THE COPY FOR THE TEXTS OF 1600 AND 1623

Summary

The only quarto of 2 Henry IV extant, and probably, for reasons to be presently examined, the only one ever printed, was entered by the publishers Andrew Wise and William Aspley in the Stationers' Register on 23 August 1600, and no doubt went to press immediately after. This text was, by the editors of The Cambridge Shakespeare, 1864, ‘regarded as having’ a ‘higher critical value’ than that in the Folio; and its latest students, Dr Greg (p. 115, The Editorial Problem in Shakespeare, 1942) and Professor Shaaber (pp. 488–94, New Variorum edition of 2 Henry IV, 1940), have independently concluded that it was actually printed from Shakespeare's original MS., i.e. the so-called ‘foul papers’ from which the book-holder prepared promptcopy for use in performance. As for the F. text, here also the finding of the Cambridge editors, that it ‘was probably printed from a transcript of the original MS.’, still holds the field, though opinions differ on the nature of this transcript, i.e. whether it was the theatrical prompt-book or a copy therefrom; while authorities like the Arden editor of the play, Sir Edmund Chambers, and Dr Greg, are all inclined to suspect that what the printers actually used in 1622–3 was not such a trapscript itself, but a copy of the quarto which had first been collated with a transcript.