The Tragedy of King Richard II Part One: Ascribed to William Shakespeare

Michael Egan is a former English professor and Scholar in Residence at Brigham Young University, Hawaii. Now an independent Shakespeare scholar, he has published 12 books and numerous articles on a variety of academic topics. 1 Richard II is based on a unique digital analysis of an anonymous Elizabethan manuscript in the British Library, London, which has been ascribed to Shakespeare. This edition includes a scholarly review of the play’s 13 previous editions, including A.P. Rossiter’s Woodstock, a Moral History (1946), notes of interest to students and actors, and an original conclusion restoring the play’s censored ending which depicted Richard II’s forgotten first deposition in 1387. The play provides an indispensable context for understanding Shakespeare’s canonical Richard II, including the murder of the Duke of Gloucester and the King’s illegal parceling out of England ’like to a tenement or pelting farm, ’ referred to in John of Gaunt’s famous ’scepter’d isle’ speech in The Tragedy of King Richard II.