Henry VI Parts 2 and 3, third editions

In 1619, William Jaggard and Thomas Pavier issued a joint reprinting of the anonymous plays The First Part of the Contention (1594) and The True Tragedy of Richard Duke of York (1595), titled The Whole Contention Between the Two Famous Houses, Lancaster and Yorke. The text of this combined edition appears to have been seventeen years in the making: an April 19, 1602 entry in the Stationers’ Register notes Thomas Millington’s transfer to Thomas Pavier for “The First and Second parte of henry the vj^t ii bookes.”

Though known today as a trilogy, Henry VI was originally considered a two-part play comprised of the texts collected and combined in this quarto. The contemporary trilogy arrangement did not appear in print until the 1623 First Folio, where these plays were printed in expanded forms as the second and third parts, respectively, and were preceded for the first time by Henry VI Part 1.

This combined edition connects these two plays for the first time, indicating that Henry VI was first considered to be a two-part rather than a three-part play. The title page attributes the plays to Shakespeare for the first time, unlike the previous editions of the two plays that comprise The Whole Contention, and highlights claims of correction and enlargement. Despite these claims, scholars generally conclude that this edition is no more or less authorial than the editions of its constituent plays, as the text is more similar to the plays’ early printings than to the 1623 versions in the First Folio. Further, Pavier’s printings of Shakespeare’s works are notorious for falsified dates, as many of the copies were pirated. As such, this text exemplifies the possibility for an interested agent bring dubious texts to print. On the other hand, textual claims of authorship and revision are usually understood to be evidence of a so-called “good quarto,” attesting to a potential practice of publishers or printers falsely claiming that earlier printings were illegitimate or pirated.

This copy of The Whole Contention is bound with the fourth edition of Pericles, Prince of Tyre, and is held at the Folger Shakespeare Library. To learn more about the plot of the plays, please visit the Folger's Shakespeare's Works and the British Library’s Shakespeare in Quarto, which also includes information about another copy of this edition.