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(3) The earlier (pre-Shakespearean) versions of 2 and 3 Henry VI were printed in 1594 and 1595 respectively, these texts presumably becoming accessible to the publishers after the revised dramas supplanted them for stage purposes. The fact that no such text of the early 1 Henry VI was printed would suggest that that play was reserved either till it was too late to warrant publishers to trade upon its former popularity or till Shakespeare's company began to take more stringent measures to prevent the publication of any play-texts.

(4) A mutual connection exists between 1 Henry VI and Henry V (cf. note on IV. ii. 10, 11). Several passages in our play seem reminiscent of the other (written in 1599). It is a plausible hypothesis at least that 1 Henry VI was revised in order on the one hand to profit by the popular interest in Henry V and on the other to link that play with 2 Henry VI, thus completing the chain of history dramas from Richard II to Richard III.1

1 It is often argued that the priority of 1 Henry VI to Henry V is proved by the closing lines of the epilogue to the latter play:

'Henry the Sixth, in infant bands crown'd King

Of France and England, did this king succeed;

Whose state so many had the managing,

That they lost France and made his England bleed: Which oft our stage hath shown; and, for their sake, In your fair minds let this acceptance take.'

Dogmatism on the point is not justifiable, but the performance of Harry the Sixth in 1592 (and afterward) by Shakespeare's company explains the allusion quite as well as the assumption that the revised 1 Henry VI had already been acted. I find it easier to read in the lines of the epilogue a modestly veiled hint that if Henry V proved a success, Shakespeare was thinking of following it up by a revised version of Harry the Sixth, than to believe that he really meant to imply that the Henry VI plays as now known were such excellent works as to make amends for any defects in Henry V. The epilogue to 2 Henry IV promised

(5) The most positive evidence of the date of the Shakespearean additions to 1 Henry VI is that discussed in the note on IV. vii. 63-71. Unless some earlier printed source than is now known can be found for Talbot's epitaph, it will be hard to establish a date prior to 1599 for the revised play.

The idea that Shakespeare could not about 1600 have done work as apparently immature as that which he contributed to 1 Henry VI, or have sanctioned the performance at that time of so poor a play, is not in consonance with facts. Shakespeare's company undoubtedly produced worse plays during this period when the public taste seemed to warrant them (e.g., A Yorkshire Tragedy in 1605), and the Shakespearean parts of 1 Henry VI are assuredly not as unworthy of the author of Henry V as is The Merry Wives of Windsor (ca. 1600) unworthy of the author of Twelfth Night and Much Ado About Nothing.

On November 8, 1623, the publishers of the Shakespeare Folio, Blount and Jaggard, entered our play for publication under the rather surprising title of "The thirde parte of Henry ye Sixt.' The work now known as 1 Henry VI is certainly meant, for 2 and 3 Henry VI (in their early forms) had both been previously licensed,1 and the Blount-Jaggard license specifically refers only to such of Shakespeare's plays 'as are not formerly entred to other men.' It is probable that in thus listing as the third part the drama which by historical sequence became in the Folio the first part, the publishers meant more the audience Henry V, if you be not too much cloyed.' The epilogue to Henry V reminds them how they have in the past applauded Henry VI. Is it not the intention to suggest: 'Perhaps you may have those plays again' (with Harry the Sixth worked over so as to fill its place in the series)?

1 When Millington assigned the early versions of 2 and 3 Henry VI to Pavier, April 19, 1602, he called them 'the first and second parte of Henry the VI.'

than simply that this was the last part remaining unlicensed. It seems fair to assume that they so thought of it because they remembered it as the latest of Shakespeare's Henry VI plays to be produced on the stage.

Since Shakespeare's death, 1 Henry VI has had only the scantiest stage history. Most subsequent adaptations of the Henry VI cycle ignore the first part. However, J. H. Merivale's compilation, Richard, Duke of York, acted by Edmund Kean, December 22, 1817, and published the same year, opens with three scenes closely following II. iv, II. v, III. i, and IV. i of our play.

An abridgment of the three Henry VI plays (Henry VI. A Tragedy in Five Acts. Condensed from Shakespeare, and arranged for the Stage') was prepared by the eminent actor-manager, Charles Kemble (1775-1854), and first printed from the only known copy in volume ii of the Henry Irving Shakespeare. This work begins like Merivale's with the Temple Garden scene, and like it ignores the scenes in France. 1 Henry VI furnished Kemble with the material for Act I (approximately) of his adaptation, which seems never to have been acted.

On March 13, 1738, 'by desire of several Ladies of Quality' the play of 'Henry 6th, part 1st,' was performed for the benefit of the actor Dennis Delane (died, 1750), who acted Talbot to the Suffolk of Walker and the Joan of Arc of Mrs. Hallam. The notice 'not acted fifty years,' affixed to the announcement of this performance, appears to be a most conservative under-statement. The most remarkable recent production was that given by the F. R. Benson company at the Stratford Memorial Festival in May, 1906. Mr. Benson here 'made a triumphant Talbot, and the audience seemed never weary of recalling him.' (Athenæum, May 12, 1906.)

APPENDIX C

THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE PLAY

I. SHAKESPEARE'S CONCERN IN IT

With regard to the connection of Shakespeare with 1 Henry VI four different opinions have been put forward:

(1) Shakespeare had no part in the play. This was apparently the view of Richard Farmer, who says (Essay on the Learning of Shakespeare, 1767): 'Henry the sixth hath ever been doubted; and [Nashe's allusion in Pierce Penniless] may give us reason to believe it was previous to our Author.

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I have no doubt but Henry the sixth had the same Author with Edward the third.' Malone1 and Drake2 took the negative position strongly, and Collier flirted with it, while more recently Dowden (Shakspere: His Mind and Art, 173; Shakspere Primer, etc.) and Furnivall (Introduction to Leopold Shakspere) have virtually denied any real trace of Shakespeare in the work.

(2) Shakespeare wrote the entire play. Samuel Johnson favored this hypothesis, arguing that 'from mere inferiority nothing can be inferred; in the productions of wit there will be inequality.' He was supported by his colleague Steevens, who remarks:

1 Boswell-Malone Shakespeare, 1823, v. 246: 'I am therefore decisively of opinion that this play was not written by Shakspeare'; ibid., xviii. 557: Part I is 'the entire or nearly the entire production of some ancient dramatist.'

2 Shakspeare and his Times, 1817, ii. 293: "The hand of Shakspeare is nowhere visible throughout the entire of this "Drum-and-Trumpet-Thing," as Mr. Morgan [Maurice Morgann] has justly termed it.'

3 Annals of the Stage, 1831, iii. 145: 'It is plausibly conjectured that Shakespeare never touched the First Part of Henry VI as it stands in his works.'

"This historical play might have been one of our author's earliest dramatick efforts; and almost every young poet begins his career by imitation. Shakspeare therefore, till he felt his own strength, perhaps servilely conformed to the style and manner of his predecessors.'1 Charles Knight in the Pictorial Shakspeare (1867) asserted with much greater positiveness that all the three parts of Henry VI ‘are, in the strictest sense of the word, Shakspeare's own plays,' and was followed by the American critics, Verplanck (1847) and Hudson.2 Such has been the view almost unanimously of the Germans: Schlegel, Bodenstedt, Delius, Ulrici, Sarrazin, Brandl, Creizenach (Gervinus is the honorable exception). The only recent British scholar to espouse this cause is, I believe, Courthope,3 who in a remarkable Appendix 'On the Authenticity of Some of the Early Plays Assigned to Shakespeare and their Relationship to the Development of his Dramatic Genius' (History

1 Capell also should apparently be included among the believers in Shakespeare's exclusive authorship. In his introduction he anticipates and very quaintly develops the idea of Steevens's second sentence: 'We are quite in the dark as to when the first part was written; but should be apt to conjecture, that it was some considerable time after the other two; and perhaps when those two were retouched.. And those two parts, even with all their retouchings, being still much inferior to the other plays of that class, he may reasonably [sic] be supposed to have underwrit himself on purpose in the first, that it might the better match with those it belong'd to.'

2 'I can but give it as my firm and settled judgment that the main body of the play is certainly Shakespeare's; nor do I perceive any clear and decisive reason for calling in another hand to account for any part of it.'

3 Note, however, the historian Gairdner's passing remark (Studies in English History, 1881, 65): 'I dismiss altogether the hypothesis which some have advanced, that the First Part of Henry VI was not really Shakespeare's. So far as internal evidence goes, if in ability it be not equal to Shakespeare's best, it is too great for any other writer.'

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