LITERARY HISTORY.

King Henry the Fifth was first printed in quarto form in 1600, with the following titlepage:—THE | CRONICLE | History of Henry the fift, With his battell fought at Agin Court in France. Togither with Auntient | Pistoll. | As it hath bene sundry times playd by the Right honourable | the Lord Chamberlaine his seruants. | LONDON | Printed by Thomas Creede, for Tho. Milling- | ton, and Iohn Busby. And are to be sold at his house in Carter Lane, next | the Powle head. 1600.

This edition, which is very imperfect, was evidently brought out in a hurried manner, and the text was probably prepared from shorthand notes taken in the theatre.

Fleay (Chronicle History of William Shakespeare, p. 206) expresses the opinion that the Quarto is "a shortened version of a play written in 1598 for the Curtain Theatre, and that the Folio (except such alterations as were made after James's accession) is a version enlarged and improved for the Globe Theatre later in the same year."

A second quarto edition, reprinted from the first, was issued in 1602, "by Thomas Creede, for Thomas Pauier," and "sold at his shop in Cornhill, at the signe of the Cat and Parrets, neare the Exchange." A third quarto, in similar style, "Printed for T. P" (the same Thomas Pavier) appeared in 1608.

No complete edition of the play was published until it was incorporated in the Folio of 1623, which must be regarded as the sole authority for the text. The quartos, however, are of use in a few instances for the correction of typographical errors in F. 1. It should be noticed that the play as it stands in the quarto of 1600 is shorter by more than one half than the version given by the folio; and this leads

to an interesting but difficult question: was the Henry V. of the folio an expansion (by Shakespeare) of the Henry V. of the quarto; or does the former represent the original draft of the piece, which the author (or some one else) abridged for stage purposes, and which in this abridged version was published in the quarto?

The arguments on both sides are intricate and involved, and we may perhaps be content with Mr. Aldis Wright's summary of the disputed points; his conclusion is as follows: that the play was shortened for the stage; that the abridgment was not made by Shakespeare; and that of this abridged version the quarto gives an imperfect and surreptitiouslyobtained representation.

The date of the play is sufficiently fixed by the following passage in the Chorus of act v.: Were now the general of our gracious empress, As in good time he may, from Ireland coming, &c.

The reference is to the expedition of Essex, who went to Ireland on the 15th of April, 1599, and returned on the 28th of the following September. As it is improbable that the passage was inserted after the play was written, the date of composition must be placed within the limits specified. The play is not mentioned by Meres in 1598, though Henry IV., its immediate predecessor, is included in his list.

Shakespeare drew the main incidents of his plot, as in the Henry IV., from Holinshed's Chronicles and the anonymous play entitled The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth, which must have been written as early as 1588, since the famous Tarlton, who died in that year, is known to have taken the part of the Clown in the play. It was not entered on the Stationers' Registers until May 14, 1594, and the earliest edition now extant is

dated 1598. It was printed by Thomas Creede, like Q. 1 of the present play.-O.F.A.

STAGE HISTORY.

A

Henry V. appears to have been a popular play on the stage from its very first production, which was, perhaps, at the Curtain Theatre not long before the building of the Globe in 1599. It was reproduced at the latter theatre in the course of the same year. It was probably also the play presented at court by the Lord Chamberlain's men during the Christmas festivities of 1599-1600. later performance at court was on the 7th of January, 1605. The record of this and sundry other performances of Shakespeare's plays, in the accounts of the Master of the Revels, has been proved to be a forgery; but, as HalliwellPhillipps (Outlines, 7th ed. vol. ii. pp. 161-167) conclusively shows, the information is genuine though the record is spurious.

In the next century, when nearly all of Shakespeare's plays were brought out in "improved" versions, more or less garbled and mixed with foreign matter, Henry V. did not escape such profanation. One of the worst of these mongrel dramas was that concocted by Aaron Hill, "poet, critic, amateur actor, playwright, and adapter from the French," which was brought out at Drury Lane in 1723; according to Genest, it was acted six times; he says that "it has considerable merit, but, after all, it is but a bad alteration of Shakespeare's play . . . his taste was too Frenchified to relish the humour of Fluellin" (sic) (vol. iii. p. 130). Certain portions of the original matter were retained, but a new underplot was introduced, in which Harriet, a niece of Lord Scrope, was a prominent figure. She was represented as having been formerly betrayed by Henry, and follows him to the wars in masculine apparel, watching over him faithfully notwithstanding his infidelity to her. Three independent adaptations of Henry V. were made by Kemble. The first was produced at Drury Lane in 1789, the second at the same theatre in 1801, and the third at Covent Garden in 1806.

On the first of these occasions (Oct. 1, 1789) the cast had Kemble as the King, Badde

ley (Fluellen), Barrymore (Dauphin), and Mrs. Booth as Hostess (see Genest, vi. 575). In the 1803 revival Charles Kemble was Gloucester, and Blanchard, Fluellen. For the rest, Henry V. appears to have been popular with last-century audiences. From the restoration of the play to the stage in 1735 at the theatre in Goodman's Fields, down to 1801, Genest chronicles some ten separate and notable reproductions of what dramatically is scarcely a strong piece, and amongst the actors who took part in these revivals not a few great names occur— -Macklin, Yates, Ryan, Woodward, Garrick, Elliston.

It was at Drury Lane on March 8, 1830, that Edmund Kean, in this play, made what proved to be his last attempt in a new part. The result was a melancholy failure. In vain he struggled against physical suffering, and against what was of more importance in such a part, the almost total decay of his memory. At the end of the fourth act he made a touching and apologetic appeal to the audience, pleading that this was the first time that he had ever presented himself before them in such a condition as to be unable to fulfil his duties. The appeal was not made in vain; for they stretched indulgence to its utmost limits. The one redeeming point, in this sad exhibition of his decaying powers, was the soliloquy in the camp after the scene with Williams. In such parts as Shylock, Hamlet, Othello, which he had known by heart long before the decay of both body and mind had set in, Kean could still recall the glory of his early triumphs; but to study such a part as Henry V. for the first time was a task far beyond his powers.

In 1839 the play was revived by Macready at Covent Garden, with brilliant scenic effects, for which the manager was largely indebted to Stanfield the painter. The cast included several well-known players: Phelps as Charles d'Albret (Constable of France); Howe (Duke of Orleans); Meadows (Fluellen); Paul Bedford (Bardolph); Harley (Pistol); Anderson (Gower); Vandenhoff (Chorus); Miss P. Horton the Boy; and Miss Vandenhoff as Katharine.1 Macready's own account of the first

1 Of these the only survivors are Mr. Howe (still acting at the Lyceum); Mr. Anderson, who has retired from the stage; and Miss P. Horton (Mrs. German Reed).