THE COPY FOR 2 and 3HENRY VI, 1623

Summary

In his brief note on this matter Sir Walter Greg defines ‘the manuscripts used for the folio texts’ as ‘old copies that had come from one of the early companies, either Strange's or Pembroke's–the evidence favours the latter, slightly’; and, ‘having lain untouched for a quarter of a century’, had ‘become rather illegible in parts’. In fact, we seem here, as with 1 Henry VI, to have texts before us printed from authorial drafts supplied to the prompter for the original performances of the play. Greg writes further that ‘the directions are basically the author's’, and admits the possibility that the manuscript may have been Shakespeare's autograph. With these suggestions I find myself in general agreement, except that I think it possible the manuscript contained passages in Greene's autograph side by side with Shakespeare's. But when Greg states in conclusion, ‘perhaps it is best to suppose an author's fair copy which, the book-keeper had annotated to serve as a promptbook without troubling to make vague directions specific’, I part company, for the same reasons which led me to dispute a similar suggestion of his about the text of Part I. ‘Vague directions’ apart, here as well as there are to be found inconsistencies and contradictions which surely must have been regularized in an acting copy.