The Smock Alley Prompt-Books of 1 and 2 Henry IV

Abstract

VER since S. W. Singer mentioned them in i853, it has been known that the so-called Smock Alley prompt-books of several of Shakespeare's plays now being published by Professor Blakemore Evans originally also included the two parts of Henry IV.' A fragment of i Henry IV has indeed been found, but of the rest of it, and of the Second Part, nothing has been known. In fact they had been thought to be irretrievably lost. This has been the more regrettable since the Smock-Alley prompt-books are the most valuable source extant for our knowledge of Restoration practices in staging Shakespeare, in London as well as in Dublin, for the links between the two Theatres Royal were close.2 Fortunately this deficiency can now be remedied, if not in its entirety, at least in many of its details. It is known that Halliwell-Phillipps at one time possessed the copy of the Third Folio used by the Smock Alley company as their prompt-book, and that he dismembered this in order to have the different plays bound separately.3 In the course of a study of the Halliwell-Phillipps scrap-books in the Shakespeare Memorial Library in Stratford-upon-Avon I discovered that he had proceeded even further in the case of Henry IV. As a part of his collecting material for his edition of Shakespeare he cut the marked passages in this play from the pages of the Folio and pasted them into the scrap-books now preserved at Stratford. There are in all 51 of these cuttings spread over nine volumes, 27 from the First Part and 24 from the Second.4 For some reason one cutting containing the outer columns of pp. 355 and 356 was pasted into Halliwell-Phillipps' other set of scrap-books, in larger format, which is now at the Folger Shakespeare Library. This is the fragment referred to above.5 Of I Henry IV some 572 lines, using Professor Hinman's method of counting', are extant in Halliwell-Phillipps' scrap-books at Stratford. This