Henry IV Part 1, fifth edition

Mathew Law published this fifth edition of Henry IV Part 1 in 1613. A prolific publisher of Shakespeare, he had issued the previous two quartos as well, along with multiple editions of Richard II and Richard III. Law commissioned the printer William White to produce this quarto. White had substantial experience working on playbooks, having previously printed the first quartos of Love's Labor's Lost (1598) and Pericles (1609), as well as editions of Henry VI Part 3 (1600) and Richard II (1608).

Although this is the sixth printed version of the play, it is usually referred to as “Q5” because it is the fifth quarto to survive fully intact, as only a fragment of the first quarto, “Q0,” has survived. The appearance of a sixth version of Henry IV Part 1 proves that the play continued to be a bestseller in Shakespeare's time. By 1613, only Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy had also reached a sixth printing.

The fifth edition of Henry IV Part 1 was published the same year as a significant royal event: the marriage of Princess Elizabeth, daughter of King James I, to Frederick V, Elector Palatine of the Rhine. Several other history plays were printed that year, along with an exceptional number of masques, royal entertainments, and pageants, which together comprised nearly half the playbooks released in 1613. Like history plays, these forms of occasional drama would often stage meditations on kingship, nobility, and English national pride. But unlike Shakespeare's histories, they also featured abstract, fantastical settings that were symbolically, rather than directly, relevant to contemporary political concerns. They sometimes even included the sitting monarch as a participant. Despite such differences, the affinity between these increasingly popular genres of drama and older history plays like Henry IV Part 1 may help explain the persistence and continuing relevance of the latter in print. 

The copy shown above is one of eleven listed in the English Short Title Catalogue, and is part of the Folger Shakespeare Library collection. It was previously owned by Charles Jennens, William P.A. Curzon, and part of the Howe family library. To learn more about Henry IV Part 1, see the Folger 's Shakespeare’s Works, and the British Library’s Shakespeare in Quarto, which also includes information about another copy of this edition.