The first published versions of Elizabethan era plays generally appeared years after the plays first came on stage. The play The Famous Victories of Henry the Fift, for just one example, had to have been played before 1588 — the year in which one of the actors in it died. References to it are everywhere in Shakespeare's two part Henry IV which, it is widely agreed, were first played around 1596. The Famous Victories were first published, however, in 1598 — some 13 years after it was first played. Henry IV, Parts 1&2, were published in 1598 and 1600 respectively.
There were a number of reasons for withholding publication. In the matter of the Henry plays, however, the profusion of new Henry-themed quarto editions, 1598-1600, was because publishers were aware that Henry V would be the first play on the stage of the Globe Theater once construction was complete.1 There could be no hope of getting hold of the new state of the play. Older versions would have to do — as was often the case — in order to take advantage of what was sure to be a high demand for Henry merch.
As for Henry V, itself, the first quarto was published in 1600. The Globe version would not be published until it appeared in the Shakespeare First Folio of 1623.
I start with this because there are hundred of years of scholarship written about the Henry plays. While much of it places at its center the Folio text of Henry V without crediting this simplest of patterns. Like the recent Arden edition, it would seem, half of that scholarship assigns the composition of the play to 1599, and the quarto editions to dates after it.
A particularly brilliant study by Hereward T. Price2 does a close reading of the texts of the Folio and quartos. His results convince him that the Folio edition is actually the earliest version of the play. And to a considerable degree he is right. But being printed from the least altered transcription of the original play does not mean that the quarto versions came after. And it most certainly does not mean that the play was composed circa 1599.
The famous choruses in the Folio version were written for the Globe performance. Choruses, it is true, were decades out of style by 1599. But Shakespeare saw himself foremost as a poet and he wanted his poetry to be a central part of the grand opening of the Globe. They are not missing from the quartos because they were stripped away in order to shorten the run-time of subsequent showings. They had never been part of the original play to begin with.
The quartos are demonstrably stripped-down versions for showings prior to the Henry IV plays with slight later emendations in an attempt to be consistent with those plays. Not only that, but the emendations were not by Shakespeare. They were done by what was called a “play dresser”. There is no sign that Shakespeare wrote or did any major rewrite of the play after the Henry IV plays. Such “dressing” was a very common practice. By all signs, Shakespeare was satisfied with the play as he wrote it.3
Henry fans — and England was full of them — were, it seems, much like our Trekies. They wanted their favorite characters and they wanted consistency across the franchise.
Falstaff was not yet so much as a glint in the eye when Henry V was first written. In the first two quarto editions, a single reference, by the character Fluellen, to seeing the “fat Knite / With the great belly doublet”, informs us that a play dresser has been at work, in order to bring Shakespeare's wildly popular character into the play.
The third quarto makes clear that the audience demanded more. The famous death scene was written in by the next dresser who had more sense than to believe he could actually write a part for Falstaff that wouldn't be a mere shadow of the original character. Falstaff himself would be too desperately ill to make a personal appearance. Not only that, but the dresser was not made aware that Fluellen sees Falstaff later in the play. For this reason, the old knight rises from the dead in the third quarto.
Notably, this is corrected in the Folio edition. It lamely explains that the “fat Knight with the great belly doublet” had properly been exiled from the presence of the king. For some bizarre reason, Fluellen merely reflects, in the heat of battle, upon the exile of Falstaff. Again, such inconsistencies are a sure sign of a dresser.
It is hard to believe, however, that Shakespeare himself did not add the famous image of “a Table of green fields” in the Folio:
He went away as if it were a crysombd childe,
Betweene twelve and one,
Just at turning of the tide ;
His nose was as sharpe as a pen ;
For when I saw him fumble with the sheets,
And talke of flowers and a Table4 of greene fields,
I knew there was no way but one.5
In yet another example of the hazards of 16th century playwriting, however, a Folio typesetter momentarily lost track of what line exactly he was setting, resulting in a garbled mess that has stumped scholars now for centuries:
it had beene any Christomed Child: a parted ev’n just betweene Twelve and One, ev’n at the turning o’ th’ Tyde: for after I saw him fumble with the Sheets, and play with Flowers, and smile upon his fingers end, I knew there was but one way: for his Nose was as sharpe as a Pen, and a Table of greene fields.6
If he realized what he had done, he chose not to lose precious time, and left it, thinking it could make no difference. In his defense, book scanning software does the same and worse often enough. Besides, his lapse left me with a 300+ year mystery to solve.
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1 Henry IV Part 1 was quickly republished in 1599 in order to restock for the Globe rush. It was printed from the 1598 edition with minor, largely typographical corrections.
2Price, Hereward T. The Text of Henry V (1921).
3For more on this see my “The un-Bad Quarto of Shakespeare’s Henry V.” Virtual Grub Street, 14 May 2022. https://gilbertwesleypurdy.blogspot.com/2022/05/the-un-bad-quarto-of-shakespeares-henry.html
4A table was the common word for a painted picture in the 16th century.
5This is my own reconstructed Shakespeare revision of the 3rd Quarto text below to include the table image from the Folio death scene.
He went away as if it were a crysombd childe,
Betweene twelve and one,
Just at turning of the tide;
His nose was as sharpe as a pen;
For when I saw him fumble with the sheets,
And talke of flowers, and smile upon his fingers ends,
1 knew there was no way but one.
6“The Life of Henry the Fift.” Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies (1623). Histories @ 75.
Also at Virtual Grub Street:
- On the Possibility that Edward de Vere and Shakspere of Straford Shared a Beer in Southwark. February 9, 2026. "The Earl of Oxford would have taken this route in 1575, as would Michel Eyquem, Seigneur de Montaigne,"
- Du Bartas – Dinosaurs = Shakespeare's Gaunt Speech in Richard the Second. November 30, 2025. "After quite some time it was discovered that one John Eliot's French lesson book Ortho-epia Gallica included..."
- Sonnet 130: Shakespeare's Reply to a 1580 Poem by Thomas Watson. September 7, 2024. “Interesting to see our Derek Hunter debating with Dennis McCarthy, at the North group,...”.
- Rocco Bonetti's Blackfriars Fencing School and Lord Hunsdon's Water Pipe. August 12, 2023. “... the tenement late in the tenure of John Lyllie gentleman & nowe in the tenure of the said Rocho Bonetti...”
Check out the Shakespeare Authorship Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time and about the Shakespeare Authorship Question.
- Check out the V.G.S. Oxfordian Shakespeare Poetry Page for many poems by Shakespeare together with historical context.
