Henry V, third edition

William Jaggard printed the third edition of Henry V, one of the infamous Pavier Quartos, for Thomas Pavier in 1619, though the title page says 1608. In 1619, Pavier and Jaggard published a set of ten works, either by Shakespeare or attributed to him. Scholars currently disagree whether the impetus for the project came from Pavier or Jaggard. Although Pavier owned the copyright to Henry V, which he acquired on August 14, 1600, he did not own the copyright to many others. To avoid conflict with copyright holders, he pre-dated the quartos to give the appearance of being old stock newly put forth to sale.

The text of this publication is based on the text of the first edition (1600). While Pavier’s printing program is recognized as the first attempt to issue Shakespeare’s plays as a body of work, Jeffrey Todd Knight has shown that many buyers bound his copies of the plays with the work of other playwrights as well. Copies of the Pavier Henry V at both the Huntington Library and the Folger Shakespeare Library were formerly bound with Thomas Heywood’s A Woman Killed With Kindness. An early owner listed the titles bound together with the Folger’s second copy of this edition (STC 26101 copy 2).

Pavier quartos survive in large numbers compared to many early modern plays. The English Short Title Catalogue lists twenty-five copies of the third edition of Henry V, and there are likely more. The Folger Shakespeare Library holds this and six other copies. Some—like the one shown above—are now bound in fine bindings on their own, while others remain in collections, such as the copy owned by Edward Gwynn (d. ca. 1645), a sammelband (or a bound collection of separately printed works) of all ten Pavier Quartos.

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.