Arch.G e.14, title page
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The Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, has graciously contributed images of materials in its collections to Shakespeare Documented under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence. Images used within the scope of these terms should cite the Bodleian Libraries as the source. For any use outside the scope of these terms, visitors should contact Bodleian Libraries Imaging Services at imaging@bodleian.ox.ac.uk.
Copy-specific information
Creator: William Shakespeare
Title: The first part of the Contention betwixt the two famous houses of Yorke and Lancaster [by W. Shakespeare.].
Date: Lond. V. Simmes for T. Millington, 1600
Repository: Bodleian Library, Oxford University, Oxford, UK
Call number and opening: Arch.G e.14, title page
View online bibliographic record
Terms of use
The Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, has graciously contributed images of materials in its collections to Shakespeare Documented under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence. Images used within the scope of these terms should cite the Bodleian Libraries as the source. For any use outside the scope of these terms, visitors should contact Bodleian Libraries Imaging Services at imaging@bodleian.ox.ac.uk.
Copy-specific information
Creator: William Shakespeare
Title: The first part of the Contention betwixt the two famous houses of Yorke and Lancaster [by W. Shakespeare.].
Date: Lond. V. Simmes for T. Millington, 1600
Repository: Bodleian Library, Oxford University, Oxford, UK
Call number and opening: Arch.G e.14, title page
View online bibliographic record
Matthew Vadnais, "Henry VI Part 2, second edition," Shakespeare Documented, https://doi.org/10.37078/659.
Bodleian Library, Arch.G e.14, title page. See Shakespeare Documented, https://doi.org/10.37078/659.
The second edition of Shakespeare’s Henry VI Part 2 was printed as The First Part of the Contention Betwixt the Two Famous Houses of Yorke and Lancaster in 1600, six years after the first edition.
Though known today as the second part of the Henry VI trilogy, Henry VI was originally considered a two-part play comprised of this text and The True Tragedy of Richard Duke of York (1595)—which would become Henry VI Part 3. In fact, the two plays were collected and printed in 1619 quarto as The Whole Contention, but Henry VI Part 1 and the contemporary trilogy arrangement did not appear in print until the 1623 First Folio, where this play appeared titled as The Second Part of Henry the Sixt for the first time.
This edition is nearly identical to the preceding 1594 edition. It also does not name either an author or performing company on the title page. The minor differences are widely understood to be spelling corrections. Both the first and second editions are significantly shorter then the version printed in the First Folio.
The copy shown here is at the Bodleian Library, and is one of five recorded in the English Short Title Catalogue.
To learn more about the plot of the play, please visit the Henry VI Part 2 page on the Folger Shakespeare Library's Shakespeare's Works page and the British Library’s Shakespeare in Quarto, which also includes information about another copy of this edition.
Written by Matthew Vadnais
Sources
Brooke, Tucker. “Elizabethan Proof Corrections in a Copy of “The First Part of the Contention” 1600.” The Huntington Library Bulletin (1931) 2: 87-89.
DEEP: Database of Early English Playbooks. Ed. Alan B. Farmer and Zachary Lesser. Created 2007.
Manley, Lawrence. “From Strange’s Men to Pembroke’s Men: 2 “Henry VI” and the First Part of the Contention.” Shakespeare Quarterly (2003) 54 (3): 253-287.
Last updated April 25, 2020
