INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION THE PLAY was entered in S.R. on 23 August, 1600, and the only Quarto version was published as The Second part of Henrie the fourth, continuing to his death, and coronation of Henrie the flft. With the humours of sir John Fal staffe, and swaggering Pistoll. As it hath been sundrie times publikely acted by the right honourable, the Lord Chamberlaine his servants. Written by William Shakespeare. London. Printed by V. S [Valentine Simmes] for Andrew Wise, and William Asplry, 1600. The Quarto has 39 lines not in F1 and omits 171 lines found there. The Folio was probably derived from a scribe's copy of a prompt-book. Sir W. W. Greg argues that Q was printed from Shakespeare's own MS, in which cuts had been marked. The fact that an actor is mentioned in Q (Sincklo (V.4)) might suggest a playhouse acting version. III. I was omitted from Q at first and later inserted. This may have been only a printer's slip or a defect in the copy, but Dover Wilson believed that the omission was due to fear of the censorship, because of the reference in that scene to Richard II's deposition, a ticklish subject in the year of Essex's conspiracy, when Shakespeare's Richard II was regarded by the Queen as touching on the political situation. It is as likely that the references to Northumberland here and elsewhere in the play would offend Henry Percy, the ninth Earl, Essex's brotherin-law. He was not involved in the conspiracy but his grandfather, Sir Thomas Percy, was executed in 1537 as a leader in the Pilgrimage of Grace, and his father Henry the eighth Earl was sent to the Tower three times and died there mysteriously in 1585, shot through the heart, while his uncle Thomas the seventh Earl made a rebellion to restore the Catholic religion in 1569 and was executed at York in 1572 after fleeing to Scotland (cf. II.3), and being sold by the Scottish Regent, the Earl of Mar, to Elizabeth's officers.