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Unless the edition is like the New Arden with a selection of textual notes, readers of 1 Henry IV in modernized texts will be unaware of a problem of staging that involves Poins and Peto. The facts are these. In Act I, scene ii, Poins reports to Hal and Falstaff that travellers are to come by Gadshill. After persuading Hal to join the hoax on Falstaff, he makes his exit, whereupon the scene concludes with Hal's 'I know you all' soliloquy. In II.ii the disguised Poins and Hal attack Falstaff and the others and secure the booty. Back at the tavern, in II.iv Poins joins Hal first in ragging Francis the drawer and then in exposing Falstaff. On the arrival of the Sheriff, Hal orders Falstaff to conceal himself behind the arras and 'the rest [to] walke up above.' In the Quarto there is no exit direction for anyone, although the Folio (with whatever authority it may possess) supplies the required but uninformative 'Exit.' The Prince and the Sheriff discuss Falstaff and the robbery in guarded terms. Upon the Sheriff's exit the Prince's next line is 'This oylie rascall is knowne as well as Poules' and he orders 'goe call him forth.' In Quarto and in Folio it is not Poins but Peto who responds by drawing the arras and ejaculating, 'Falstalffe: fast a sleepe behind the Arras,
This scene poses a difficulty, for without motivation Peto has been silently abstracted from Falstaff's party, with whom he entered, and appointed Hal's servant as a substitute for the attendant and part-companion, Poins. In staging, the dialogue forces us to take it that Poins joins Bardolph and Gadshill in the unnoted exeunt before the Sheriff's arrival but, inexplicably and with no prior arrangement or command, Peto stays with the Prince in his place. Moreover, upon his exit, Poins disappears from the play although he should have appeared in III.iii. Some editors have considered that there has been compositorial confusion here owing to the Quarto abbreviated speech-prefix Po. for Poins that could have been misread as Pe., and these have followed Dr. Johnson by emending to remove Peto and to re-install Poins as the Prince's companion at the end of the scene, this requiring a stage-direction that includes Peto in the general exit before the Sheriff's arrival. Nevertheless, whatever one may think of the emendation, compositorial confusion is unlikely to have extended to the name Peto in the Prince's farewell.[1]
The switch in the roles begun in the Quarto at the end of II.iv is continued in Act III, scene iii, opening with Falstaff, Bardolph, and then the Hostess in the tavern, these being joined by Hal in the following stage-direction: 'Enter the prince marching, and Falstalffe meetes him playing upon his trunchion like a fife.' Peto has no speaking part, but it seems clear that he enters with the Prince, even though unmentioned in the stage-directions,[2] for at the scene's close Hal cries, 'Go Peto to horse, to horse, for thou and I | Have thirty miles to ride yet ere dinner time'. This is the last of Peto on stage, although we hear of him in IV.ii when Falstaff, on the march, orders Bardolph, 'bid my Liuetenant Peto meet me at townes end.'
In this second tavern scene III.iii earlier editors once more were likely to substitute Poins for Peto as Hal's companion despite the text, aided by the assumption that Poins fits the metre as in 'Go Poins to horse, to horse' better than Peto. However, the extra weak syllable is by no means so unmetrical as to make this sufficient evidence for a mistake. Indeed, any theory for compositorial or scribal error based on a confusion of speech-prefixes breaks down on the occurrence of the name in the dialogue in two different scenes, the more especially since in III.iii Peto appears in the Quarto neither in stage-direction nor in speech-prefix.
Since another explanation must be sought, it behooves an editor to account for the abrupt substitution of Peto for Poins at the end of the first tavern scene, and on the basis of this explanation to decide what he should do in the text: whether to emend to Poins in both scenes, which has not been done since Dyce except for Dover Wilson and Charles Sisson; or to split the ticket with the old Oxford and Kittredge by retaining Peto in II.iv but emending to Poins in Hal's 'to horse, to horse' in III.iii; or to retain Peto in both scenes according to the Quarto and Folio authority, as in Alexander, the New Arden, the New Penguin, and other modern editions like the Pelican and New Riverside. In my opinion this latter has been a course influenced more by an inability to explain the anomaly of the names than by any conviction that the Quarto text offers a basically desirable assignment.
So far as I have been able to investigate, a satisfactory explanation for this odd switch in characters has not been offered. I suggest that such an explanation is important: those who emend either in both scenes or, unreasonably, in the second only, have taken it that compositorial or scribal error has somehow occurred, whereas those who decline to emend presumably do so on the ground that even against their better judgment they are following in the Quarto the only evidence they have for Shakespeare's intention. Either school of thought poses its difficulties.
I propose a relatively simple theatrical explanation. In Julius Cœsar I think it is now established that Dover Wilson's old guess was right and that the same actor doubled the lean and hungry Cassius and the emaciated sick man Caius Ligarius recruited to the conspiracy by Brutus.[3] As a consequence, it is Ligarius, not Cassius, who waits on Cæsar with the other conspirators to escort him to the Capitol even though Cassius had stated that he would be present; yet it is Cassius who enters with the procession at the Capitol, and Ligarius not only does not appear in this stage-direction but is not mentioned in the assassination. This disruption is readily explained by the doubling, an expedient also reinforced by other evidence which indicates that the part of Ligarius was added in a revision of the text after it had been copied out. What we have in 1 Henry IV, I suggest, is the same situation: because of an assignment of actors decided upon during the early planning for production, or even during rehearsal, the actor of Poins had to be withdrawn
If Poins could not be permitted to finish the scene, the only reason must have been that the actor was to double a role in the very next. The next scene is Act III, scene i, marked by the entrance of Hotspur, Worcester, Mortimer, and Glendower in the opening stage-direction. As a doubled part Hotspur must be excluded because his immediate entrance at the start of II.iii had followed directly after Poins's exit in the Gadshill robbery scene. Worcester is a possibility. The closest that his entrance ever comes to an exit by Poins is at the beginning of I.iii which follows the plans for the robbery in I.ii but with Hal's 'I know you all' soliloquy intervening for twenty-three lines between Poins's exit and Worcester's entrance. This soliloquy might have provided somewhat less time to change costume than the action of discovering Falstaff at the end of II.iv, but it could have been enough if Worcester were the part doubled.[5] However, both Mortimer and Glendower are candidates as well, perhaps more attractive in some respects than Worcester,[6] even though Poins's continued absence in Acts IV and V could be explained by Worcester's important role in that section. But since Peto is not present in these acts either, I think it clear that once the battle is forward the seriousness of the action prevented Hal from carrying along a low-life companion like Peto, or even Poins: such an incongruity would have interfered with Shakespeare's efforts to show that the Prince has detached himself from the tavern milieu and is now committed to the chivalric life. The brief interludes with Falstaff are enough to continue the comic subplot without diminishing Hal's glory. Moreover, it should not be held against either
Evidence is lacking, then, that might point to Worcester or to Mortimer or Glendower as Poins's doubled part, although it must have been one of the three. Nonetheless, once the probability of the hypothesis for doubling is accepted, the two particular consequences that follow are of greater import than the identification of the doubled character. As an example, the recognition of Shakespeare's revision of Julius Cæsar led to a reassessment of the nature of the Folio printer's copy. Greg's generally accepted assumption that it was Shakespeare's own holograph had to make way for the more probable hypothesis—given the characteristics of the text as well as the theatrically motivated revision—that Jaggard's copy was a scribal transcript used for the early stages of rehearsal, or at least for the early planning of the production, before a promptbook had been written up. An intermediate transcript, in short, containing what might have been Shakespeare's own holograph revisions in three and just possibly in four scenes. It follows that if an exchange of roles for Poins and Peto to enable the Poins actor to double another character in III.i were inserted in the manuscript of 1 Henry IV, there could be a tug to forsake Greg's tentative leaning toward a Quarto printed from Shakespeare's papers and to accept as somewhat strengthened Alice Walker's assignment (made on other evidence) of the printer's copy as a non-authorial fair transcript of the foul papers and therefore a predecessor of the promptbook;[9] that is, an intermediate transcript as in the copy for Julius Cœsar.[10]
Between the two plays a real distinction must be drawn, however. The doubling of Cassius as Caius Ligarius caused what can be described as a major revision and amplification of one scene and minor revision in another. No such evidence of textual expansion or thematic revision is found in 1 Henry IV, nor is there any evidence for more than minor textual change. In fact, except for the simple substitution of Peto's name for Poins's, no other change may have been made in II.iv.[11] Since Poins was disguised, as was Hal, when they attacked Falstaff and his crew, he could not be identified by the Carrier who accompanied the Sheriff and thus it is natural that in the original version with no mention made he should have stayed with Hal during the encounter, as a necessary attendant. This same action is difficult to account for with Peto, who was identifiable and had not been requested to remain in order to replace a Poins who had no reason to leave. That the substitution creaks in this manner may be an indication that Shakespeare (if it were indeed he who tinkered with this doubling problem) made no
If this is so, the editorial problem is somewhat sharpened although the procedures to be adopted still remain similar to those advisable for Julius Cœsar. The exigencies of doubling should have no effect on the production (or reading) of Julius Cœsar as it ought to be performed (or read) without the necessity for doubling. To establish a text of Julius Cœsar that does not include Ligarius in the procession at the Capitol and, though a mute, in the assassination would now be, in my view, the height of pedantry. By the same logic, we must distinguish between 1 Henry IV as Shakespeare originally intended it to be acted and the form in which we find it in the Quarto after the doubling rearrangement of parts had been inserted. Any modern producer who retains Peto instead of restoring Poins as Hal's attendant throughout would be violating the clear intention of the author as he wrote the play without doubling in mind. It follows that, as in Julius Cœsar, an editor should ignore the changes later forced on Shakespeare (or caused by company tinkering) because of a problem in casting, perhaps because of the company's attempt to have each role played by the most appropriate actor (as with Cassius-Ligarius), which would mean that the actor of Poins might have been thought to be peculiarly suited for some other part as well.[12]
Dr. Johnson's instincts were sounder than the present-day veneration for a theatrically altered text that violates the propriety of character and of situation as Shakespeare had conceived it. An editor cannot restore the missing lines in III.iii but here and in II.iv he can at least give back to Hal his proper companion Poins, and keep Peto exclusively where he belongs in Part One, that is, as a member of Falstaff's party, to which in fact he reverts in Falstaff's reference (presumably in the original version and never altered to take account of the change in II.iv and III.iii) to "my lieutenant Peto" who is to meet him at town's end when the characters of the comic underplot are on the way to the battle.
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