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KING HENRY THE FIFTH.

WITH

INTRODUCTION, AND NOTES EXPLANATORY AND CRITICAL.

FOR USE IN SCHOOLS AND FAMILIES.

BY THE

REV. HENRY N. HUDSON, LL.D.

BOSTON:

PUBLISHED BY GINN, HEATH, & CO.
1882.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1880, by

HENRY N. HUDSON,

in the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

GINN & HEATH:

J. S. CUSHING, PRINTER, 16 HAWLEY STREET,
BOSTON.

INTRODUCTION.

History of the Play.

HE LIFE OF HENRY THE FIFTH, as it is called in the

THE

folio of 1623, was registered, along with As You Like It, at the Stationers', August 4, 1600, but was locked up from the press under an order "to be stayed." In respect of As You Like It the stay seems to have been continued; but not so in regard to the other, as this was entered again on the 14th of the same month, and was published in the course of that year. The same text was reissued in 1602, and again in 1608. In these editions, known as the quartos, the author's name was not given: the play, moreover, was but about half as long as we have it; the Choruses, the whole of the first scene, and also many other passages, those too among the best in the play, and even in the whole compass of the the Poet's works, being wanting altogether. All these, besides more or less of enlargement in a great many places, together with the marks of a careful finishing hand running through the whole, were supplied in the folio of 1623; which, accordingly, is our only authority for the text, though the quartos yield valuable aid towards correcting the errors and curing the defects of that copy.

That the issue of 1600 was surreptitious is on all hands allowed. But there has been much controversy whether it was printed from a full and perfect copy of the play as first written, or from a mangled and mutilated copy, such as

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