If you look at printers' handbooks from the age of Shakespeare, you quickly discover that one of the first rules was that, whenever possible, compositors were recommended to set their type from existing printed books rather than manuscripts. This was the age before mechanical typesetting, where each individual letter had to be picked out by hand from the compositor's case and placed on a stick (upside down and back to front) before being laid on the press. It was an age of murky rush-light and of manuscripts written in a secretary hand that had dozens of different, hard-to-decipher forms. Printers' lives were a lot easier when they were reprinting existing books rather than struggling with handwritten copy. Easily the quickest way to have created the First Folio would have been simply to reprint those eighteen plays that had already appeared in Quarto and only work from manuscript on the other eighteen.
But that is not what happened. Whenever Quartos were used, playhouse "promptbooks" were also consulted and stage directions copied in from them. And in the case of several major plays where a reasonably well-printed Quarto was available, the Folio printers were instructed to work from an alternative, playhouse-derived manuscript. This meant that the whole process of producing the first complete Shakespeare took months, even years, longer than it might have done. But for the men overseeing the project, John Hemings and Henry Condell, friends and fellow actors who had been remembered in Shakespeare's will, the additional labor and cost were worth the effort for the sake of producing an edition that was close to the practice of the theater. They wanted all the plays in print so that people could, as they wrote in their prefatory address to the reader, "read him and again and again," but they also wanted "the great variety of readers" to work from texts that were close to the theater-life for which Shakespeare originally intended them. For this reason, the RSC Shakespeare, in both Complete Works and individual volumes, uses the Folio as base text wherever possible. Significant Quarto variants are, however, noted in the Textual Notes.
Henry V is one of those plays that was first published in a Quarto text of uncertain status. Some scholars call it a "bad" text, others a "short" one. It seems to have been "unauthorized" and has been seen as a "memorial reconstruction" as opposed to a text based on the playwright's script. The Quarto offers invaluable, if inscrutable, testimony as to the early stage history of the play, but all modern editors begin with the Folio text.
The following notes highlight various aspects of the editorial process and indicate conventions used in the text of this edition:
Lists of Parts are supplied in the First Folio for only six plays, not including Henry V, so the list here is editorially supplied. Capitals indicate that part of the name which is used for speech headings in the script (thus "Duke of EXETER, the king's uncle").
Locations are provided by the Folio for only two plays. Eighteenth-century editors, working in an age of elaborately realistic stage sets, were the first to provide detailed locations. Given that Shakespeare wrote for a bare stage and often an imprecise sense of place, we have relegated locations to the explanatory notes, where they are given at the beginning of each scene where the imaginary location is different from the one before.
Act and Scene Divisions were provided in the Folio in a much more thoroughgoing way than in the Quartos. Sometimes, however, they were erroneous or omitted; corrections and additions supplied by editorial tradition are indicated by square brackets. Five-act division is based on a classical model, and act breaks provided the opportunity to replace the candles in the indoor Blackfriars playhouse which the King's Men used after 1608, but Shakespeare did not necessarily think in terms of a five-part structure of dramatic composition. The Folio convention is that a scene ends when the stage is empty. Nowadays, partly under the influence of film, we tend to consider a scene to be a dramatic unit that ends with either a change of imaginary location or a significant passage of time within the narrative. Shakespeare's fluidity of composition accords well with this convention, so in addition to act and scene numbers we provide a running scene count in the right margin at the beginning of each new scene, in the typeface used for editorial directions. Where there is a scene break caused by a momentary bare stage, but the location does not change and extra time does not pass, we use the convention running scene continues. There is inevitably a degree of editorial judgment in making such calls, but the system is very valuable in suggesting the pace of the plays.
Speakers' Names are often inconsistent in Folio. We have regularized speech headings, but retained an element of deliberate inconsistency in entry directions, in order to give the flavor of Folio.
Verse is indicated by lines that do not run to the right margin and by capitalization of each line. The Folio printers sometimes set verse as prose, and vice versa (either out of misunderstanding or for reasons of space). We have silently corrected in such cases, although in some instances there is ambiguity, in which case we have leaned toward the preservation of Folio layout. Folio sometimes uses contraction ("turnd" rather than "turned") to indicate whether or not the final "-ed" of a past participle is sounded, an area where there is variation for the sake of the five-beat iambic pentameter rhythm. We use the convention of a grave accent to indicate sounding (thus "turned" would be two syllables), but would urge actors not to overstress. In cases where one speaker ends with a verse half line and the next begins with the other half of the pentameter, editors since the late eighteenth century have indented the second line. We have abandoned this convention, since the Folio does not use it, nor did actors' cues in the Shakespearean theater. An exception is made when the second speaker actively interrupts or completes the first speaker's sentence.
Spelling is modernized, but older forms are occasionally maintained where necessary for rhythm or aural effect.
Punctuation in Shakespeare's time was as much rhetorical as grammatical. "Colon" was originally a term for a unit of thought in an argument. The semicolon was a new unit of punctuation (some of the Quartos lack them altogether). We have modernized punctuation throughout, but have given more weight to Folio punctuation than many editors, since, though not Shakespearean, it reflects the usage of his period. In particular, we have used the colon far more than many editors: it is exceptionally useful as a way of indicating how many Shakespearean speeches unfold clause by clause in a developing argument that gives the illusion of enacting the process of thinking in the moment. We have also kept in mind the origin of punctuation in classical times as a way of assisting the actor and orator: the comma suggests the briefest of pauses for breath, the colon a middling one, and a full stop or period a longer pause. Semicolons, by contrast, belong to an era of punctuation that was only just coming in during Shakespeare's time and that is coming to an end now: we have accordingly only used them where they occur in our copy texts (and not always then). Dashes are sometimes used for parenthetical interjections where the Folio has brackets. They are also used for interruptions and changes in train of thought. Where a change of addressee occurs within a speech, we have used a dash preceded by a period (or occasionally another form of punctuation). Often the identity of the respective addressees is obvious from the context. When it is not, this has been indicated in a marginal stage direction.
Entrances and Exits are fairly thorough in Folio, which has accordingly been followed as faithfully as possible. Where characters are omitted or corrections are necessary, this is indicated by square brackets (e.g. "[and Attendants]"). Exit is sometimes silently normalized to Exeunt and Manet anglicized to "remains." We trust Folio positioning of entrances and exits to a greater degree than most editors.
Editorial Stage Directions such as stage business, asides, indications of addressee and of characters' position on the gallery stage are only used sparingly in Folio. Other editions mingle directions of this kind with original Folio and Quarto directions, sometimes marking them by means of square brackets. We have sought to distinguish what could be described as directorial interventions of this kind from Folio-style directions (either original or sup
plied) by placing them in the right margin in a smaller typeface. There is a degree of subjectivity about which directions are of which kind, but the procedure is intended as a reminder to the reader and the actor that Shakespearean stage directions are often dependent upon editorial inference alone and are not set in stone. We also depart from editorial tradition in sometimes admitting uncertainty and thus printing permissive stage directions, such as an Aside? (often a line may be equally effective as an aside or a direct address--it is for each production or reading to make its own decision) or a may exit or a piece of business placed between arrows to indicate that it may occur at various different moments within a scene.
Line Numbers are editorial, for reference and to key the explanatory and textual notes.
Explanatory Notes explain allusions and gloss obsolete and difficult words, confusing phraseology, occasional major textual cruces, and so on. Particular attention is given to non-standard usage, bawdy innuendo, and technical terms (e.g. legal and military language). Where more than one sense is given, commas indicate shades of related meaning, slashes alternative or double meanings.
Textual Notes at the end of the play indicate major departures from the Folio. They take the following form: the reading of our text is given in bold and its source given after an equals sign, with "Q" indicating that it derives from the First Quarto of 1600, "F" from the First Folio of 1623, "F2" a correction introduced in the Second Folio of 1632, "F4" a correction introduced in the Fourth Folio of 1685, and "Ed" one that derives from the subsequent editorial tradition. The rejected Folio ("F") reading is then given. Thus, for example, "2.1.21 mare = Q. F = name" indicates that at Act 2 Scene 1 line 21, we have preferred the Quarto reading, "though patience be a tired mare, yet she will plod" which makes better sense of the line: it is hard to imagine Folio's "name" as anything other than a printer's error.
KEY FACTS
MAJOR PARTS: (with percentage of lines/number of speeches/scenes on stage) King Henry V (32%/147/11), Fluellen (9%/68/6), Chorus (7%/6/6), Archbishop of Canterbury (7%/18/2), Pistol (5%/62/7), Duke of Exeter (4%/22/8), Constable of France (4%/40/5), Lewis the Dauphin (4%/31/5), French King (3%/19/3), Boy (2%/16/4), Williams (2%/28/3), Duke of Burgundy (2%/8/1), Gower (2%/5/1), Katherine (2%/33/2), Montjoy (2%/11/3), Nym (1%/20/3), Hostess (1%/11/2), Duke of Orleans (1%/29/3).
LINGUISTIC MEDIUM: 60% verse, 40% prose.
DATE: 1599. Must have been written soon after 2 Henry IV; not mentioned by Meres in 1598; published 1600. It is nearly always assumed that "the general ... from Ireland coming" (Act 5 Chorus) refers to the Earl of Essex's Irish expedition, which lasted from March to September 1599. A small minority of commentators suppose that "the general" is Lord Mountjoy, who was Master-General of the Ordnance and Lord Deputy of Ireland from February 1600 onward, which would date the play, or at least the choruses, rather later, but the allusion implies public fame much more fitting with Essex than Mountjoy. Self-conscious theatrical references ("this wooden O") suggest that the play may have been written as a showpiece for the newly built Globe theater, which opened sometime between February and September 1599, but it could have opened at the Curtain.
SOURCES: Based primarily on the 1587 edition of Holinshed's Chronicles; some probable use of Holinshed's main source, Edward Halle's Union of the Two Noble and Illustre Families of Lancaster and York (1548). Like the Henry IV plays, also draws on the anonymous play The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth: containing the Honourable Battell of Agincourt (published 1598, but in the repertoire for up to a decade before this). The old play includes such details as Canterbury's justification of the claim to France, the tennis balls, and the courtship of Princess Katherine. The rival acting company of Philip Henslowe also had a Henry V play, but it is lost, so its influence on Shakespeare cannot be determined. The sequence on the night before Agincourt is influenced by a 1590s dramatic tradition of scenes in which a ruler goes in disguise among his people.
TEXT: A Quarto was published in 1600 (The Chronicle History of Henry the fift, With his battell fought at Agin Court in France. Together with Auntient Pistoll. As it hath bene sundry times playd by the Right honorable the Lord Chamberlaine his servants). Less than half the length of the later Folio text, with many errors and inconsistencies, and some notable differences from the Folio (e.g. no Chorus whatsoever; Bourbon instead of the dauphin on the French side in the Agincourt scenes), it is some kind of reconstruction, perhaps from memory, of a version of the play as performed onstage. This Quarto was reprinted in 1602 and 1619 (the latter with a false date of 1608). The Folio text is much fuller and better printed; it is almost certainly derived from Shakespeare's manuscript or a scribal copy of it. There are, however, some occasions when the Quarto can be used to correct errors. It is possible that the Folio editor occasionally consulted a copy of the Third Quarto. The most awkward speeches for modern editors are those written in French: a combination of Shakespeare's imperfect French, incomprehension on the part of the printers, and the differences between sixteenth-century and modern French means that the creation of a usable text requires more than usual editorial license in correcting and modernizing.
THE LIFE OF
HENRY THE FIFTH
LIST OF PARTS
CHORUS
The English side
KING HENRY V
Duke of BEDFORD, his younger brother Humphrey, Duke of GLOUCESTER, another younger brother Duke of EXETER, the king's uncle Duke of YORK, the king's cousin Earl of WESTMORLAND
Earl of WARWICK
Earl of SALISBURY
Archbishop of CANTERBURY
Bishop of ELY
conspirators against the king
Richard Earl of CAMBRIDGE
Henry, Lord SCROOP of Masham Sir Thomas GREY
Corporal NYM
Lieutenant BARDOLPH
Ancient PISTOL
HOSTESS QUICKLY, keeper of a tavern, married to Pistol BOY, previously page to Falstaff
officers in the king's army
Sir Thomas ERPINGHAM
Captain GOWER, an Englishman Captain FLUELLEN, a Welshman
officers in the king's army
Captain JAMY, a Scotsman Captain MACMORRIS, an Irishman
English soldiers
John BATES
Alexander COURT
Michael WILLIAMS
HERALD
The French side
FRENCH KING, Charles VI QUEEN ISABEL, his wife Lewis the DAUPHIN, their son and heir KATHERINE, their daughter ALICE, Katherine's lady-in-waiting CONSTABLE of France Duke of BURGUNDY
MONTJOY, the French Herald GOVERNOR of Harfleur Duke of BOURBON
Duke of ORLEANS
Duke of BERRI
Lord RAMBURES
Lord GRANDPRE
French AMBASSADORS to England FRENCH LORDS
Soldiers, Messengers, Attendants
Prologue
Enter Prologue
CHORUS O, for a muse1 of fire, that would ascend
The brightest heaven of invention2,
A kingdom for a stage, princes to act
And monarchs to behold the swelling4 scene!
Then should the warlike5 Harry, like himself,
Assume the port6 of Mars, and at his heels,
Leashed in like hounds, should famine, sword and fire
Crouch for employment. But pardon, gentles8 all,
The flat unraised9 spirits that hath dared
On this unworthy scaffold10 to bring forth
So great an object. Can this cockpit11 hold
The vasty12 fields of France? Or may we cram
Within this wooden O13, the very casques
That did affright14 the air at Agincourt?
O, pardon! Since a crooked15 figure may
Attest in little place a million,
And let us, ciphers17 to this great accompt,
On your imaginary18 forces work.
Suppose19 within the girdle of these walls
Are now confined two mighty monarchies20, br />
Whose high upreared21 and abutting fronts
The perilous narrow ocean22 parts asunder.
Piece out23 our imperfections with your thoughts:
Into a thousand parts divide one man,
And make imaginary puissance.25
Think when we talk of horses, that you see them
Printing their proud hoofs i'th'receiving earth,
For 'tis your thoughts that now must deck28 our kings,
Carry them here and there, jumping o'er times,
Turning th'accomplishment of many years
Into an hourglass: for the which supply31,
Admit me chorus to this history;
Who prologue-like your humble patience pray,
Gently to hear, kindly to judge, our play.
Exit
Act 1 Scene 1
running scene 1
Enter the two Bishops of Canterbury and Ely
CANTERBURY My lord, I'll tell you: that self1 bill is urged,
Which in th'eleventh year of the last king's2 reign
Was like3, and had indeed against us passed,
But that the scambling4 and unquiet time
Did push it out of further question.5
ELY But how, my lord, shall we resist it now?
CANTERBURY It must be thought on: if it pass against us,
We lose the better half of our possession.
For all the temporal9 lands which men devout
By testament10 have given to the Church
Would they strip from us; being valued thus:
As much as would maintain12, to the king's honour,
Full fifteen earls and fifteen hundred knights,