Arden Shakespeare Third Series Complete Works

Ann Thompson, David Scott Kastan, H. R. Woudhuysen, Richard Proudfoot, Ann Thompson, David Scott Kastan, H. R. Woudhuysen, Richard Proudfoot

• Publisher: The Arden Shakespeare
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781474296397
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literatura
• Subtopic: Arte dramático shakespeariano

This new Complete Works marks the completion of the Arden Shakespeare Third Series and includes all of Shakespeare's plays, poems and sonnets, edited by leading international scholars. New to this edition are the 'apocryphal' plays, part-written by Shakespeare: Double Falsehood, Sir Thomas More and King Edward III. The anthology is unique in giving all three extant texts of Hamlet from Shakespeare's time: the first and second Quarto texts of 1603 and 1604-5, and the first Folio text of 1623. With a simple alphabetical arrangement the Complete Works are easy to navigate. The lengthy introductions and footnotes of the individual Third Series volumes have been removed to make way for a general introduction, short individual introductions to each text, a glossary and a bibliography instead, to ensure all works are accessible in one single volume. This handsome Complete Works is ideal for readers keen to explore Shakespeare's work and for anyone building their literary library.

King Henry IV, Part 1

King Henry IV, Part 1 was from the first both a theatrical and a literary success, as popular in the bookstalls as on the stage. Entered in the Stationers’ Register on 25 February 1598, as ‘The historye of Henry the iiijth’ (it was not until the 1623 Folio that the play was published as The First Part of King Henry the Fourth), the play quickly became a best-seller. Two editions appeared in 1598 (the first surviving only in a single sheet, now in the Folger Shakespeare Library), and seven more editions were published before 1640, making it not only Shakespeare’s most frequently reprinted play before the Interregnum but also one of the most popular of all printed plays in the period. In the theatre also it continuously thrived, though early references to specific performances are few.

Probably first performed in 1597, it held the stage throughout the seventeenth century. In a commendatory poem to Shakespeare’s Poems (1640), Leonard Digges noted that, while Ben Jonson’s plays no longer drew an audience large enough to cover the costs of production, ‘let but Falstaff come, / Hal, Poins, the rest, you scarce shall have a room, / All is so pestered’.

Much of the play’s popularity is no doubt due to the appeal of Falstaff. Indeed, in the seventeenth century there are more references to the fat knight than to any other dramatic character, though he first appeared on the stage with the name ‘Sir John Oldcastle’. A well-known fifteenth-century Lollard who had been burned as a heretic, Oldcastle emerged a century later as a celebrated precursor of the Protestant martyrs. Shakespeare’s irreverent treatment of the historical figure seems to have offended William Brooke, Lord Cobham, who held his title in descent from Oldcastle’s wife. Brooke was Queen Elizabeth’s Lord Chamberlain from August 1596 to his death on 5 March 1597, and he seems to have insisted on the change of name. It has even been suggested that publication of the play was required to prove that Shakespeare and his acting company had complied with the Lord Chamberlain’s demand.

By whatever name, however, the irrepressible knight has long delighted readers and audiences, offering a vital alternative to the sober world of political consideration over which Henry IV rules. The two men stand as opposing father figures for Prince Henry, one fat and full of life, the other ‘portly’ only in his power, each in turn drawing the commitment of the Prince who must, as history dictates, finally reject revel for responsibility and accept his destiny to rule. There is a third vector in the play, however, that further complicates his choice: the chivalric energies of the rebel Hotspur that lead Henry IV to wish this son of Northumberland his child instead of Hal. But on the battlefield at Shrewsbury the Prince displays both heroism and magnanimity, proving himself a worthy successor and putting to rest fears either that the irresponsible tavern world has claimed him or that he is only the self-regarding son of a calculating father.

The play, of course, is a ‘history’ and appears as the third of ten such in the catalogue of the 1623 Folio, but though it concerns the reign of a historical English king and is largely based upon Holinshed’s Chronicles, it is hardly faithful to the historical record. Not only does it select, restructure and change that history (for example, Hotspur was in fact three years older than the King rather than the Prince’s contemporary), but it mixes in completely invented material, that very tavern world that threatens to keep the Prince from his fate. It is precisely this that has made the play so continuously popular: that it is more than its historical plot. It mingles kings and clowns, history and comedy, challenging the exclusive logic of the aristocratic, political action with its rich variety and demotic energy.

The Arden text is based on the two Quartos of 1598.

King Henry IV, Part 1

1.1 Enter the KING, Lord John of LA...