THE COPY FOR 1 Henry VI, 1623

Summary

The thirty-one years between the production of this play in 1592 and its publication in 1623 is a long period for a MS. to lie undisturbed in the theatre ‘book’ room, yet everything about the F. text leads me to believe that it was printed from the actual draft supplied by the authors for its performance at the Rose on 3 March of the earlier year. Sir Walter Greg virtually arrives at this same conclusion; but when he goes on to suggest that the MS. had originally served as the prompt-copy, I find it difficult to follow. He makes no comment upon the striking variations in the form and spelling of character-names as they appear in different scenes; variations which would have puzzled anyone unacquainted with the chronicles, and, I should have thought, entirely baffling to someone trying to prompt from it during performance. Then there are those curious gaps at 1. 1. 56 and 1. 4. 95 which must have been filled up in the players' parts, to say nothing of a large number of hypermetrical or defective lines of verse, many of which might have been cured at a glance by a competent prompter of that age; blank verse being the element he lived in.