STC 22285 copy 1, title page
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Copy-specific information
Creator: William Shakespeare
Title: The historie of Henry the Fourth : with the battell at Shrewseburie, betweene the King, and Lord Henry Percy, surnamed Henry Hotspur of the north : with the humorous conceits of Sir Iohn Falstaffe / newly corrected. By William Shake-speare.
Date: London : Printed by T. P. and are to be sold by Mathew Law, dwelling in Pauls Church-yard, at the signe of the Foxe, neere S. Austines gate, 1622.
Repository: Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC, USA
Call number and opening: STC 22285 copy 1, title page
View online bibliographic record
Terms of use
Images that are under Folger copyright are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. This allows you to use our images without additional permission provided that you cite the Folger Shakespeare Library as the source and you license anything you create using the images under the same or equivalent license. For more information, including permissions beyond the scope of this license, see Permissions. The Folger waives permission fees for non-commercial publication by registered non-profits, including university presses, regardless of the license they use. For images copyrighted by an entity other than the Folger, please contact the copyright holder for permission information.
Copy-specific information
Creator: William Shakespeare
Title: The historie of Henry the Fourth : with the battell at Shrewseburie, betweene the King, and Lord Henry Percy, surnamed Henry Hotspur of the north : with the humorous conceits of Sir Iohn Falstaffe / newly corrected. By William Shake-speare.
Date: London : Printed by T. P. and are to be sold by Mathew Law, dwelling in Pauls Church-yard, at the signe of the Foxe, neere S. Austines gate, 1622.
Repository: Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC, USA
Call number and opening: STC 22285 copy 1, title page
View online bibliographic record
Justin Kuhn, "Henry IV Part 1, sixth edition," Shakespeare Documented, https://doi.org/10.37078/171.
Folger Shakespeare Library, STC 22285 copy 1. See Shakespeare Documented, https://doi.org/10.37078/171.
The sixth edition of Henry IV Part 1 was one of three Shakespearean playbooks printed in 1622, the year before the first edition of his collected plays, Mr William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies, also known as “the First Folio,” was published. The first edition of Othello and the sixth edition of Richard III were also printed in 1622, along with the third edition of a playbook about King John, falsely attributed to Shakespeare for the second time, although bearing close resemblances to his play of the same title. These quartos suggest an abiding interest in the dramatist's printed works leading up to the publication of the monumental First Folio.
Although this is the seventh printed version of the play, it is usually referred to as “Q6” because it is the sixth quarto to survive fully intact, as only a fragment of the first quarto, “Q0,” has survived. By 1622, only Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy and the anonymous Mucedorus had also reached seven printings.
This edition of Henry IV Part 1 retains the title page information from the previous four quartos, including the assertion that it was “Newly corrected by W. Shake-speare.” Its publisher, Matthew Law, had issued three prior editions as well, along with two quartos each of Richard II and Richard III. On June 25, 1603, he acquired the rights to all three of these playbooks, Shakespeare's most popular history plays in print, from the bookseller Andrew Wise. To produce both this edition of Henry IV Part 1 and a new edition of Richard III in 1622, Law hired the printer Thomas Purfoot, who had extensive experience printing plays and had also worked with Law before on the fifth edition of Richard II in 1615.
The copy shown above is one of twelve listed in the English Short Title Catalogue, and is part of the Folger Shakespeare Library collection. It was previously owned by James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps. 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.
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 8, 2020
