Henry V, first edition

The first edition of Henry V, shown here, was printed in 1600 by Thomas Creede for Thomas Millington and John Busby. It had been entered into the Stationers’ Register on August 4, along with Much Ado about Nothing, As You Like It, and Ben Jonson’s Every Man in His Humor, all of which were likely in Shakespeare's company's repertoire at the time. First performed in the summer of 1599, Henry V was brought to press unusually fast; typically, Shakespeare’s plays were at least three years old before being printed.

The text of this edition, one of the so-called “bad quartos” (although the term has fallen out of favor with scholars), is substantially different from the play as we know it today. Henry V as represented in this edition is about half the length of the First Folio (1623) version of the play. For example, it omits a topical reference that appears in the Folio text that allows modern scholars to date the play’s first performance. In the prologue to act five, the Chorus compares the triumphant Henry’s return to England to “the general of our gracious empress ... from Ireland coming, / Bringing rebellion broachèd on his sword” (Act 5, chorus, lines 31–33). The Earl of Essex’s expedition to Ireland in the summer of 1599 ended in disaster, not triumph, and he returned to England in September in disgrace. This means that while the play’s first performance must date to the few months during which Essex was still in Ireland, its first publication occurred after the hopeful reference to Essex was no longer politically safe. The reference was therefore omitted from this 1600 edition, and re-introduced to the 1623 Folio text after the political climate changed.

Although scholars largely agree that this edition is based on the same texts as the later Folio version, some believe it was created from a script for a reduced cast (either for touring the provinces or performance in London in the wake of Essex’s fall from grace), while others argue that its abbreviated form is the result of memorial reconstruction by the actors playing Exeter, Pistol, and Gower. The most significant difference between this text and the play as we know it from the First Folio is the lack of the Chorus, although many other characters’ speeches are eliminated or reassigned.

Six copies are known to survive, according to the English Short Title Catalogue. The copy shown above, held at the Folger Shakespeare Library, is fragmentary; everything after leaf B3 (the third leaf in the second gathering) is supplied in 19^th century type facsimile, likely from around the time it was re-bound by Francis Bedford (1799–1883), a famous London bookbinder. Henry Clay Folger bought the book at one of Henry Huntington’s duplicate sales on March 6, 1919. (The copy that Huntington retained, Huntington 69321, is fully digitized.) 

To learn more about Henry V, please see the Folger Shakespeare Library’s Shakespeare’s Works and the British Library’s Shakespeare in Quarto, which also includes information about additional copies of this edition.