Shakespeare's Works Henry IV pt 1-2 Author:William Shakespeare Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND PART OF KING HENRY THE FOURTH. I. THE HISTORY OF THE PLAY. This play was first published in quarto form in 1600, with... more » the following title-page (as given in the Camb. ed.): The | Second part of Henrie | the fourth, continuing to his death, | and coronation of Henrie the fift. | With the humours of sir lohn Fal- | staffe, and swaggering Pistoll. | As it hath been sundrie times publikely acted by the right honourable, the Lord | Chamberlaine his seruants. | Written by William Shakespeare. London | Printed by V. S. for Andrew Wise, and 1 William Aspley. | 1600. It had been entered by the publishers upon the Stationers'Registers on the 23d of August, 1600, in connection with Much Ado about Nothing (see our ed. of that play, p. 10). In some copies of the quarto the ist scene of act iii. is wanting. The error seems to have been discovered after part of the edition had been printed, and was rectified by inserting two new leaves. For these the type of some of the preceding and following leaves was used, so that there are two different impressions of the latter part of act ii. and the beginning of iii. 2. The play in the ist folio was probably printed either from a transcript of the original manuscript, or from a complete copy of the quarto collated with such a transcript. " It contains passages of considerable length which are not found in the quarto. Some of these are among the finest in the play, and are too closely connected with the context to allow of the supposition that they were later additions inserted by the author after the publication of the quarto. In the manuscript from which that edition was printed, these passages had been most likely omitted, or erased, in order to shorten the play for the stage" (Camb. ed.). On t...« less