69310, title page
Terms of use
The Huntington Library has graciously contributed the above images from their collections. Visitors may link to or download these images for personal research or non-commercial publication. As a matter of good scholarly practice and for the benefit of future researchers, we ask that researchers using reproductions of our materials give appropriate credit when quoting from or reproducing an item in the Huntington collections. Images should be captioned with information about the original source, and quotations should be footnoted. For more information about The Huntington's reproduction policy and citation guidelines, please visit their webpages.
Copy-specific information
Creator: William Shakespeare
Title: The history of Henrie the Fourth; : vvith the battell at Shrewsburie, betweene the King and Lord Henry Percy, surnamed Henrie Hotspur of the north. With the humorous conceits of Sir Iohn Falstalffe [sic]
Date: At London : Printed by P[eter] S[hort] for Andrew Wise, dwelling in Paules Churchyard, at the signe of the Angell, 1598
Repository: The Huntington Library, San Marino, CA, USA
Call number and opening: 69310, title page
View online bibliographic record
Terms of use
The Huntington Library has graciously contributed the above images from their collections. Visitors may link to or download these images for personal research or non-commercial publication. As a matter of good scholarly practice and for the benefit of future researchers, we ask that researchers using reproductions of our materials give appropriate credit when quoting from or reproducing an item in the Huntington collections. Images should be captioned with information about the original source, and quotations should be footnoted. For more information about The Huntington's reproduction policy and citation guidelines, please visit their webpages.
Copy-specific information
Creator: William Shakespeare
Title: The history of Henrie the Fourth; : vvith the battell at Shrewsburie, betweene the King and Lord Henry Percy, surnamed Henrie Hotspur of the north. With the humorous conceits of Sir Iohn Falstalffe [sic]
Date: At London : Printed by P[eter] S[hort] for Andrew Wise, dwelling in Paules Churchyard, at the signe of the Angell, 1598
Repository: The Huntington Library, San Marino, CA, USA
Call number and opening: 69310, title page
View online bibliographic record
Justin Kuhn, "Henry IV Part 1, first edition," Shakespeare Documented, https://doi.org/10.37078/615.
Huntington Library, 69310. See Shakespeare Documented, https://doi.org/10.37078/615.
This edition of Henry IV Part 1 is the earliest printed version of the play to survive fully intact. Although it is the second printed version of the play to appear in 1598, it is customarily labeled “Q1,” while the fragment edition published earlier the same year is often referred to as “Q0.”
The play’s title page promises the Battle of Shrewsbury, the presence of Hotspur, and “the humorous conceits” of Falstaff, but it makes no mention of the central character, Prince Hal. It also does not mention Shakespeare's name. In modern times, this would seem to be a notable omission, but in fact most printed drama in the 1590s did not name authors on title pages.
An extraordinarily popular play, Henry IV Part 1 is one of the very few playbooks to reach a second printing in the year it was first published. Demand must have owed something to the vogue for histories at that time, a trend Shakespeare's works certainly helped to sustain. Andrew Wise, the publisher of the play’s first three quartos, previously released multiple printed versions of two other best-selling histories, Richard II (1597) and Richard III (1597), and he would subsequently issue both Henry IV Part 2 as well as the comedy Much Ado About Nothing in 1600. To produce the first two editions of Henry IV Part 1, Wise hired the printer Peter Short, whose prior experience with printing playbooks included Henry VI Part 3 (1595).
Most modern editors use this edition as their primary source text, with the exception act 1, scene 3, line 200 to act 2, scene 2, line 108, which they take from its incomplete predecessor (Q0).
This copy is one of three recorded in the English Short Title Catalogue, and is part of the Huntington Library collection. It was previously owned by Sir Henry, and possibly Sir William, Bunbury, and Payne & Foss. To learn more about Henry IV Part 1, see the Folger Shakespeare Library’s Shakespeare’s Works, and the British Library’s Shakespeare in Quarto, which also includes information about another copy of this edition.
Written by Justin Kuhn
Sources
DEEP: Database of Early English Playbooks. Ed. Alan B. Farmer and Zachary Lesser. Created 2007. <deep.sas.upenn.edu>.
English Short Title Catalogue (ESTC). British Library. <estc.bl.uk>
David Scott Kastan, eds. King Henry IV: Part 1 (London: Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, 2002).
Last updated June 10, 2020
