THE FIRST PART OF

KING HENRY THE FOURTH.

"THE History of Henrie the Fovrth; With the battell at Shrewsourie, betweene the King and Lord Henry Percy, surnamed Henrie Hotspur of the North. With the humorous conceits of Sir John Falstalffe. At London, Printed by P. S. for Andrew Wise, dwelling in Paules Churchyard, at the signe of the Angell. 1598." Such is the title of the first and best edition of this famous historic drama. A second edition was issued in 1599, which was followed by a third in 1604, a fourth in 1608, a fifth in 1613, and a sixth in 1622. That six distinct impressions of it should have been published before its incorporation in the folio of 1623, is proof of its enduring popularity.

The First Part of King Henry IV. was entered on the books of the Stationers' Company in 1597, to which year Malone ascribes its production. Chalmers and Drake assign it to 1596, but the evidence for either date is so extremely vague and unsubstantial that no dependance can be placed upon it. All we really know is, that the play was written before 1598, because Meres, in his list published that year, enumerates "Henry the IVth." as one of our poet's works. Shakespeare, it is thought, selected the stirring period of our history comprehended in the reigns of Henry IV. and V. for dramatic illustration, in consequence of the success achieved by an old and worthless piece which had long retained possession of the stage, called "The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth;" though Dr. Johnson conceived that he had planned a regular connexion of these dramatic histories from Richard the Second to Henry the Fifth. From a similarity in some of the incidents and in the names of two or three of the characters, it is quite clear that he was acquainted with "The Famous Victories," and the circumstance of his having chosen the same events for representation, may have occasioned the revival of that old piece by Henslowe's company in 1595, and its re-publication in 1598. As Mr. Collier observes, "It is impossible to institute any parallel between 'The Famous Victories' and Shakespeare's dramas; for, besides that the former has reached us evidently in an imperfect shape, the immeasurable superiority of the latter is such, as to render any attempt to trace resemblance a matter of contrast ret: unan of comparison."

In the year 1844, a manuscript copy of the play of Henry the Fourth was found among the family papers of Sir Edward Dering, Bart., of Surrenden, Kent. Mr. Halliwell, who edited the MS. for the Shakespeare Society, observes, in his Introduction to the volume, that it "does not contain the whole of Shakespeare's Henry IV., but the two parts condensed into one, and, as we

may presume, for the purpose of representation." And he goes on to say that "the variations are so numerous, that we can hardly believe the MS. was transcribed from any printed edition. At all events, we cannot discover any which contains them. If the adapter was a player, there seems to be no preponderating reason why the MS. should not originally have been the property of one of the metropolitan theatres, and have been prepared for the use of such an establishment."

The discovery of any of Shakespeare's plays in manuscript of a date even approaching his own time, is alone sufficiently interesting in a literary point of view; the editor's suggestion that the Dering MS. may have been derived from some independent source, cannot, however, be maintained. There is abundant internal evidence to show that it was copied, in the first instance, from the quarto edition of 1613; and as the transcript was apparently made during the reign of James I, with a view to private performance, by the friends of Sir Edward Deryng, the first baronet, the language was, as usual, altered to suit the taste of the day; the various readings, therefore, whatever their merit, cannot be accepted as of any authority in elucidating the text.