The Will of Elizabeth Dowager Countess of Oxford, Proved 15 Feb. 1612 [O.S.].

St. Augustine Church, Hackney, 1797.

Among the most informative historical documents from any era are wills and testaments. The will of Elizabeth de Vere née Trentham, the second wife of Edward de Vere, the 17^th Earl of Oxford, is no exception.

From it we learn that the countess was struggling to pay her bills. Likely, it is the reason she requests a small private funeral.

I joyfullie committ my bodie to the earth from whence it was taken desiringe to be buried in the Church of Hackney wthin the Countie of Middlesex, as neare unto the bodie of my said late deare and noble lorde and husband as maye bee and that to be done as privately and with as little pompe and ceremonie as possible may be.¹

She did still have some personal wealth, as we learn in the body of the will, and she prefered to use it to honor outstanding debts and to give bequests.

We also learn that her husband had been buried in what she refers to as “the Church of Hackney,” and history knows as St. Augustine Church of Hackney, without a proper tomb.² Church records show that he died June 24, 1604, and was buried on July 6 following. The one special expense she does direct is that they be buried in a proper tomb.

Onlie I will that there bee in the said Church erected for us a tombe fittinge our degree and of such chardge as shall seem good to myne Executors...³

It would seem to be clear that her husband, who had technically died intestate,⁴ was buried within the church chancel but without a formal tomb. This may also have been the case in order to leave the countess and their young son what resources were left of the earldom of Oxford.

The countess and her 11 year old son, Henry, the 18^th Earl of Oxford, were left with some considerable property upon Edward's death, as royal gifts, patents, etc., were not attachable for debts of a decedent. For this reason, we learn to what most of the remaining gifts amounted. Foremost was possession of Hedingham Castle, the hereditary seat of the Earls of Oxford⁵:

I have devised leased graunted bargained and sould to the said Sr Edward Moore Frauncis Trentham and John Wright all that the great Parke of Hedingham ad Castrum aforesaide and certaine partes and parcells of the Castle Parke and the little Parke there as alsoe the Scite and precincte of the late Priorie there and all the landes Tenementes and hereditaments to the same late belonginge and appertagninge And alsoe the Rectorie or parsonage of Water Belchampe wthin the said Countie of Essex To have and to hold to the said Sr Edward Moore Frauncis Trentham and John Wright their Executors Administrators and Assignes from the feast of St. Michaell the Archangell nowe last past untill the full end and terme of Twentie yeares from thenceforth next ensuinge by and under certaine yearlie Rentes as in and by the saide severall deedes indented more fullie and plainelie maye appeare which saide severall deedes were soe by mee made in trust thereby to enable them to raise such sommes of money as should sufficientlie serve and suffice to dischardge and paye all my debtes and legacies and funerall expences as alsoe all such other paymentes and disbursementes⁶

The rents and other deeds, indentures, etc., had been awarded to Edward's daughters, as part of a deal to settle his debts to the crown, in order to support them after the death of Edward's first wife, Anne de Vere née Cecil.

Elizabeth, having a good head for economy, bought out the daughter's interest in 1609, such that Henry could have back his prime hereditary possession. But she had had to borrow considerable amounts, in the meantime, to keep up even a minimum of appearances and of a noble quality of life. She apparently had already signed the 20 year lease over the property and associated emoluments some five months before her death.

Upon her passing, Henry and his heirs would still be legally in possession, and would receive (presumably favorable) rents from the new leasees, but the payments from the tenants and the rights of usufruct, etc., would go to the leasees. After 20 years, Henry or his heirs would be free to lease again or to take full possession.

Edward de Vere's Ulysses & Agamemnon (1584)!

Henry would never recover full possession as he died in the Netherlands campaign of 1625. He was seriously overweight and suffered heat stroke during a battle on a hot day. He died some weeks later.⁷

Neither did his heirs inherit. As he had only married his second cousin, Lady Diana Cecil, a year-and-a-half before, much of which he spent serving the Netherlands campaign, he fathered no heirs, and, for all his mother's deft arrangements, the earldom and Hedingham passed to another branch of the Vere family.

Elizabeth's will also gives bequests to her servants.

Item I give to Margerie flower my wayting woeman my tawney satten gowne I give to Marie my chambermaid one other gowne at the discrečon of myne Executors I give to the said Margerie flower X^li [ten pounds] and to the said Marie my my (sic) chambermaid five poundes And to the said Margerie and Marie equallie to bee devided betweene them all my wearinge lynnen about my bodie I give to my Laundrie maide fortie shillinge [twenty shillings = 1 pound] To Katherine Three poundes To Gallantyne the Frenchman that serveth me five poundes To (sic) Thoroughgood five poundes To Thomas my Taylor dwelling wth mee five markes To Thomas my coachman five markes To John Bill my late servant five poundes⁸

We learn that even on an excruciatingly tight budget, a countess needed eight servants. The live-in tailor, however, might have been an extravagance.

Beyond clothing, amounts of money were bequeathed that might seem disappointingly small. Until we realize, that is, that a pound was worth some 300 times what it is worth today.

One other servants received a unique bequest:

Item I give unto my dombe man yearelie duringe his life (sic) powndes to be paide him by my Executors quarterlie at the foure most usuall feastes of the yeare by even and equall portions.⁹

This “dumb” (i.e. “silent”) man is thought, by Oxfordians, to have been William Shakspere of Stratford-upon-Avon. I have stayed away from the subject, all these years, until recently having come upon evidence that all but proves it to be the case. I expect to be announcing it in my upcoming book.

1Ward, B.R. The Mystery of “Mr. W. H.” (1923). 99-100.

2See my ““In this uncarued marble”: Shakespeare’s Tomb”. Virtual Grub Street, Oct. 31, 2021. https://gilbertwesleypurdy.blogspot.com/2021/10/in-this-uncarued-marble-shakespeares.html

3Ward, 100.

4Royal gifts in the possession of a nobleman were bequeathed by law and custom regardless of a will or lack thereof.

5See my “Hedingham Castle Fact Sheet with Virtual Tour Link.” Virtual Grub Street, Jan. 20, 2019. https://gilbertwesleypurdy.blogspot.com/2019/01/hedingham-castle-fact-sheet-with.html

6Ward, 104-5.

7See my [pending]

8Ward, 102-3.

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.

9Ibid. 103.

From Shakespeare to AI: A Midsummer Night's Nightmare?

Studying Shakespeare likely isn't high on your to do list. And studying can mean any number of things. Study what? Sources? Prosody? All those strange words and stranger usages? Booor-iiiing!

I can almost read your thoughts. “Nope. It was his job as an author to be accessible to a reader some 450 years later. And he failed. I can't make heads nor tails of it. And don't even talk to me about his portrayal of women or role in colonialism.

Yadda, yadda, yadda, his plays have a lot of sex jokes in them. Yadda, yadda, yadda, he invented a lot of words and sayings we use today. Whatever. Besides, aren't you one of those nut-cases who believes that the Earl of Oxford actually wrote the works? Why in the world would I want to read anything you write about 30-something plays and 100-and-some poems 400 years past their best by date?”

If anyone is still reading, after these introductory paragraphs, you're my potential audience. Even if you agree with their sentiment.

I've spent years doing research of all kinds. I am indeed a nut-case for knowing the details of any subject that interests me. I do a lot of deep dive. One of those subjects is Shakespeare. In the spirit of my years as a Navy nuke and a computer-based production systems engineer, I apply strict rational analysis to all of my studies.

Deep dive, as it regards Shakespeare, does not mean chasing conspiracy theories or detecting hidden ciphers. In fact, it frequently doesn't mean researching the Authorship Question at all. From my perspective, to know something real about the works of Shakespeare is to know something important toward Authorship. Let the chips fall where they may.

All of this said, deep dive is time consuming and crushingly hard work. In the matter of language alone — and it must be admitted that language is everything — I have painstakingly gathered together scores of physical and above 100 digital facsimile dictionaries. Add half that many again, encyclopedias. Almost as many of other detail-oriented close cultural anthropology studies, of engineering studies, of period cookbooks, of government and guild records, etc.

Upon transitioning to my dream position of hermit, I could only add a few books a year on any of my subjects. Shakespeare related studies, of the necessary depth, were so hard to come by, at an affordable price, or to find on area library shelves, that I pretty much despaired of pursuing the many leads I'd uncovered.

But then matters got considerably better. Libraries began selling large quantities of books from their stacks and donations in order to replace them with CDs, DVDs and computer terminals. They did not sell the popular novels (for which I have no use), but, rather, all of the boring books that no one ever took out — the classics in every field. They were chunked on long tables and sold for pennies on the pound. Fabulous tomes of knowledge were donated to thrift shops and sold for 5-25¢ a volume.

Suddenly, my various studies looked like they could move forward in a meaningful way — Shakespeare among them. Still, I could only be disappointed with the limitations of my resources. I was making headway but constantly jotting memoranda to my future (somehow still better resourced) self.

Then Google started its book digitization project. The Project Gutenberg, it seems, had first come up with the concept some 30 years before. The Internet Archive followed. Millions of digitized books were rapidly becoming available, going back to the end of the 15^th century.¹ The Internet was suddenly a wonder. 

My years of sheltering-in, with more books than I could read in a lifetime, on every topic of interest, had begun. With a little bit of help from the inter-library loan system the t's were being crossed and the i's dotted. With a little more from Blogger and Amazon Kindle, and the occasional paper-and-ink and digital literary journal, it was finding a modest readership.

I will spare us a recitation of the detriments that come along with the Internet, as well as the benefits. The very fact that none of us can afford to do without it is one such detriment. But that is the subject of another essay.

The most immediately threatening (detriment? benefit?), is the advent of Automated Intelligence. It promises to create disruption like nothing else the human race has experienced before.

At first, I refused to use its services. But then the most basic of its services that are available now — its use as a super-powerful search engine, that responds to and answers queries in everyday language — was too tempting to resist. I now use it regularly to verify and/or expand my understanding of a wide range of topics, to remind myself of exact dates, etc.

Shakespeare studies have long now sent me down the rabbit hole of western languages as they were written in the Middle Ages through the 17^th century. It is a fascinating subject and truly a Shakespeare study. Whoever one might think he was, he clearly loved reading the Italian and French poetry and novellas of his day. As well as classical languages, he was well-read in Chaucer and Gower who wrote in middle English, Pierre de Ronsard who wrote in middle French. His strange, and much commented, depiction of the Greek heroes and the defeat of Troy, in the play Troilus and Cressida, prove to us that he had access and the ability to read Benoit Sainte-Maure's medieval french Roman de Troie (1160)² — obscure even in his day. The even more obscure Latin Chronicle of John Whethamstede, Abbot of St. Albans, is the only known source for some key details in Henry VI. Shakespeare ransacked the libraries of the Royalty, the nobility, the monasteries and the universities of his day in search of plots for his plays.

Edward de Vere's Ulysses & Agamemnon (1584)!

Many of the cherished dictionaries I have mentioned above specialize in one or another of the period languages of his sources. But, when I come upon a particularly knotty passage, for all I value their knowledge, the time it takes to extract that knowledge is often a matter of simmering frustration. I now merely type an entry such as “middle french domter” to remind myself that this word I constantly forget means “to tame or domesticate”.

In my recent essay on the carnival at Fontainebleau, in 1564³, the word “gaillarde,” repeated in works by Ronsard, clearly did not refer directly to the dance called the “galliard,” in english, but likely would tell me from what the name was derived. The AI query “middle french gaillarde” gave the result shown in the screen shot at the head to this essay: “lively, vigorous or brave”. My cherished Ancient French Dictionary was, for some reason, unaware of this definition but did offer:

GALER, galler, gualler, v., s'amuser, se réjouir, danser, faire la noce⁴

[to amuse onself, to enjoy oneself, to dance, to pass the night away]

On this occasion, AI's definition exactly fitted Ronsard's various uses in the works he wrote for the carnival. But the Ancient French Dictionary only covers through the 15^th century. Ronsard wrote in the 16^th. The contrast between the two may suggest the history and derivation of the name galliard.

At some point, I will return to research on the relation of Ronsard to Shakespeare or between the 1564 carnival and the play A Midsummer Night's Dream. Or perhaps between Whethamstede's Chronicle and the Henry VI plays. I am almost certain to save precious time by consulting AI about minor but nonetheless essential matters in ancient texts — and to consult my dictionaries when time allows or circumstance requires.

Has AI brought my guard down while it insidiously takes over the world? Perhaps I will ask it. I mean, it would tell me. Right?

Remember to “follow” this blog to receive notifications when new posts go up and to be able to comment on posts. The link is located in the upper righthand corner of the page.

1Manuscript collections were eventually digitized but access largely retracted.

2See my variorum edition of Ulysses and Agamemnon (1584). https://www.amazon.com/Ulysses-Agamemnon-Edward-William-Shakespeare-ebook/dp/B07JD7KM1T/ This is the play that was later expanded into Troilus and Cressida (1609) which first shows up in the famous Diary of Philip Henslowe, as Ulysses and Agamemnon, under the date of 1599.

3See my “Shakespeare and Catherine de Medici's Famous 1564 Carnival at Fontainebleau.” Virtual Grub Street, September, 23, 2026. https://gilbertwesleypurdy.blogspot.com/2026/09/shakespeare-and-catherine-de-medicis.html

4Dictionnaire L'Ancienne Langue Français et de Tous ses Dialectes du IX au XV Siècle (1885). IV.209.

Also at Virtual Grub Street:

• Shakespeare and Catherine de Medici's Famous 1564 Carnival at Fontainebleau. September 23, 2026. "Fontainebleau featured a massive pleasure garden, with a carved marble fountain, which would serve as portal to the magical world that had been prepared for the guests."
• 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,...”.
• 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.

Shakespeare and Catherine de Medici's Famous 1564 Carnival at Fontainebleau.

On the last day of January, in the year 1564, the Queen Mother, Catherine de Medici, and her 13 year old son, King Charles IX, departed Paris, to undertake a two year tour of his new kingdom. The season of Lent would soon be upon them so Catherine commissioned the official court poet, Pierre Ronsard, to arrange a grand month-plus-long carnaval at the favorite party-palace of the french nobility, Fontainebleau. It has since become one of history's most famous galas.

Although Charles was his own man now, and his mother no longer Regent, she still made most of the decisions. Including those related to the grand gala. She was so wise as to avoid any public display of her power for all she was at least equal to the king. The ambassadors of England, Thomas Smith and Nicholas Throckmorton, knew to start with the Queen Mother if they wanted an audience with her son.

Smith not only attended the festivities at Fontainebleau but signed the Treaty of Troyes, together with Charles, in the midst of them. He had been tutor to Edward de Vere, heir to the earldom of Oxford, some years before, during the reign of Queen Mary I. He and the young earl's eventual father-in-law, William Cecil, Baron Burghley, were close friends, as well, having risen together as young stars of Henry VIII's secretariat.

Back in England, Smith commissioned allegorical paintings for his country seat, at Hill Hall, similar to those at Fontainebleau. Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester, did so in great profusion for his Kenilworth entertainment of Queen Elizabeth I, in 1575. Numerous accounts of various aspects of the Fontainebleau event had been published (including one by the king's wine-steward) in the years immediately after. They were best sellers in terms of the time. Dudley was intent to compete with the famous fête in an effort to convince the queen to marry him.

Dudley may also have learned of the event first hand from Michel de Castelnau, Lord of Mauvissiere, who had attended in person. Castelnau was something of a special ambassador to England and visited many times. He did not become the resident ambassador until several months after Kenilworth, though. He had played perhaps the single most historical role in the French festivities — which we will come to in its proper place.

So then, Fontainebleau featured a massive pleasure garden, with a carved marble fountain, which would serve as portal to the magical world that had been prepared for the guests. Dudley finished a large in-progress garden with carved marble fountain at Kenilworth in time for the visit of his queen. Each celebration featured a man-made lake with temporary-construction enchanted castle in the midst. The forests around the grounds of each featured a resident hermit who recited poetry. Both celebrations included fireworks displays.

While Fontainebleau was simply far larger and more monumental than Kenilworth, and the tournaments more impressive, it was far more impressive still in that its plays and recitations, presented throughout the month, were written by Ronsard. His works are considered among the finest in all of French literature.

Also from the pen of this laureate, and ironically more famous still, is a play that he presented, the text of which has entirely disappeared. We are informed that it was a dramatized translation from Ariosto's Orlando Furioso — the single most celebrated poem of the time.

Kenilworth is thought to have influenced its times, in a signal way, by being remembered by the character Oberon in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.

My gentle Pucke come hither; thou remembrest

Since once I sat upon a promontory,

And heard a Meare-maide on a Dolphins backe,

Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath,

That the rude sea grew civill at her song,

And certaine starres shot madly from their Spheares,

To heare the Sea-maids musicke.¹

There is certainly a strong resemblance to such witness accounts as survive of the festivities presented for Elizabeth.

Traditional scholars have imagined 11 year old William of Stratford traveling 14 miles to see the queen and her entertainments the memory of which he brought back to give magic to his most magical play. Oxfordians can take no comfort from such fantasizing, however, as the earl was off visiting Italy at the time and could not himself have witnessed the entertainments, either. Whoever wrote under the name of Shakespeare likely got his information from George Gascoigne's The Princely Pleasures at Kenilworth Castle,² Robert Laneham's famous letter to his friend Humphrey Martin³ and from other reminiscences that did not find pen and ink.

One detail given by Oberon is not found in any description of the festivities at Kenilworth.

My gentle Pucke come hither; thou remembrest

Since once I sat upon a promontory,

The occasional guess has been made as to when the promontory scene occurred. It seems like it would have caught the attention of those who witnessed the event. But no account remains.

A promontory, it bears mentioning, or rock face of any kind constantly figured in the poetry of Ronsard. It was among his favorite poetical props. Due to the fact that Ronsard wrote nearly all of the entertainment for the fête at Fontainebleau, such rock faces could be found everywhere.

In the opening masque which welcomed the king to the entryway to the world of fable, the gate to the garden at the Orleans' house, his highness stood at the foot of a sheer rock-face.⁴ Rather than the Lady of the Lake riding a dolphin, a nymph was carried along the water toward the king, riding on a giant seashell, to bid him welcome — presumably a tip of the hat to Botticelli's Birth of Venus.

The nymph explained that the denizens of mythology, facing an increasingly hostile world, bereft of so good a king as he who now stood before them, they had melded into nature, some into the sea, some into the earth, some into caves and crevices. But now that so great a king was crowned, at last, they began, as the nymph spoke, to emerge from all sides. This was the theme of the first masque. Shakespeare may have imagined Oberon, emerging into the famous french scene, to sit looking down from atop the sheer rock-face.

While there is some amount of conjecture to this explanation of the line, there is no doubt that Ronsard was a favorite poet of Shakespeare. The Frenchman's influence is everywhere in his works. We have referred above to perhaps the best known instance. This may be another.

Ronsard wrote two plays for performance before the court at Fontainebleau. One, entitled Le Bergerie, was a play written to be acted by the noble members of the court themselves. The other was a dramatized translation from the most celebrated poem of the day: Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso. It was entitled La Belle Genièvre.

The text of The Belle Genievre has since been lost. What little is left to us is an epilogue, spoken before the court by the above mentioned Michel de Castelnau, Lord of Mauvissiere. One particular image has become more famous than any in the lavish Fontainebleau fête.

Le monde est le theatre et les hommes acteurs;

La Fortune, qui est maistresse de la Sceine,

Appreste les habits, et de la vie humaine⁵

This for the fact that, some 25 years later, it would be adapted by William Shakespeare.

                                All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and their entrances;

And one man in his time plays many parts,⁶

Remember to “follow” this blog to receive notifications when new posts go up and to be able to comment on posts. The link is located in the upper righthand corner of the page.

Edward de Vere's Ulysses & Agamemnon (1584)!

1A Midsummer Night's Dream, II.i.153-59.

2Gascoigne, George. The Princely Pleasures at Kenilworth Castle (1576). I have advanced substantial evidence, in my Shakespeare in 1573: Apprenticeship and Scandal (2021), that Edward de Vere was the poet who went under the moniker Si Fortunatus Infoelix in the anthology section of Gascoigne's An Hundreth Sundrie Flowers (1573). https://www.amazon.com/Shakespeare-1573-Apprenticeship-Authorship-Progress-ebook/dp/B096GSQV14

3Laneham, Robert. A LETTER: Whearin part of the Entertainment unto the Queen's Majesty at Killingworth Castle... (no date, 1576).

4Le Recueil des triumphes et magnificences qui ont estez faictes au logis de monseigneur le duc d’Orléans (1564). No page numbers. “...le Roy s'acheminant plus auant arriua pies d'un grand Rocher...”

5Blanchemain, M. Prosper. Oeuvres Complètes de P. De Ronsard (1860). IV.184.

6As You Like It, II.vii.

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.

Dressing Shakespeare in the 16th Century: Another Mystery Solved.

Standard Citation: Purdy, Gilbert Wesley. “Dressing Shakespeare in the 16^th Century: Another Mystery Solved.” Virtual Grub Street,  https://gilbertwesleypurdy.blogspot.com/2026/09/dressing-shakespeare-in-16th-century.html [state date accessed].

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, came about 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,

And smile upon his fingers ends,

I knew there was no way but one.⁵

In yet another example of the hazards of 16^th 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.

Remember to “follow” this blog to receive notifications when new posts go up and to be able to comment on posts. The link is located in the upper righthand corner of the page.

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 16^th century.

5This is my own reconstructed Shakespeare revision of the 3^rd 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,

I 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,"
• Did Shakespeare Make Fun of Other Writers? August 2, 2026. "A friend recently asked me whether Shakespeare ever made fun of the work of other writers."
• 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,...”.

• 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.