INTRODUCTION THE First Part of King Henry IV. was first published Early in a quarto edition of 1598, bearing the title : The History of Henrie the Fourth; with the battell at Shrewsburie, 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 1598. Wise. . . They Five other quartos were issued before the appearance of the First Folio, each described on the titlepage as 'newly corrected by W. Shakespeare.' are dated 1599, 1604, 1608, 1613, 1622. Two more appeared in 1632 and 1639. Each appears to have been printed from its predecessor. The title in the First Folio ran: 'The First Part of Henry the Fourth, with the Life and Death of Henry sirnamed Hot-spurre.' It was printed, in the view of the Cambridge editors, from a partially corrected copy of the Fifth Quarto, with occasional reference to the earlier quartos. The Second Part from the outset never rivalled the fame of the First. A single edition only was issued in quarto, in 1600, with the title :— The Second Part of Henrie | the fourth, continuing to his death, | and coronation of Henrie | the fift. With the humours of Sir John Fal-staffe, and Editions. Date of tion. swaggering Pistoll. As it hath been sundrie times publikely acted by the right honorable, the Lord Chamberlaine his servants. | Written by William Shakspeare. London. Printed by V. S. for Andrew Wise and William Aspley. 1600. In some copies of this Quarto, the first scene of Act III. was omitted; the omission being afterwards rectified by inserting two new leaves and resetting part of the type. The Folio text of the Second Part was apparently derived from a transcript of the original MS. It contains several striking passages not found in the Quarto, yet clearly inseparable from the context. The text of both parts in the Folio has been rigorously purified of all profane oaths and biblical allusions. The First Part was entered in the Stationers' Composi- Register under date of Feb. 25, 1597-8, as 'The Historye of Henry the iiiith.' Critics are unanimous in regarding it as the work of one of the two previous years 1596-7. Some slight allusions have been detected to events of 1596; while the perfect uniformity of manner which connects this play with the Second Part, and both with Henry V., favours the later year. For the Second Part was clearly unknown and presumably unwritten when the First Part of the History was entered as 'The History,' i.e. in Feb. 1598. But the Second Part must have been produced before the close of the year, for a few months later the character of Silence was already famous enough to point an allusion in Jonson's second comedy, performed in 1599.1 Henry V. is fixed with equal 1 In Jonson's Every Man out of his Humour (1599), v. 2, where Saviolina asks Fastidious Brisk Who is he, gentle monsieur Brisk? Fast. No, lady, this (i.e. Fungoso) is a kinsman to justice Silence. The first allusion to Falstaff occurs at the close of the same play: You may in time make lean Macilente as fat as Sir John Falstaff.' definiteness to 1599. The three plays thus composed in close succession form a trilogy on the career of the great Lancastrian king, clearly more after Shakespeare's heart than any other figure in English history. A deep gulf separates this trilogy, in manner and matter, from all the previous Histories, even from Richard II., which looks so like a prelude to it. Richard III., Richard II., and John are almost devoid of prose. Of Henry IV. and Henry V. nearly one-half is prose;1 and this external difference rests upon differences of dramatic method by no means wholly due to the less passionate and tragic quality of the subject. Richard II. moves throughout among courtly persons; if for a moment we are suffered to hear the vox populi (as in iv. 1.), it speaks pathetically, in blank verse, like the rest. Yet Richard, not less than Hal, had given occasion for scenes in the Eastcheap vein of humour and realism which flowed with such marvellous freedom in 1597-8. Characteristically enough it is only in the later play that Shakespeare draws the vivid picture of 'the skipping king' who ambled up and down (1 Henry IV. iii. 2. 60 f.) The quality of the verse is still more decisive. Even in the most intense and dramatic situations of Richard II. it rarely escapes a suggestion of the lilting rhetoric, the wanton and self-indulgent sweetness, the highly poetised and somewhat abstract ornateness of phrase, by which the lyric Shakespeare had won renown. In Henry IV. this manner is no longer Shakespeare's 1 In 1 Hen. IV., 1464 out of 3170 lines; in 2 Hen. IV., 1860 out of 3446; in Hen. V., 1531 out of 3379. own, but only the dramatically expressive utterance of lyrical natures like Glendower (who had 'framed to the harp many an English ditty lovely well '), and his daughter, whose beautiful love-lyric (interpreted by Glendower) in 1 iii. 1. 214-222 was admired and imitated by later dramatists. Here we have for the first time the mature dramatic verse of Shakespeare with its wonderful capacity of wedding itself with the character of each speaker and the matter of each speech; so that it seems as natural a vehicle for Hotspur, vowing that he had rather live With cheese and garlic in a windmill, far, as for the king's solemn expostulations, or Vernon's dazzling description of 'young Harry, with his beaver on.' The plot-structure, finally, shows a radically changed appreciation of the dramatic elements of history. Richard III., Richard II., and John are in effect tragedies; they carry us through crimes or follies to a ruin weighted with Nemesis; they represent a struggle carried on by move and counter-move through situations of ever- heightened intensity to the mortal catastrophe. In Henry IV., on the contrary, the interest is not criminal but heroic. If the king broods remorsefully over his crime, and sees its Nemesis in his riotous son and his rebellious subjects, it is only that the prince may gloriously shatter the illusion. The guilt of the House of Lancaster, though confessed by both kings, falls altogether into the background as a dramatic motif, and Henry V., no longer the head of a usurping dynasty, but the 'star of England,' king and brother to all the peoples of the English nation, reigns by the title of merit. And, to judge from the Epilogue to Henry V., even the subsequent ruin of the House of Lancaster in the person of Henry VI., was held to have befallen it, no longer as a Nemesis for their usurpation, but because of his state so many had the managing, That they lost France and made his England bleed. Lastly, certain discrepancies of detail between Richard II. and Henry IV. confirm the view that a considerable interval separated their composition. Henry's account of Richard's prophecy (2 Hen. IV. iii. 1. 65 f.) does not agree with the actual representation of it in Rich. II. v. 1. Warwick was not 'by,' Henry was already king, when according to the later play he 'had no such intent.' And what is more important, Henry in the earlier play accepts the throne as a divine mission ('in God's name, I'll ascend the regal throne,' iv. 1. 113), while in the later he sorrowfully excuses the act as unavoidable. The cold and calculating Bolingbroke of the earlier is not clearly recognisable in the remorseful king. And the prince, as reported, is much more like the ruffianly scapegrace of the Famous Victories than the Hal of Shakespeare. Part. The relation of the Two Parts is not altogether The Second clear. The Second can hardly be maintained to be either an integral part of the original plan or a mere afterthought. Much in the first four acts looks like a reworking of motives used in the First Part: the plot of Scroop tamely echoes the rising of the Percies; Falstaff's recruiting is a dramatised version of his account of a corresponding exploit before Shrewsbury. On the other hand, the loose threads left hanging at the close of the First Part point to a sequel; the appearance of the Archbishop of York in the First has no meaning unless his conspiracy was to follow. The great death-scene of Henry, and the new king's final rebuff to his followers must have been designed from the outset. And much that makes the Second Part |