ABSTRACT
A letter from Sir Edward Hoby to Sir Robert Cecil on 7 December, 1595, invites him to Channon Row on the 9th, 'where as late as it shal please you a gate for your supper shal be open; and K. Richard present him selfe to your vewe' (WSh 11.320-1). This suggests a private performance of a play already known to Cecil. When Shakespeare's play was written is uncertain, but the lyrical richness of style accords well with 1594/5 and puts the piece in the same group with A Midsummer Night's Dream and Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare may have been influenced by Samuel Daniel's The First Fowre Bookes of the Civile Wars, registered II October, 1594. and dated 1595 on the title-page of the first edition. If so, Richard II was probably written in 1595. If on the other hand Daniel had seen the play before writing his epic, Richard II must have been written in 1594 or earlier. I believe that Shakespeare was influenced slightly by Daniel's first edition (cf. infra). Daniel was certainly influenced by Richard II in revising his poem later (editions in 1601 and 1609), but this fact tells against the argument that he had borrowed from the play before it was published.
