The text is given by Steevens, Variorum (1803), iii. 414; Boswell, Variorum (1821), iii. 356; Greg, Henslowe Papers, 133; and a facsimile by Halliwell, The Theatre Plats of Three Old English Dramas (1860).
The names of actors who took part in the play point to a performance by the Admiral’s, about 1590–1 (cf. ch. xiii).
The Reign of King Edward the Third > 1595
S. R. 1595, Dec. 1. ‘A book Intitled Edward the Third and the Blacke Prince their warres with kinge John of Fraunce.’ Burby (Arber, iii. 55).
1596. The Raigne of King Edward the third: As it hath bin sundrie times plaied about the Citie of London. For Cuthbert Burby.
1599. Simon Stafford for Cuthbert Burby.
Editions with Shakespeare Apocrypha, and by E. Capel (1759–60, Prolusiones), F. J. Furnivall (1877, Leopold Sh.), J. P. Collier (1878, Shakespeare), G. C. Moore Smith (1897, T. D.), J. S. Farmer (1910, T. F. T.).—Dissertations: H. von Friesen, Ed. iii, angeblich ein Stück von Sh. (1867, Jahrbuch, ii. 64); J. P. Collier, K. Edw. III, a Historical Play by W. Sh. (1874); A. Teetgen, Sh’s. K. Edw. iii, absurdly called, and scandalously treated, as a ‘Doubtful Play’: an Indignation Pamphlet (1875); A. C. Swinburne, On the Historical Play of K. Edw. iii (1879, Gent. Mag., 1880, &c., Study of Sh.); G. von Vincke, K. Edw. iii, ein Bühnenstück? (1879, Jahrbuch, xiv. 304); E. Phipson, Ed. iii (1889, N. S. S. Trans. 58*); G. Liebau, K. Ed. iii von England und die Gräfin von Salisbury (1900, 1901), K. Ed. iii von England im Lichte europäischer Poesie (1901); R. M. Smith, Edw. III (1911, J. G. P. x. 90).
The authorship was first ascribed to Shakespeare (with that of Edw. IV and Edw. II!) in Rogers and Ley’s play-list of 1656 (Greg, Masques, lxiv). The theory was advocated by Capell, and has received much support, largely owing to the assent of Tennyson, against whose authority, however, may be set that of Swinburne. In its latest and not altogether unplausible form, Shakespeare is regarded as the author, not of the whole play, but of i. 2 and ii, which deal with the episode of the wooing of Lady Salisbury by the king, and are possibly, although by no means certainly, due to another hand than that of the chronicle narrative, to which they are only slightly linked. The style of these scenes is not demonstrably un-Shakespearian, and they, and in less degree the play as a whole, contain many parallels with Hen. V and other works of the ‘nineties, of which the repetition in II. i. 451 and in Sonnet XCIV of the line
Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds
is the most striking. The controversy cannot be dealt with in detail here. Shakespeare’s contribution, if any, may with most probability be assigned to the winter of 1594–5; but it does not follow that the original play may not have been of earlier date. No importance is to be attached to the argument of Fleay (ii. 62; Shakespeare, 282) that the use of the phrase ‘Ave, Caesar’ in I. i. 164 caused its use in Greene’s Francesco’s Fortunes of 1590 (cf. App. C, no. xliii), but it is noteworthy that a play on the subject was produced, apparently under Anglo-German influence, at Danzig in 1591 (Herz, 5). Of non-Shakespearian authors, for the whole or a part of the play as extant, Marlowe is preferred by Fleay, Greene by Liebau and Robertson, and Kyd by Sarrazin.