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The hystorie of Henrie the fourth
1598

STC 22279a, signature C1 recto

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STC 22279a, signature C1 recto
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Copy specific information
Creator: William Shakespeare
Title: The hystorie of Henrie the fourth.
Date: [London? : P. Short for A. Wise, 1598]
Repository: Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington DC, USA
Call number and opening: STC 22279a, sig. C1r
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Item Creator
William Shakespeare
Item Title
The hystorie of Henrie the fourth.
Item Date
[London? : P. Short for A. Wise, 1598]
Repository
Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington DC, USA
Call Number
STC 22279a, sig. C1r

Institution Rights and Document Citation

Terms of use
Images that are under Folger copyright are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. This allows you to use our images without additional permission provided that you cite the Folger Shakespeare Library as the source and you license anything you create using the images under the same or equivalent license. For more information, including permissions beyond the scope of this license, see Permissions. The Folger waives permission fees for non-commercial publication by registered non-profits, including university presses, regardless of the license they use. For images copyrighted by an entity other than the Folger, please contact the copyright holder for permission information.

Copy specific information
Creator: William Shakespeare
Title: The hystorie of Henrie the fourth.
Date: [London? : P. Short for A. Wise, 1598]
Repository: Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington DC, USA
Call number and opening: STC 22279a, sig. C1r
View online bibliographic record

 

Justin Kuhn, "Henry IV Part 1, fragment edition," Shakespeare Documented, https://doi.org/10.37078/262.

Folger Shakespeare Library, STC 22279a. See Shakespeare Documentedhttps://doi.org/10.37078/262.

This edition of Henry IV Part 1 survives only as a single gathering of four leaves from a copy of the quarto published in 1598. Identified by its signature as gathering C, this fragment consists of eight pages of printed text, featuring the passages that modern editions usually designate as act 1, scene 3, line 200 to act 2, scene 2, line 108. Because it is so incomplete, scholars traditionally classify this fragment quarto as “Q0,” and the second quarto as “Q1.”

Produced the same year as five other editions of Shakespeare's history plays, this quarto of Henry IV Part 1 appeared at the height of the popularity of histories in the book trade. Andrew Wise, who published this edition, entered the play in the Stationers' Register on February 25, 1598, suggesting it was printed early in the year. Wise was responsible for publishing nearly every edition of Shakespeare's plays up to that point, most of which were eventually included in the “Histories” section of the 1623 First Folio.

Wise commissioned Peter Short to print the first two quartos of Henry IV Part 1. Although no title page including Short’s name survives, David Scott Kastan argues that his role in this edition can be “ascertained from the common stock of type that appears” in this quarto and the one following (Kastan 108). Short had worked with Wise previously on the first edition of Richard III (1597), and he would continue to print several more of Wise's books through 1600. However, Short would not be involved in Wise's third edition of Henry IV Part 1, published the following year.

In the 1860s, James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps discovered this fragment in the binding of William Thomas' Rules of the Italian Grammar (1567). It is now part of the Folger Shakespeare Library collection. To learn more about Henry IV Part 1, see the Folger 's Shakespeare’s Works, and the British Library’s Shakespeare in Quarto.

Written by Justin Kuhn

Sources

DEEP: Database of Early English Playbooks. Ed. Alan B. Farmer and Zachary Lesser. Created 2007. <deep.sas.upenn.edu>.
English Short Title Catalogue (ESTC). British Library. <estc.bl.uk>
David Scott Kastan, eds. King Henry IV: Part 1 (London: Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, 2002).

Last updated June 8, 2020