Virtual Grub Street: The un-Bad Quarto of Shakespeare’s Henry V.

When one of the persons in a debate says such sweeping things as “those who have carefully studied the quartos KNOW,” “are in every case,” etc., and gives examples vague enough that they can’t be checked, it is likely a sign that he or she is posing for the camera. Scholarship — even amateur scholarship — is better not done using social media for the poor man’s production of CSI Tudor London.

As it turns out, there are no sweeping generalities worth mentioning among the so-called “bad quartos” beyond those that give the phrase its definition. If any more can be found out, after careful, tedious analysis, they can only be discovered by addressing each text as a unique, separate study. Analysis of the “bad quarto” of Shakespeare’s Henry V (mentioned in the above referenced debate), for example, soon finds the researcher reading his 2 Henry IV.

The speaker of the famous epilogue at the end of Shakespeare’s 2 Henry IV asks the listeners’ patience.

If you looke for a good speech now, you vndoe me: For what I haue to say, is of mine owne making:

The epilogue is not written by the playwright but by some third party. Perhaps by one of the actors. Perhaps by one of the investors and/or managers of the theater. Perhaps by someone who fit each of those categories.

The speech is designed to ingratiate the playhouse with an audience that was expected to have heard that a recent performance of the play upon their stage was cried down for insulting the historical figure of Sir John Oldcastle.

One word more, I beseech you: if you be not too much cloid with Fat Meate, our humble Author will continue the Story (with Sir Iohn in it) and make you merry, with faire Katherine of France: where (for any thing I know) Falstaffe shall dye of a sweat, vnlesse already he be kill'd with your hard Opinions: For Old-Castle dyed a Martyr, and this is not the man. My Tongue is wearie when my Legs are too, I will bid you good night;…

The previous audience may have been salted with provocateurs in the pay of the Cobham family — proud descendants of Oldcastle — instructed to put the crowd into a frenzy over the insulting way the old knight was portrayed.

Numerous anomalies in the Henry IV plays inform us that the name “Oldcastle” was at first held over from the earlier telling of the history in the play entitled The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth. I’ve gone to considerable length in my Edward de Vere's Retainer Thomas Churchyard: the Man Who Was Falstaff[1] to explain precisely why the Famous Victories was written by Edward de Vere, the 17^th Earl of Oxford, around 1585, and rewritten and reissued by him in the late 1580s as The Chronicle History of Henry the Fift. With his battell fought at Agin Court in France. The 1600 first quarto — erroneously designated a “bad quarto” — featured the above title together with the disclaimer Togither with Auntient Pistoll.

We might seem lucky to have the epilogue at all. After the first performances of the revised play it was unlikely to be needed. It may survive in the printed text in order to cast aspersions upon Thomas Creede the printer of the 1600 first quarto of the play entitled The Famous Victories of Henry the Fift. The first quartos of the Henry IV plays were consecutively published by Creede’s competitor, Andrew Wise — 2 Henry IV appearing during the same year, 1600.

The Henry V plays were among the most popular ever to be played on the Elizabethan stage. Creede had managed a coup by capturing the rights to both the Famous Victories and the Chronicle History. The Henry IV plays were also to a lesser extent spun off from the Famous Victories and its prequel The Tragedie of King Richard II as I have pointed out in an earlier essay “Shakespeare’s King Richard II as Prequel.”[2]

Some claim that The Chronicle History of Henry V was written after the Henry IV plays. The epilogue, in fact, promises a Henry V with Falstaff as a featured character. But none of the quartos of Henry V features the enormously popular old knight. He makes nothing more than a cameo appearance in the first two quartos.

Flewelen. so our king being in his ripe

Wits and iudgements, is turn away the fat Knite

With the great belly doublet:

I am forget his name.

Gower. Sir Iohn Falstaffe.

Flew. I, I think it is Sir Iohn Falstaffe indeed,

I can tell you, theres good men borne at Monmorth.

That’s it! Nothing more! In the third quarto, Sir John’s famous death scene was added — in which he does not personally appear — which is likely to have been written by a dresser. Had Shakespeare written Henry V after Henry IV plays he would have to have decided to write out Falstaff, one of his most popular characters, from Henry V, and to replace him with the character Pistoll.

Instead, what Shakespeare didn’t choose to do was to rewrite the earlier play The Chronicle History of Henry V in order to back-fit the character Falstaff whose name he had exchanged for Sir John Oldcastle, in the 1596, after audiences threatened to shut down his new Henry IV plays. The owners of the Chronicle History lamely inserted an utterly extraneous cameo appearance, after the Henry IV plays came on the stage, in hopes it would increase the popularity of the old play. Eventually they sprang for a play dresser to write a death scene. Forgetting the cameo, inserted further toward the end of the play, they left Falstaff to rise from the dead only to be “turn away” by the King.

He did, however, choose to revise his Henry V to add choruses, and to generally touch it up, for the high honor of having it featured, in 1599, to inaugurate the Globe Theater. Following the performance, quartos of the various Henry plays were suddenly printed in profusion. No text of the new Henry V being available, Creede did the next best thing, and published the old versions while the market was hot. The revised Globe version would appear in the First Folio.

So then, it turns out that at least one “bad quarto” can be shown to be an earlier version of the more mature, stylistically evolved play as we have it.

[1] Purdy, Gilbert Wesley. Edward de Vere's Retainer Thomas Churchyard: the Man Who Was Falstaff (2017). https://www.amazon.com/dp/B077LVLXY2/.

[2] Purdy, Gilbert Wesley. “Shakespeare’s King Richard II as Prequel.” Virtual Grub Street. August 6, 2018. https://gilbertwesleypurdy.blogspot.com/2018/08/shakespeares-king-richard-ii-as-prequel.html