@ 12-1-48mm Cont. 3-12-48 INTRODUCTION.] The Life of Henry the Fift. V INTRODUCTION. IN submitting this work to the members of the New Shakspere Society, it is desirable that I should state how I came to be engaged on it, and for what share in it I am responsible. It was commenced by Dr Brinsley Nicholson, under whose supervision the reprints of the 1st Q and 1st F editions of the play were issued to the Society in 1875. The present work was then taken in hand, the texts arranged, and elaborate collations of the several quarto and folio editions made. Proofs of the first few pages were actually prepared by the printer in January 1876, when illness compelled Dr Nicholson to suspend his labours. In the mean time it will be understood that the type which had been set up for the simple reprints of the texts had still to remain in its forms awaiting re-arrangement for this edition, and was therefore unavailable for the general work of the printing-office. In November last it became a question, in which both the economy of the Society and the convenience of the printer were concerned, whether the work on which so much loving care and labour had been expended was to be abandoned, or whether it could be carried to completion by another hand. In this emergency, and encouraged thereto by our Director, Mr Furnivall, I volunteered my services. The whole body of the work and the marginal notings are distinctly the work of Dr Nicholson; but I must add that for any short-comings in them, the responsibility must fall on my shoulders. In his hands the marginal notes would have been very much more minute than they now are. Unfortunately, although he had accumulated materials, he had not completed their arrangement; and not feeling my ability to carry out his intentions to their full extent, I found myself compelled to sacrifice much that was already prepared. I believe, however, that everything essential to the study of the texts will be found in its place; but should it hereafter appear desirable to give additional fulness to the work, it is to be hoped that Dr Nicholson may himself supplement my deficiencies. In this edition the text of the folio is printed, line for line, as in the original. Each page presents half a column of the folio-the number of the page and column being noted within brackets on the left hand of the text, at top. The Acts, Scenes, and lines are also numbered on the left hand. text. In the Q page the Acts, Scenes, and lines are numbered on the right hand of the It must be borne in mind that the scenes of the Q are numbered to correspond with those of the F: thus the Q not having any scene corresponding with Sc. i. of F its first scene is numbered II. to agree with the F; and in one place-Act IV. Sc. iv. & v.-for the same reason, the order of the two scenes in the Q has been reversed. The lines of the Q text are in the sequence of the original; but the text itself is necessarily much broken up in order to bring its several parts as nearly as possible in apposition with the corresponding passages of the F text. The end of each page of the Q is indicated by the printing within brackets of the signatures of the original edition: thus at page 14, [20. Â 2.] signifies that line 20 of the text ends page A 2. of the Q; and so throughout. In some places the latter half of a line of the Q text has been dropped in order to make it correspond with the F: thus on page 14, line 6 has been printed,— to correspond with lines 10 & 11 of F text. Again, and for the same reason, two lines of the Q are printed as one, the division being thus marked ||, as in page 18, lines 67-8,— Noble Lord stand for your owne, || Vnwinde your bloody flagge. In the 3rd Q, 1608, many of the lines of Q: I were re-arranged by its editor or printer; the Q3 arrangement is marked in our text by the usual divisional sign /. Thus, page 24, line 108 becomes two lines in Q3 ending egs, cat., and line 118 two lines, ending heauen, functions. Sometimes in Q° 3 two lines of Q° 1 are printed as one, and in a few places some words were added to the text: these cases will be found noted in the margin. Cross references to corresponding passages which it was not possible to place in apposition, are printed within the texts in brackets. Thus, page 36 [lines 83-4 fol.] refers the reader to those lines of the same scene in the folio text, page 41, which correspond with lines 16-17 of the Q?. I regret to say that these cross references are not so complete as it was evidently the intention of Dr Nicholson to make them. Finding, in his MS., references of this kind throughout the work, I rashly concluded that all had been noted, and it was not till the whole body of the work had passed through the press, and I was enabled to take a more leisurely and comprehensive view of it for the purpose of this introduction, that I discovered the deficiencies. They are not many, however; and the additional interreferences that might have been given are nearly all within the corresponding scenes of Q and F, and frequently within the two opposite pages of our texts. The student will have no difficulty in discovering for himself the separated passages; and for the casual reader who requires to be knowledge-crammed, I confess I have but small sympathy. With regard to the marginal notings: when there can be no doubt as to the word or words of the text to which the marginal variation refers, the text is not quoted in the margin. Thus, page 22, line 81, gainst of Q3 clearly refers to the against of the text. When, however, there is a radical difference in the variation, the text is quoted behind the bracket; thus in line 82 of the same page, for] against 2. signifies that Q2 in place of for of the text has against. The number of that edition only in which the variation is found, follows the marginal note. When the marginal variation is found in all editions subsequent to the text, no number follows it: thus (same page) line 94, no number following the marginal note fear'd, it is understood that the two quartos subsequent to our text agree in this variation. The same principle which regulates the marginal notings of the Q text applies also to that of the F. The Title-page of Q1 is of course given in full, page 2 of our text. The only noticeable variations in the title-pages of the two subsequent quartos are in the imprint. London | Printed by Thomas Creede, for Thomas | Pauier, and are to be sold at his shop in Cornhill, | at the sign of the Cat and Parrets neare | the Exchange, 1602. |* Q2 has, Q3 has only, Printed for T. P. 1608. | ' The author's name is not given on any of these title-pages. The 2nd and 3rd Q°s were both printed from the 1st; their variations from that edition, as Dr Nicholson has remarked in his notice to the reprint of Q1, neither aid in determining its character nor in the correction of the folio text. The Q text has 1623 lines, printed throughout as verse, but with little_regard to the proper division of the verse lines, and of course none at all as regards the prose. For the F text I take the lines as metrically numbered in the Globe edition; for the play itself 3256 lines, add for Choruses 223 lines = total 3479 lines. Very nearly one-third of the dialogue, or 1060 lines, is placed in the mouth of King Henry. The two principal points which this parallel-texts edition may assist in determining are, 1. The value of the Q as regards the revision of the text. Three lines from it (ii. 1. 79, iv. 3. 43, & iv. 5. 16) have been received into many modern editions. It enables us also to correct, with something like certainty, a few words in the folio text which had been blundered by the printer; and here and there it affords some support to what, at the best, can only be considered as conjectural emendations of that text. This, I think, is the utmost that can be said for it. It does not, as is the case with other imperfect' quartos, enable us to restore any passage of importance which there is reason to think may have been accidentally omitted in the folio. In what it does give of the fuller text, its variations are generally for the worse. 2. The question whether the Q is to be accepted as the author's first sketch of the play; or to be rejected as a mere imperfect and corrupted version of the play as it appears in the folio edition. This question is of great interest to many students, for its determination in the affirmative would, they believe, afford some reasonable starting-point from which to trace the development of Shakespeare's method of composition from its first conception to its perfect growth. Some enquiry as to the date of production of the play is here necessary. In the Chorus at the beginning of Act V. the following passage occurs :- 'Were now the general of our gracious empress, As in good time he may, from Ireland coming, Bringing rebellion broached on his sword, This is universally received as an allusion to the expedition of the Earl of Essex, and if so, must have been written between the date of his departure for Ireland, 15th April, 1599, and his return to London, 28th Sept. in the same year. This being granted, it is scarcely possible to imagine that any portion of the play could have been written after that date. Nor can we suppose that any portion of it was written long before that date. It was certainly written after the second part of Henry IV., as the promise of it in the epilogue of that play sufficiently proves : 'If you be not too much cloyed with fat meat, our humble author will continue the story, with Sir John In it, and make you merry with fair Katherine of France: where, for anything I know, Falstaff shall die of a sweat, unless already a' be killed with your hard opinions,' etc. The earliest date assigned to this second part of Henry IV. is 1596; but the latest, 1598, is more probably the right one1. Meres, who in his Wits Treasury,' 1598, mentions Henry the 4,' is silent as regards Henry V.; and it is by no means certain that in his mention of Henry IV. he included both parts of that play. On the whole, then, we may reasonably conclude that 1599 is the date to be assigned to Henry V., and that when in 1600 the 1st Quarto edition was published, the whole play, as we now have it in the Folio, was in existence, and had been produced on the stage. It does not, however, necessarily follow that because the Q was not printed till 1600, it therefore could not be an earlier version than that of 1599; though in any case its previous existence must have been very brief: few plays got to the press until some time after their presentation on the stage; and it might be fairly argued that the appearance of the 1599 play was the cause of the disinterment and hasty printing of the first sketch'; that being the only version the unscrupulous stationer could lay his hands The internal evidence therefore that the Q itself affords is all that we have to rely on in forming our judgment as to its character. on. Nearly all editors have expressed a more or less definite opinion as to the relation of the two versions of the play to each other; but few have deemed it necessary to adduce other than general arguments in support of their decision: special proof either for or against the first sketch' theory seems yet a thing to be desired. Pope, who in one note instances the Essex allusion as a proof that the play was writ in 1599, in another asserts that in the folio the speeches are generally enlarged and raised, and that several whole scenes and all the choruses were added, since the edition of 1608 [Q3.]. Capell says of the quartos that they are all equally defective in a most high degree, and vicious in what they do give us: notwithstanding which, great use was to be made of them, and has been, in mending and compleating the folio, the basis of the text of this play. The whole play as it lyes in that folio, must have been written in the year '99, and in the spring of that year. The reverse of the Earl of Essex's fortunes, upon whom 1 See Malone. Chronological Order of the plays, p. 357, Vol. II., Variorum Shakspeare, ed. 1821. so handsome a compliment is made in the fifth Chorus, follow'd its composition so quickly, a presentation became improper; and the suppression of this Chorus, it is probable drew on that of the others: From this lame representation, in which the play might be otherwise mangl'd by the persons presenting it, the quarto of 1600 was certainly pirated, by some scribe of profound ignorance, set to work by the printer.' Johnson apparently believed the Q to be a first sketch: in a note on Act II. sc. ii., he remarks, 'This whole scene was much enlarged and improved after the first edition;' and in a note on Act IV. sc. vii., he speaks of the play [the folio version] as a 'second draught.' Steevens thought that the difference between the two copies might be accounted for by the elder (the Q) having been taken down during the representation, or collected from the repetitions of actors: the second and more ample edition (the F) being that which regularly belonged to the play-house. Malone says, "The fair inference to be drawn from the imperfect and mutilated copies of this play, published in 1600, 1602, and 1608, is, not that the whole play, as we now have it, did not then exist, but that those copies were surreptitious; and that the editor in 1600, not being able to publish the whole, published what he could.' (Chronological order, etc.) Elsewhere, in a note on Act IV. sc. vii., he says, 'The quarto copy of this play is manifestly an imperfect transcript procured by some fraud, and not a first draught or hasty sketch of Shakspeare's.' Boswell considers that the earliest editions are evidently corrupted and imperfect, and bear no marks of being the author's first conceptions.' Other editors speak vaguely of additions' in the folio, thereby leaving it to be inferred that in their opinion the Q° represents an earlier and independent version of the play. Knight holds the Q edition, though surreptitiously obtained, and not printed till after the appearance of the fuller folio version, to be a genuine copy of an earlier and shorter play, written perhaps hastily for a temporary purpose. He considers that the fuller version is manifestly and beyond question, from beginning to end, the result of the author's elaboration of this first sketch; and, in proof of this, in his Introductory Notice, and in his notes to the play, he specially directs attention to the following |