Copland
• Lodowick, Kind Edward's secretary
• Two Esquires
• A Herald

Supporters of the English

• Robert, Count of Artois and Earl of Richmond (historically deceased)
• Lord Mountford, Duke of Brittany
• Gobin de Grace, a French prisoner

The French

• King John II
• Prince Charles, Duke of Normandy, his son
• Prince Philip, his youngest son (historically not yet born)
• The Duke of Lorraine
• Villiers, a Norman Lord (an unnamed "knight of Normandy" in Froissart)
• The Captain of Calais
• Another Captain
• A Mariner
• Three Heralds
• Two Citizens from Crécy
• Three other Frenchmen
• A Woman with two children
• Six wealthy citizens of Calais
• Six poor Frenchmen of Calais

Supporters of the French

• The King of Bohemia
• A Polonian Captain
• Danish troops

The Scots

• King David, Bruce of Scotland
• Sir William Douglas
• Two Messengers

Synopsis

Edward the Black Prince (David Mendolsohn) in the American Professional premiere of Edward III, staged by Pacific Repertory Theatre in August, 2001.

The plot of the play consists of two distinct parts. The first is centred on the Countess of Salisbury (the wife of the Earl of Salisbury), who, beset by rampaging Scots, is rescued by King Edward III, who then proceeds to woo her himself. In an attempted bluff, the Countess vows to take the life of her husband if Edward will take the life of his wife. However, when she sees that Edward finds the plan morally acceptable, she ultimately threatens to take her own life if he does not stop his pursuit. Finally, Edward expresses great shame, admits his fault and acquiesces.

In the second part of the play, in several scenes reminiscent of Henry V, Edward joins his army in France, fighting a war to claim the French throne. The play switches between the French and English camps, where the apparent hopelessness of the English campaign is contrasted with the arrogance of the French. Much of the action is focused on young Edward, the Black Prince, who broods on the morality of war before achieving victory against seemingly insurmountable odds.

Sources

Like most of Shakespeare's history plays, the source is Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles, while Jean Froissart's Chronicles is also a major source for this play. Roger Prior has argued that the playwright had access to Lord Hunsdon's personal copy of Froissart and quoted some of Hunsdon's annotations. A significant portion of the part usually attributed to Shakespeare, the wooing of the Countess of Salisbury, is based on Novel 46, "The Countesse of Salesberrie" by William Painter in Palace of Pleasure. Unlike Painter, who wrote Edward as a bachelor and the Countess as a widow, the author of the play is aware that both are married at the time, and Edward tries to get the countess to make a pact with him in which each kills the other's spouse and tries to make it look like a double suicide. Melchiori (p. 104) points out the similarity of the playwright's language to that of Painter in spite of the plotting differences.

Authorship

In 1596, Edward III was published anonymously. which was not uncommon in the 1590s. The principal arguments against Shakespeare's authorship are its not being included in the First Folio of Shakespeare's plays in 1623, and its being unmentioned in Francis Meres' Palladis Tamia (1598), a work that lists many (but not all) of Shakespeare's early plays. Also, some critics view the play as not worthy of Shakespeare's writing ability. Despite this, many critics have seen some passages as having a Shakespearean ring to them. In 1760, noted Shakespearean editor Edward Capell included the play in his Prolusions; or, Select Pieces of Ancient Poetry, Compil'd with great Care from their several Originals, and Offer'd to the Publicke as Specimens of the Integrity that should be Found in the Editions of worthy Authors, and concluded that it had been written by Shakespeare. However, Capell's conclusion was not embraced by scholars.

In recent years, professional Shakespeare scholars have increasingly reviewed the work with a new eye, and have concluded that some passages are as sophisticated as any of Shakespeare's early histories, especially King John and the Henry VI plays. In addition, passages in the play are direct quotes from Shakespeare's sonnets. Stylistic analysis has also produced evidence that at least some scenes were written by Shakespeare. In the Textual Companion to the Oxford Complete Works of Shakespeare, Gary Taylor states that "of all the non-canonical plays, [Edward III] has the strongest claim to inclusion in the Complete Works" (the play was subsequently edited by William Montgomery and included in the second edition of the Oxford Complete Works, 2005). The first major publishing house to produce an edition of the play was Cambridge University Press as part of its New Cambridge Shakespeare series. Since then, an edition of the Riverside Shakespeare has included the play, and plans are afoot for the Arden Shakespeare and Oxford Shakespeare series to publish editions. Giorgio Melchiori, editor of the New Cambridge edition, asserts that the play's disappearance from the canon is probably due to a 1598 protest at the play's portrayal of the Scottish. According to Melchiori, scholars have often assumed that this play, the title of which was not stated in the letter of 15 April 1598 from George Nicolson (Elizabeth I's Edinburgh agent) to Lord Burghley noting the public unrest, was a comedy (one that does not survive), but the play's portrayal of Scots is so virulent that it is likely that the play was, officially or unofficially, banned, and left forgotten by Heminges and Condell. (Melchiori, 12–13)

Some scholars, notably Eric Sams, have argued that the play is entirely by Shakespeare, but today, scholarly opinion is divided, with many researchers asserting that the play is an early collaborative work, of which Shakespeare wrote only a few scenes.

In 2009, Brian Vickers published the results of a computer analysis, with a program designed to detect plagiarism, which suggest that 40% of the play was written by Shakespeare with the other scenes written by Thomas Kyd (1558–1594).

Harold Bloom rejects the theory that Shakespeare wrote Edward III, on the grounds that he finds "nothing in the play representative of the dramatist who had written Richard III."

Attributions

• George Peele — Tucker Brooke (1908)
• Christopher Marlowe, with Robert Greene, George Peele, and Thomas Kyd — J.M. Robertson (1924)
• Michael Drayton— E.A. Gerard (1928) and H.W. Crundell (1939)
• Robert Wilson — S.R. Golding (1929)
• William Shakespeare — A.S. Cairncross (1935)
• Thomas Kyd — W. Wells (1940) and G. Lambrechts (1963)
• Robert Greene — R.G. Howarth (1964)
• William Shakespeare — Elliott Slater (1988), Eric Sams (1996)
• William Shakespeare and one other — Jonathan Hope (1994)
• William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe — Robert A.J. Matthews and Thomas V.N. Merriam (1994)
• William Shakespeare and others (not Marlowe) — Giorgio Melchiori (1998)
• Thomas Kyd (60%) and William Shakespeare (40%) — Brian Vickers (2009)

Performance

According to Melchiori (pgs 46–51), the first contemporary performance of the play was on 6 March 1911, when the Elizabethan Stage Society performed Act 2 at the Little Theatre in London. Following this, the BBC broadcast an abridged version of the play in 1963, with complete performances taking place in Los Angeles in 1986 (as part of a season of Shakespeare Apocrypha) and Mold in 1987.

In 1998, Cambridge University Press became the first major publisher to produce an edition of the play under Shakespeare's name, and shortly afterward, the Royal Shakespeare Company performed the play (to mixed reviews). In 2001, the American professional premiere was staged by Pacific Repertory Theatre's Carmel Shakespeare Festival, which received positive reviews for the endeavor.

See also

• Shakespeare Apocrypha

External links

• Edward III at Project Gutenberg
• Google Books edition (Donovan's English Historical Plays, vol. 1, London, 1896)