The Texts of Henry V

Abstract

Recent criticism of HenryV has made some startling and apparently contradictory claims. The play has come down to us in two forms: the short Quarto of 1600 and the much longer Folio version of 1623. Successive editors and textual critics have suggested that the Quarto is an abridgement made for performance; that it was produced simply as a version for the printing house; that the Folio Choruses were not performed in Shakespeare's time; that the Folio text was written for readers rather than audiences. Close discussion of these claims suggests that each of them shows particular weaknesses. Evidence of rehearsal, misrecollection and mishearing in the Quarto point to a tangled process of textual construction; while other evidence suggests, first, that the play's Choruses were indeed spoken in the play's earliest performances, and, second, that Elizabethan playgoers may have tolerated works that went beyond the two hours currently assumed to have been their limit of duration.