INTRODUCTION. I. DATE OF THE PUBLICATION OF THE PLAY. 1600. Henry V. was first published in 1600 in a Quarto edition which was republished in 1602 and 1608. It had Published in been entered on the Register of the Stationers' Company on August 4, 1600. The title of the play in the Quarto is noticeable: "The Chronicle History of Henry the Fifth with his battell fought at Agin Court in France. Together with Auntient Pistoll. As it hath bene sundry times played by the Right honorable the Lord Chamberlaine his seruants." The title in the 1st Folio1 (1623) is simply "The Life of Henry the Fift." 1 The first collected edition of Shakespeare's plays, and the earliest authority for the text of many, e.g. As You Like It, The Tempest, Julius Cæsar; indeed, but for it they would be lost. It is often referred to by editors simply as "the Folio." The 2nd Folio (1632) was a reprint of the Ist, correcting some of its typographical errors, and introducing some conjectural changes which are often quite unnecessary. The later Folios have little value or interest, except that the edition of 1664 was the first to give Pericles. Where in the Notes to this edition of Henry V. the "Ist Folio" alone is mentioned, it may be taken for granted that the others follow it. Quarto and Ist Folio com pared. II. RELATION OF QUARTO TO IST FOLIO. The text of the Quarto edition (1600) is very imperfect; indeed, the play as there printed is less than half its length in the 1st Folio. The Quarto contains1 1623 lines, the 1st Folio 3479. The current opinion as to the relation of the text of the Quarto to the text of the 1st Folio is this: that the 1st Folio gives us the original version of Henry V.; that of this version the manager of the Globe Theatre had a shortened acting-version made; and that of this acting-version the Quarto was an imperfect, unauthorized version, "hastily made up from notes taken at the theatre during the performance and subsequently patched together." That is to say, the Quarto was a surreptitious abridgement of an abridgement. Careful comparison of the Quarto with the 1st Folio shows to some extent how far the abridgement in the Quarto was due to the manager of the theatre, and how far to the circumstances under which the Quarto version was put together. Omissions in Quarto. Thus the Quarto omits the five Prologues and the Epilogue. We cannot doubt that these formed part of the original version: the famous allusion to Essex in Prologue V. 29—34, is in itself decisive evidence on this point. But noble as these pieces of poetry are intrinsically, and valuable to the scheme of the play, they are not absolutely necessary from the purely theatrical standpoint. We may reasonably infer, therefore, that their excision was due to the manager's "abhorred shears." And the same may be assumed with regard to the omission from the Quartos of three minor scenes-I. I, III. I, IV. 2. Again, the Quarto omits several of the minor characters, either leaving out their speeches altogether, or transferring them to other characters. "Thus in 1. 2 Canterbury and Ely 1 All these details about the early editions are due to other editors. coalesce in a single 'Bishop,' though a tell-tale stage direction at the head of the scene describes the entry of '2 bishops.' Similarly in IV. 3 Westmoreland's part is made over to Warwick, while Erpingham, save for a mutilated semblance of his name in a stage direction (‘Epingham'), disappears altogether. These changes were an obvious stage-manager's shift to reduce the number of actors required" (Herford). Similarly, other dramatis persona of the 1st Folio version who have no speeches assigned to them in the Quarto are Bedford, Rambures, Grandpré, Macmorris, Jamy1, the Messenger in II. 4 and IV. 2, and the French Queen. But a large number of lines are omitted in the Quarto for no apparent reason. These omissions are spread over the whole play, and the cause of their omission explains itself. They are due to the surreptitious origin of the Quarto, whose "brevity is not that of a first sketch, but of imperfect note-taking. It is not an unexpanded germ, but a cento ['collection'] of scraps. Scarcely a single passage of more than a few lines is reported continuously; catching phrases reappear, complexities of thought or phrase vanish, fidelity for a line or two is purchased by the total loss of the following lines" (Herford). There can, then, be practically no doubt as to the relation of the Quarto (1600) to the 1st Folio (1623); and we may dismiss the theory that the former represents a first draft which Shakespeare revised and expanded into the latter. III. DATE OF COMPOSITION. Written early in 1599. The year of the composition of Henry V. can be fixed precisely. The play was written in 1599. The date is determined by the well-known allusion to Essex in the Prologue to Act V.; cf. lines 25-34: 1 Of the omission of "the Scots captain, Captain Jamy," a special explanation is possible. "The mayor and all his brethren in best sort, Were now the general of our gracious empress— How many would the peaceful city quit, To welcome him!" Essex left London, to suppress the rebellion in Ireland under Tyrone, on March 27, 1599; he returned to England, hurriedly and in disgrace, at the end of September in the same year, arriving at court on September 28. The passage quoted above must, therefore, have been written between March 27 and September 28. It justifies the belief that Henry V. was first acted between these dates: probably soon after March 27, while the popular enthusiasm which marked the departure of Essex was still fresh in men's thoughts and the triumphant return which the Prologue promises was still a matter of expectation and hope; certainly not later than the end of June, by which time it must have been known in England that the realisation of this hope was very doubtful. This passage, then, viewed in the light of the history of Essex's expedition, seems to afford conclusive evidence that Henry V. was written in the early part, and first acted in the early summer, of I 599. We may note that apart from the popular acclaim which the departure of Essex moved and which inspired more than one other contemporary poem, Shakespeare had a personal reason for interest in the expedition, namely, that his old patron and friend the Earl of Southampton (to whom Venus and Adonis and Lucrece were dedicated) accompanied Essex. Other evidence, scarcely less cogent, indicates 1599 as the Other evidence year when Shakespeare composed Henry V. The points to 1599. Quarto (1600) fixes a limit in the one direction: the fact that Henry V. does not occur in Meres's Palladis Tamia1 (1598) fixes a limit in the other direction: one would naturally assign the play to the intermediate year 1599. Again, it followed 2 Henry IV. (mentioned by Meres), which is supposed to date from 1598. And it refers so pointedly to the Globe Theatre built in 1599 that some have thought that it was first performed at the opening of the theatre. IV. EVIDENCE OF METRE, STYLE AND TONE. The metrical characteristics, the style and diction, and the tone of Henry V. all accord with this date. Metre. Compared with the blank verse of plays like Richard II. the blank verse of Henry V. is of that freer type which illustrates Shakespeare's variations3 of the regular type; yet not in the same degree as that of plays like Macbeth and King Lear which are known to belong to a later period-still less, of plays like The Tempest and The Winter's Tale. The influence of rhyme is still seen, as in all the plays of Shakespeare's middle period. There is much prose, as in Much Ado About Nothing (1599) and As You Like It (1600). Prose. The style and diction are essentially those of the dramatist's middle period. To quote Dowden's familiar summary: Style and diction. 1 Or Wit's Treasury, published in the autumn of 1598; a sort of survey of English literature, comparing modern writers with ancient. Meres mentions six of Shakespeare's comedies and six of the tragedies. 2 On the Bankside, Southwark; about a hundred yards west of the Surrey foot of London Bridge (Furnivall). 3 See pp. 231-239. Henry V. contains a not inconsiderable amount of "run-on" lines and "double endings," as the student can see for himself. The proportion indeed is about 18 per cent., as in As You Like It. |