I. THE HISTORY OF THE PLAY.

THIS play was first published in quarto form in 1600, with 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 Iohn 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 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 1st 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 1st 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 the other hand, the quarto contains several passages which do not appear in the folio. Some of these were probably struck out by the author, and others by the Master of the Revels. They will be considered in detail in our Notes below.

The Second Part of King Henry IV. was probably written immediately after the First Part, and before the entry of the latter on the Stationers' Registers, February 25, 1598;* for that entry shows that the name of Oldcastle, which was originally applied to the fat knight in both plays,† had already

* As the year did not then end until March 25, the date "February 25, 1597," on the Registers was of course February 25, 1598 (Coll.).

That this was true of 2 Henry IV. is evident from the fact that in the quarto of 1600 the prefix " Old." is retained before one of the speeches of Falstaff (see on i. 2. 113 below). Steevens, to be sure, suggested that "Old." might have been the beginning of some actor's name, but none