T he Dating of Shakespeare’s History Plays€¦ · plays in quarto after 1616. A collection of ten plays attributed to Shakespeare was issued in 1619 by Pavier. Only eight of those

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Dating Shakespeare’s Plays: The Dating of Shakespeare’s History Plays

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T he Dating of Shakespeare’s History PlaysBy Kevin Gilvary

The ‘scholarly consensus’ on the dating of Shakespeare’s History plays in general derives from the magisterial work of Sir

Edmund Chambers. He gave us a neat scheme of dates for almost forty plays apparently composed between 1590 and 1610, at the rate of two a year, comprising a comedy and either a history or a tragedy. Chambers had proceeded with caution and devoted seventy pages to his discussions of the ‘Problem of Authenticity’ and ‘The Problem of Chronology’. His ordered list of dates is qualified:

There is much of conjecture, even as regards the order, and still more as regards the ascriptions to particular years. These are partly arranged to provide a fairly even flow of production when plague and other inhibitions did not interrupt it (Chambers, WS, I, 269).

Later scholars, however, have not followed such a cautious approach, but have simply accepted his dates as ‘fact’ rather than ‘conjecture’. Wells and Taylor (in William Shakespeare: A Textual Companion) follow Chambers in giving a detailed account of the ‘Canon and Chronology of Shakespeare’s plays’ and offer a very similar pattern of dating. Yet a comment in answer to Honigmann’s attempt to offer earlier dates implies their own lack of firm evidence about the dates of the plays:

Curiosity abhors a vacuum, and the urge to push Shakespeare’s first play farther and farther back into the 1580s is palpably designed to fill the black hole of our ignorance about those years; but since we must then spread the same number of plays over a larger number of years, by filling one big vacuum in the 1580s, we simply create other vacuums elsewhere (Wells & Taylor, TxC, 97).

Wells and Taylor suggest that Shakespeare cannot have written any plays in the 1580s because he would then have had a period in the 1590s when he wrote no plays. Wells and Taylor state the date of composition of The Life and Death of King John as 1596, notwithstanding their own admission that the play “could be, and has been, dated in any year in the decade between these two termini” [i.e. between Meres’ list in 1598 and Holinshed’s Chronicles in 1587].

Date of Composition

There is no direct evidence for the date of composition of any of Shakespeare’s plays. As Stephen Greenblatt sums up (Will in the World: How Shakespeare became Shakespeare, 2004: 13):

Those springs [of Shakespeare’s art] would be difficult enough to glimpse if biographers could draw upon letters and diaries, contemporary memoirs and interviews, books with revealing marginalia, notes and first drafts. Nothing of the kind survives.

In the absence of such direct evidence for the date of composition of any of Shakespeare’s plays, many assertions and proposals have become gradually accepted as ‘fact’ in ‘scholarly consensus’.

Stationers’ Register

The Stationers’ Register (SR) notes the intention of a publisher to publish a work, establishing a kind of copyright as well as an ‘imprimatur’ – an official licence to go to print. Chambers quotes the dates and the entries of Shakespeare’s plays in the Stationers’ Register and assumes that

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Title page to the anonymous first quarto of Troublesome Raigne of King John, Part I, 1591. It has generally been believed that this play was by another author, but some scholars have argued that it

was an early version by Shakespeare which he later revised.

most of the history plays were composed shortly before their registration, e.g. Henry V is said to have been composed in 1599 and published in 1600. This assumption has been followed by later commentators, yet is open to question: some plays, which are thought to have been composed c. 1591, e.g. 1 Henry VI were not recorded in the SR until the publication of the First Folio (1623). Similarly, not all printed plays had been registered in the SR, e.g. there is no entry for The First Part of the Contention (2 Henry VI). An entry in the SR is probably only useful as a final date (terminus ante quem) for the composition of a play, but even

then there is doubt: The Famous Victories of Henry V was registered in 1594 but, according to the title page, this play was not published until 1598.

Publications: Quartos (& an Octavo)

The title page of a published play often gives useful information, including the date of publication. Sir Edmund Chambers in William Shakespeare: A Study of Facts and Problems quotes the dates for the actual publication of the plays in quarto as mentioned in their title pages.

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There were only two publications of history plays in quarto after 1616. A collection of ten plays attributed to Shakespeare was issued in 1619 by Pavier. Only eight of those plays are recognised now as Shakespearean, including three history plays: Henry V, Henry VI Part 2, Henry VI Part 3 (these two combined as a single play titled The Whole Contention between the Two Famous Houses, Lancaster and York), and two other plays attributed to Shakespeare, A Yorkshire Tragedy and Sir John Oldcastle. In 1622, sixth quartos appeared of 1 Henry IV and Richard III. The First Folio contained 36 plays by Shakespeare, eighteen of which had not been published before, including three history plays: King John, 1 Henry VI and Henry VIII.

Two Tetralogies or an Octology?

Apart from King John and Henry VIII, the plays fall neatly into two groups of four, and it is generally supposed that they were conceived in two separate groups. Some commentators envisage an original grouping of four plays (1, 2, 3 Henry VI–Richard III), which treated events continuously from the funeral of Henry V (1422) to the accession of Henry VII (1485). These four plays are usually referred to as ‘The First Tetralogy’, although it is not absolutely certain that they were composed before the so-called ‘Second Tetralogy’, or even whether they were conceived as four plays from the outset. Others see an initial grouping of three plays, First Part of the Contention–Tragedy of Richard Duke of York–Richard III, eventually being expanded with a prequel, to emerge as the tetralogy 1, 2, 3 Henry VI–Richard III.

Similarly, most commentators see the four plays, Richard II, 1, 2 Henry VI– Henry V, as conceived at the outset and written later, thus forming the ‘Second Tetralogy.’ Some commentators envisage another grouping of three plays, I Henry IV–2 Henry IV–Henry V, as a trilogy emerging from the anonymous Famous Victories of Henry V, eventually being expanded with their own prequel to emerge as the tetralogy Richard II, 1, 2 Henry VI–Henry V. Most see these four plays as being conceived as a continuous series from the initial feud between Bolingbroke and Mowbray.

In 2005–08, the Royal Shakespeare Company performed these eight History plays in sequence, which they readily called an octology. While

accepting that the tetralogy 1, 2, 3 Henry VI–Richard III was written before the tetralogy Richard II, 1, 2 Henry VI–Henry V, both the director, Michael Boyd, and the company believed that the eight plays were conceived as a continuous sweep of history – an octology. Members of the ensemble have given fascinating accounts of the endeavour in Smallwood’s edition The Players of Shakespeare 6: Essays in the Performance of Shakespeare’s History Plays (Cambridge: CUP, 2007).

Use of Sources

Geoffrey Bullough in Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare conducted a very thorough review of the sources used by Shakespeare. In volume III, he dealt with “the earlier history plays” and in volume IV with “the later plays”. He concluded that the main sources for the History plays were Hall and Holinshed. Further examination of sources is given in more recent editions of individual plays, e.g. in the Arden, New Cambridge and Oxford Shakespeare editions.

Edward Hall, The Union of the Two Noble and Illustre Famelies of Lancastre and Yorke (1548–50). Bullough argues that the author began his plan for both the tetralogies by studying Hall’s moralising narrative of English History from Henry IV to Henry VIII. Hall (?1498–1547) relied on previous chroniclers, especially Polydore Vergil’s account in Latin, Historia Anglica (1512–13, later editions, inc. 1545) and, in turn, influenced other writers, e.g. Richard Grafton, A Chronicle at Large and Meere History of the Affayres of Englande (1569).

Hall emphasised the providential pattern of history in the coming of the Tudors, which ended the disastrous Civil Wars. Hall’s account begins half-way through the reign of Richard II in 1387 with the quarrel between Bolingbroke and Mowbray – exactly where Shakespeare begins Richard II. Hall’s Chapter Titles anticipate Shakespeare’s plays:

i The unquiet time of King Henry the Fourthii The victorious acts of King Henry the Fifthiii The troublous season of King Henry the Sixthiv The prosperous reign of King Edward the Fourth

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v The pitiful life of King Edward the Fifthvi The tragical doings of King Richard the Thirdvii The politic governance of King Henry the Seventhviii The triumphant reign of King Henry the Eighth

Tillyard argued (and Bullough agreed) that Hall provided the moral and providential framework for the two tetralogies. While there has been extended criticism of Tillyard’s view of the extent of a ‘Tudor myth’, most commentators editors agree that Hall provides some kind of moral framework for the plays. His work was prohibited and burnt under Mary for giving support to Henry VIII and Protestantism.

Raphael Holinshed, The Chronicles of Englande, Scotlande, and Irelande. The first edition appeared in two volumes in 1577 and the second was greatly expanded into three volumes in 1587. This second edition, which is often bound together into a single book, comprises some 3½ million words, about four times the length of the First Folio and was thus both valuable and bulky. Holinshed and his co-authors were more like editors, as the work is really a compendium of previous chroniclers and geographers, drawing especially on Hall, but also on writings by Robert Fabyan, The New Chronicles of England and France (1516), parts of Grafton’s Chronicle (1569) not used by Hall, John Stow’s Chronicles of England, (1580) and John Foxe’s Actes and Monuments (1583). Bullough demonstrates how Holinshed is frequently the principal source for the detailed material in the plays. In fact, so close is Shakespeare to Holinshed, e.g. in Canterbury’s speech in Henry V at 1.2, that Bullough believes the dramatist had the work open in front of him as he composed. Boswell-Stone established that for most readings the second edition was used by Shakespeare, a view supported by Lucille King (see the section on 2 Henry VI). It is, however, just possible that the playwright used these sources independently of Holinshed.

There was a strong personal link between Oxford and Raphael Holinshed, who prepared the main source for all the History plays. Holinshed was a member of Sir William Cecil’s household, where Oxford had been a ward and where his wife Anne Cecil generally resided. Holinshed had dedicated his first edition to Cecil in 1577. In addition,

Holinshed had sat as a juror to the enquiry that found Oxford not guilty of manslaughter in 1567. He had also issued a pamphlet in 1573 attacking a man called Brown as the murderer involved in an incident in Shooters Hill, thereby deflecting blame from Oxford (for details see Monstrous Adversary, Alan Nelson’s unsympathetic biography of Oxford, pp. 48, 90–2). It is possible that Oxford had access to the same material as the editors and contributors to Holinshed’s second edition in 1587, which would allow an earlier date than is generally proposed.1

Like Hall, A Mirrour for Magistrates (1559) influenced Shakespeare in providing a tragic framework for his characters in that they often owed their downfall to their own actions. The Mirror for Magistrates contained nineteen first person narratives in its first edition (with seven more in its second edition, 1563), in which ghosts from English history, principally from Richard II to Richard III, lament their own downfalls and warn future rulers to moderate their conduct. These narratives were planned in three volumes:

Volume 1: to the end of Edward IV’s reign: Tresilian, Mortimer, Gloucester, Mowbray, Richard II, Owen Glendower, Northumberland, Cambridge, Salisbury, James 1 (of Scotland), Suffolk, Cade, York, Clifford, Worcester, Warwick, Henry VI, Clarence, Edward IV; mention is made of three others – those of the duchess Eleanor and duke Humphrey of Gloucester (printed in 1578) and that of Somerset (printed 1563).

Volume 2: to the end of Richard III’s reign, contained only eight tragedies: those of Woodville, Hastings, Buckingham, Collingbourne, Richard III, Shore’s Wife, Somerset and the Blacksmith.

Volume 3: was planned to cover the period to the end of Mary’s reign.

There were over twenty other narratives covering earlier generations printed in later versions. Thus almost all the narratives in the Mirror for Magistrates which influenced Shakespeare were to be found in the first edition of 1559.2

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Samuel Daniel’s epic poem The First Fowre Bookes of the Civile Wars was registered on 11 October 1594 and published twice in 1595 (according to the title page), i.e. two years before the registration and publication of Richard II. The first three books deal with the story of Richard II. Most commentators follow Chambers and Bullough in viewing this poem as derivative from the Chronicles (to which it is very much closer) and influential upon the play. Both play and poem make the Richard II’s Queen (historically aged ten) a mature woman. Both play and poem make the Prince and Hotspur (historically two years older than Bolingbroke) roughly contemporaries.

The dating of the history plays obviously affects our understanding of the direction of influence; it is usually asserted that Daniel embarked on his epic poem before Shakespeare began his tetralogy, but it is possible that Shakespeare’s handling of various themes influenced Daniel. It is not thought that Shakespeare knew Daniel or whether he knew that they were dealing with the same material on a big scale. It is possible however that Daniel’s patron, Mary Sidney, brought him into contact with Oxford through her literary salon.

Obscure Sources

Each of Shakespeare’s history plays shows knowledge from at least one obscure source. The great achievement of the dramatist is to integrate arcane details seamlessly into the dramatic narrative. Here is a sample of sources; more details can be found in individual chapters:

King John The Wakefield Chronicle (in Manuscript)

Richard II French Chronicles Histoire du Roy d’Angleterre Richard II

1 Henry IV Legal case ivolving Sir John Fastolf of Nacton

2 Henry IV anonymous play HickscorerHenry V Latin Chronicle Gesta Henrici

Quinti1 Henry VI Talbot’s epitaph in the

Cathedral at Rouen2 Henry VI Grafton’s Chronicles (for the

Simcox miracle)3 Henry VI Ovid’s HeroidesRichard III Dr Legge’s Ricardus TertiusHenry VIII Margaret of Navarre’s Dream

This is relevant to apportioning Authorship, as Oxford is far more likely to have had access to these unusual sources than Shakespeare of Stratford.

References to Plays of Shakespeare

Contemporary references to the history plays have been collected by Chambers with occasional additions noted in the Arden and Oxford Shakespeare editions. Some references seem to be to printed texts attributed to Meres, who praises Shakespeare’s Richard II, Richard III and Henry IV, but does not mention the Henry VI plays, which were not attributed to Shakespeare until 1619. If some references, e.g. Henslowe’s 1598 mention of a gown for the character of Henry VIII, actually refer to costumes used in Shakespeare’s play, then much earlier dates are entailed.

References in the Plays to External Events

Some commentators, e.g. David Bevington in Tudor Drama and Politics (1968), believe that the plays only reflect matters of contemporary concern without alluding to specific events. Others, e.g. Christopher Highley in Shakespeare, Spenser and the Crisis in Ireland (1997), argue for precise references. Further consideration of this can be found in the sections on Richard II, 2 Henry VI and Henry V.

Shakespeare’s Use of Existing Plays

Shakespeare appears to have used a number of plays published anonymously in the 1590s:

Thomas of Woodstock (?1 Richard II) manuscriptTroublesome Reign of King John 1591 (quarto)True Tragedie of Richard the Third 1594 (SR & quarto)Famous Victories of Henry V 1594 (SR); 1598 (quarto)Arden of Faversham 1594 (SR); 1598 (quarto)Edward III 1595 (SR); 1596 (quarto)

Some commentators, including Oxfordians, view these as early versions of plays by Shakespeare.

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Early Starter?

Most scholars agree that I Henry VI is among Shakespeare’s earliest plays. In Pierce Penniless (1592), Nashe had defended the idea of plays, especially those derived from the Chronicles:

First, for the subject of them, (for the most part) it is borrowed out of our English chronicles, wherein our forefathers’ valiant acts (that have lain long buried in rusty brass and worm-eaten books) are revived, and they themselves raised from the grave of oblivion, and brought to plead their aged honors in open presence; than which, what can be a sharper reproof to these degenerate effeminate days of ours?

Ribner believes that few history plays (none of which was Shakespeare’s) had been performed on stage by the time of Pierce Penniless; from Ribner’s list, only a small number were derived from the Chronicles: Legge’s Ricardius Tertius (a play in Latin, which is only known to have been performed in Cambridge in 1579), Peele’s Jack Straw (1587–90), the anonymous True Tragedy of Richard the Third (1588–90), Peele’s Edward I (1590–1) Marlowe’s Edward II (1591) and the anonymous Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth (1588) and 1, 2 Troublesome Raigne of King John (1588–89).

Both J. Dover Wilson (The Fortunes of Falstaff ) and E. M. W. Tillyard (Shakespeare’s History Plays) proposed that Shakespeare had begun composing his plays before 1590. E. A. J. Honigmann in Shakespeare: the ‘ lost years’(1985) has developed an alternative chronology, in particular for the history plays, thus suggesting that Nashe was referring to various plays by Shakespeare in 1592. Honigmann proposed the following dates:

1586 Titus Andronicus1587 Two Gentlemen of Verona1588 1 Henry VI Taming of The Shrew1589 2 Henry VI Comedy of Errors1590 3 Henry VI; Richard III1591 King John Romeo & Juliet

Although his premise that Shakespeare had a Catholic connection with Lancashire is doubted by many, this does not disqualify Honigmann from showing that the existing evidence can support earlier dates than is usually proposed.

Wells & Taylor, however, reject the idea that Shakespeare was an early starter: ‘We have little reason to suppose that Shakespeare began writing in 1586.’ They list five arguments against earlier dates:

(1) Honigmann supposes that The Troublesome Reign of John, King of England was written in 1590–1, then published in 1591 because the Queen’s Men were in financial difficulties. Wells & Taylor do not accept this.

(2) Honigmann’s chronology, by pushing back the traditional dating of the early histories, creates a large gap between King John (early 1591) and Richard II (1595), in which Shakespeare purportedly wrote no history plays at all – a genre which, on Honigmann’s account, he had created almost single-handed, and which had been the staple of his early success.

(3) Likewise, after resounding and early successes in tragedy (Titus 1586?, Romeo 1591?), we are to suppose that Shakespeare did not write another tragedy for eight years.

(4) All of Shakespeare’s histories, with the possible exception of Contention, must post date publication of Holinshed’s Chronicle, second edition (1587: STC 13569), and most scholars have believed that the sudden popularity of the genre owes something to the swell of nationalism associated with the defeat of the Spanish Armada (August 1588).

(5) Finally, Honigmann’s early dating asks us to believe that Shakespeare was not mentioned by name in any surviving document for the first seven years of his playwriting career—years in which he allegedly dominated theatrical life, writing a series of plays so successful that they were busily echoed and pillaged by all his elders and contemporaries.

These arguments suggest that dating some plays to the 1580s is unlikely, but it remains a possibility that the history plays were written earlier than has been generally supposed.

Oxfordian Hypothesis:History Plays as Tudor Propaganda

When ascribing the works of Shakespeare to Edward de Vere, Oxfordians tend to date the plays earlier. The following points apply to the history plays:

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(1) Oxford wrote history plays as instruments of Tudor Orthodoxy, mainly from the mid 1580s when the Spanish threat was at its highest. The plays graphically represent the futility of dissension and disloyalty.

(2) Oxford had connections with the authors of both the main sources used for the History plays. Edward Hall attended Grays Inn, as did Oxford at a later date.

(3) Oxford had closer connections with Raphael Holinshed. The first edition of The Chronicles had been dedicated to Oxford’s father-in-law, William Cecil, Lord Burghley in 1577. Holinshed seems to have been a member of the Cecil household, as he had sat as a juror on the enquiry that found Oxford not guilty of manslaughter in 1567. Holinshed had also issued a pamphlet in 1573 attacking a man called Brown as the perpetrator of a murder in Shooters Hill, thereby deflecting blame from Oxford. The incident is very reminiscent of Prince Hal’s antics in Famous Victories and in 1 Henry IV. It is possible that Oxford was composing his plays and consulting the same sources at the same time and in the same place (Cecil House) as Holinshed was preparing his Chronicles. Thus Oxford had the opportunity to consult the same sources as Holinshed before the results appeared in the 1587 edition.

Conclusion

We do not know the date of composition of any of Shakespeare’s history plays. All we can propose for sure is the range of dates within which they were composed.

Notes1. Holinshed’s Chronicles is now the subject of

careful scrutiny. See page 287, note 2.2. For A Mirrour for Magistrates, Stuart Gillespie

(Shakespeare’s Books, 2004) gives a brief review of Lily Campbell’s 1960 edition.

Other Cited Works

Anderson, Mark, “Shakespeare” by Another Name. New York: Gothem, 2005

Bevington, David, Tudor Drama and Politics, Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1968

Boswell-Stone, W. G., Shakespeare’s Holinshed: The Chronicle and The Historical Plays Compared, London: Longwell’s, 1896

Bullough, Geoffrey, Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare, vol. III (‘The Early Histories’) vol. IV (‘The Later Histories’), London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1960 & 1962

Chambers, E. K., William Shakespeare A Study of Facts and Problems, 2 vols, Oxford: Clarendon, 1930

Clark, Eva Turner, Hidden Allusions in Shakespeare’s Plays. New York: Kennikat, rptd 1974

Farina, William, De Vere as Shakespeare: An Oxfordian Reading of the Canon, Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2006

Greenblatt, Stephen, Will in the World: How Shakespeare became Shakespeare, London: Jonathan Cape, 2004

Highley, Christopher, Shakespeare, Spenser and the Crisis in Ireland, Cambridge: CUP, 1997

Honigmann, E. A. J., Shakespeare, the “ lost years”, Manchester: MUP, 2005

King, Lucille, “2 and 3 Henry VI – Which Holinshed?”, PMLA, 1935: 745–52

Nelson, Alan, Monstrous Adversary, Liverpool: LUP, 2003

Ogburn, Charlton, The Mysterious Mr Shakespeare, Virginia: EPM, 1984

Ribner, Irving, The English History Play in the Age of Shakespeare, Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1957

Tillyard, E. M. W., Shakespeare’s History Plays, London: Chatto & Windus, 1944

Vickers, Sir Brian, Shakespeare, co-author, Oxford: OUP, 2002

Wells, Stanley & Taylor Gary, William Shakespeare: A Textual Companion, Oxford: OUP, 1987

— (eds), William Shakespeare: The Complete Works, Oxford: OUP, 1988

Wilson, J. Dover, The Fortunes of Falstaff, Cambridge, CUP, 1943

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I, II, III Henry VI and Richard III‘The First Tetralogy’

Preface to 1, 2, 3 Henry VI & Richard III

The First Folio presents King Henry the Sixt in three parts, (i.e. as three plays) in their historical sequence after The Life of King

Henry V and before The Life and Death of King Richard III.

The First Tetralogy

It is usual to refer to the Henry VI–Richard III plays as the ‘First Tetralogy’ on the hypothesis that these four plays were composed before Richard II–1, 2 Henry IV–Henry V the ‘Second Tetralogy’: the Epilogue to Henry V suggests that Henry VI’s loss of France was already familiar material on the Elizabethan stage:

Thus far, with rough and all-unable pen,Our bending author hath pursued the story,In little room confining mighty men,Mangling by starts the full course of their glory.Small time, but in that small most greatly livedThis star of England: Fortune made his sword;By which the world’s best garden be achieved,And of it left his son imperial lord.Henry the Sixth, in infant bands crown’d KingOf 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.

Henry V. 5.2.1–14

Since there are no other plays which are know to deal with these events, it is assumed that Shakespeare is referring to his own Henry VI plays, which must therefore have been composed before the Henry IV & Henry V plays. On the other hand,

the Epilogue to Henry V may be a later addition, since it is not included in Q1 (1600). Thus it is possible that Henry V (as reported in Q1) was originally composed before the Henry VI plays, and that the Chorus speeches were only added to Henry V after the Henry VI plays were composed.

Sequence of Composition

There is neither contemporary evidence nor scholarly consensus for the sequence of composition of the Henry VI plays. Since the time of Malone, there has been much discussion on the sequence: Cairncross (Arden 2 editor of the Henry VI trilogy) and Hammond (Arden2 editor of Richard III) argued for a plain sequence, believing that the four plays were planned and composed as a coherent tetralogy to work through a grand scheme of history, in line with Edward Hall, The Union of the Two Noble and Illustre Famelies of Lancastre and Yorke (1548–50). Hall depicted the weaknesses of the reigns of Henry VI and Richard III up to their resolution with the accession of Henry Tudor as Henry VII.

Chambers, WS, believes that Parts 2 & 3 were conceived as a two-part play, written before Part 1. He also considered Parts 2 & 3 to be the earliest individual plays in the canon. Others follow Wells & Taylor, Burns and Knowles, who have argued that Parts 2 & 3 were closely followed by Richard III with 1 Henry VI composed a while later (as a ‘prequel’). Further complications arise for those who believe that at least one of the plays (1 Henry VI) was written collaboratively with the help of another author. The main studies are mentioned under Attribution in the section on 1 Henry VI which follows.

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Dates for registration and publication of plays in The First Tetralogy

1 H 6 2 H 6 3 H 6 R III

1590–94 SR / Q1 1594

1595–99 O1 1595 SR / Q1 1597 Q2 1598

1600–04 Q2 1600 SR / Q2 1600 Q3 1602 Q4 1605

1605–09

1610–14 Q5 1605

1615–19 Q3 1619 Q3 1619

1620–24 SR / F1 1623 F1 1623 F1 1623 Q6 1622 F1 1623

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Richard II, Henry IV Parts 1, 2 and Henry V

‘The Second Tetralogy’

The First Folio presents Richard II, Henry IV Parts 1, 2 and Henry V in their historical sequence, after King John and before King Henry VI, Part 1. There is no evidence for their sequence of composition and no direct evidence as to whether they were conceived as a tetralogy, a trilogy, or piecemeal. All the plays appeared in quarto in sequence between 1597–1600. The general consensus amongst editors is that they were conceived as Shakespeare’s ‘Second Tetralogy’ and composed in sequence between 1595 and 1600,

A grid is helpful to show the relevant publication dates clearly:

R2 1H4 2H4 H51595–99 Q1 1597

Q2, Q3 1598Q1 1598Q2 1599

1600–04 Q3 1604 Q 1600 Q1 1600Q2 1602

1605–09 Q4 1608 Q4 1608

1610–14 Q5 1613

1615–19 Q5 1615 Q3 1619

1620–24 F1 1623 Q6 1622F1 1623

F1 1623 F1 1623

It is thought that the tetralogy had been inspired mainly by Hall’s The Union of the Two Noble and Illustre Famelies of Lancastre and Yorke (1548–50), which begins with the challenge between Bolingbroke and Mowbray, just as does Richard II. Most of the detail seems to derive from Holinshed, with some reference to The Mirror for Magistrates.

Documents

T he Dating of Shakespeare’s History Plays€¦ · plays in quarto after 1616. A collection of ten plays attributed to Shakespeare was issued in 1619 by Pavier. Only eight of those