Section 1: Memorial Reconstruction in Q Henry
V
To seek verifiable evidence for or against memorial reconstruction,
I designed a computer-assisted analysis to help compare the two versions
of Henry V.[3] My
analysis is based on the fluctuating quality of Q, observed by
many scholars, for the parts of certain characters seem to correspond more
closely to F than others; the analysis is designed to isolate the lines with the
highest correlation in the two versions and to identify both the speakers and
the characters whose actors witnessed these closely parallel lines.
To implement the analysis, I first underlined each matching word in
corresponding segments of my handmade parallel text, then marked each
line with a code reflecting the degree of correlation. If every word in the
line appears in the parallel segment of the other text (ignoring word order,
lineation, and spelling), I marked the line "A" (for all). If more than half
of the words correlate, the code is "M" (for most); if half or fewer words
match, I marked the line "S" (for some). Lines that paraphrase the content
of a parallel segment—but contain no matching words—were
marked
"P" (for paraphrase), and lines with no correlation were marked "X". Next,
using computer typescripts of Q and F, I transferred the correlation codes
from my parallel text to the computer texts. I also marked each line with
codes to identify the speakers and the characters on stage.[4]
For each of the two texts, I used a database program to isolate and
count the lines that each character speaks and the lines his or her actor
witnesses while on stage. In addition, I determined the degree of correlation
between the two texts for these spoken and witnessed lines, using the five
correlation categories, A through X. Tables A, B, C, and D in the appendix
record this basic information. Then I organized the data with the help of a
spreadsheet program.[5]
Tables A and B in the appendix, which record the number of lines of
each character in various correlation categories, show that actors playing 26
of the 51 roles are very unlikely candidates for a reporter. Even if a
reporter
had doubled in some of these roles, there is often too little information to
draw any conclusions about his part in a possible reconstruction. Beaumont,
Berri, and the Second French Ambassador have no lines in either version,
making them the first to be eliminated. Clarence, Gebon, and the Lord have
no lines in F; most of the lines spoken by them in Q are spoken by other
characters in F, making them equally unlikely reporters. The Chorus, Ely,
Westmorland, Isabel, MacMorris, Grandpre, Jamy, Bedford, Britanny,
Rambures, Erpingham, and the English Herald have no lines in the Quarto
version, though some lines have been reassigned. Court has one line in Q,
only 2 in F, while the French Messenger and Salisbury each speak only 3
lines in Q (7 and 9 lines respectively in F); parallels between the lines in
F and Q for each are not striking. The roles of the Dauphin, Bourbon, and
Burgundy are radically different in Q, eliminating them as likely reporters.
The Dauphin's role is reduced from
117 lines in F to 22 in Q; Bourbon is assigned some of these lines, as his
role expands from 9 in F to 29 in Q. Burgundy's role is trimmed from 68
lines in F to only 4 in the Quarto. Warwick's and Gloucester's much
smaller parts are also altered in Q: Warwick has 1 line in F, a line that
does not appear in Q, but is reassigned 7 lines spoken by others in the
Folio; Gloucester's part includes 5 lines in F, 11 in Q, again reassigned
from the roles of other English lords in F. Thus these 26 unlikely
candidates have been eliminated as possible reporters.
Table 1 shows the percentage of lines in the Folio with a high
correlation to parallel lines in Q, for lines spoken and witnessed by the
remaining 25 characters. We would expect that a reporter—if one
existed
for Q Henry V —would have remembered his own
lines more
accurately than those he witnessed, for it seems likely that an actor would
recall his own part more fully than the words of others on stage with him.
Using this criterion, I have eliminated as possible reporters the 14
characters listed toward the bottom of Table 1, for in each case the lines
witnessed in the two texts are more closely parallel than those spoken by
their actors. The only possible exception among this group may be Mistress
Quickly, for the difference in correlation between spoken and witnessed
lines is very slight. I believe her actor is an unlikely reporter, however,
because of the relatively low proportion of lines in the "A" category and
because her spoken lines are not more accurately
rendered than those her actor witnessed.
In addition to remembering his own lines more fully than those he
witnessed, we would expect a likely reporter to recall his own role with an
accuracy greater than the average, shown near the center of Table 1.
Orleans is at the median whereas Alice and Kate fall below both median
and mean (average), making their actors unlikely reporters.
This leaves eight possible reporters out of the 51 characters: Exeter,
Gower, Pistol, Nym, Scrope, the Governor of Harfleur, York, and
Williams. I believe Williams is an unlikely reporter, for the proportion of
his lines in the "A" category is considerably below the mean. York has only
two spoken lines and witnesses only three others in F; because of the small
amount of data, it is difficult to determine if his actor was a reporter,
although one of
Table 1: Folio Spoken & Witnessed Lines with a High
Correlation to Q (expressed as a percentage of the character's total F
lines)
|
Folio |
Folio |
Folio |
Folio |
|
spoken |
witnessed |
spoken |
witnessed |
|
A + M |
A + M |
A |
A |
| Exeter |
84% |
49% |
57% |
22% |
| Gower |
61% |
55% |
40% |
21% |
| Pistol |
65% |
55% |
35% |
22% |
| Nym |
67% |
53% |
22% |
20% |
| Scrope |
100% |
55% |
62% |
28% |
| Governor |
100% |
0% |
57% |
0% |
| York |
100% |
67% |
50% |
33% |
| Williams |
43% |
39% |
11% |
13% |
| MEAN (AVERAGE) |
39% |
39% |
17% |
17% |
| MEDIAN |
33% |
33% |
10% |
10% |
| Orleans |
33% |
25% |
22% |
9% |
| Alice |
30% |
13% |
19% |
4% |
| Kate |
25% |
22% |
15% |
7% |
| --------------------------------------- |
| Quickly |
59% |
60% |
22% |
24% |
| French Amb. |
65% |
88% |
24% |
43% |
| Grey |
50% |
59% |
8% |
32% |
| Fluellen |
48% |
60% |
10% |
31% |
| Canterbury |
45% |
59% |
24% |
26% |
| Henry |
42% |
48% |
19% |
22% |
| Cambridge |
40% |
60% |
27% |
31% |
| Montjoy |
33% |
75% |
13% |
40% |
| Boy |
29% |
43% |
12% |
17% |
| Constable |
28% |
35% |
10% |
18% |
| Bardolph |
27% |
62% |
10% |
22% |
| French Soldier |
20% |
60% |
0% |
30% |
| Bates |
18% |
21% |
6% |
3% |
| Charles |
14% |
31% |
2% |
16% |
the reporters certainly could have doubled as York. The case for the
Governor of Harfleur is similar, for though his 7 lines in F are closely
parallel to his role in Q, his actor witnesses no lines in the Quarto; one of
the reporters could easily have doubled as the Governor, but without lines
witnessed by this character in Q, there is too little evidence to
evaluate.
Five characters, then, remain as major candidates for
reporter—Exeter (obviously the most likely possibility), Gower,
Pistol,
Nym, and Scrope—perhaps also doubling the smaller roles of the
Governor and York. Table 1 shows why Exeter is often mentioned as a
likely reporter, for well over half of his spoken lines are virtually identical
in the two versions, while 84% are closely parallel.[6] Lines spoken by the other likely
reporters
show less correspondence,
though still considerably more than either the median or the mean. Equally
important, the proportion of closely parallel lines witnessed by all five is
also well above average, a key indication that Q did not begin simply as a
transcript of these players' parts.
No single actor could have played all five of these roles in
Henry V: although some doubling is certainly possible, each
of
the five appears with at least one of the others. Exeter could double Pistol
or Nym, but this seems unlikely (apart from casting difficulties), because
Exeter's scenes are generally more accurately rendered in Q than Pistol's
and Nym's. Gower could double both Nym and Scrope; Pistol could also
double Scrope, and any but Exeter could double the Governor and York.
Three actors, then, could have reconstructed the Quarto: the actor playing
Exeter, along with the actors playing Pistol and Gower, doubling Nym,
Scrope and possibly the Governor and York. Thus Table 1, based on a
quantitative analysis of possible candidates, verifies the widely-held
impression that Exeter, along with one or two others, was responsible for
reconstructing Henry V from his memory of performances,
a
significant confirmation of the memorial-reconstruction theory. This result
is particularly important in light of the recent healthy skepticism of Steven
Urkowitz and Paul Werstine, among others, concerning the validity of the
theory of memorial reconstruction.[7]
Just as significantly, Table 1 indicates that the version the reporters
apparently knew was a script linked to the Folio rather than to an
intermediate abridgment. The proportion of closely parallel lines spoken by
Exeter, Scrope, and the Governor suggests that the reporters attempted to
reconstruct a version similar to the Folio, apparently abridging sections of
it at the same time or shortly thereafter. Exeter's part in Q retains some
84% of his Folio lines with considerable accuracy, as noted above, while
all 13 of Scrope's Folio lines and all seven of the Governor's reappear with
equal accuracy. The Quarto, with 1629 spoken lines, includes only 50% as
many lines as does the Folio (3253 spoken lines). If the reporters had
known only an abridgment, their lines presumably would have been cut in
such an abridgment in roughly the same proportion as the rest of the play.
But Exeter's crucial part in particular is remarkably full as well as
unusually accurate, a key indication that
he was working from his memory of a longer, Folio-linked script. Though
the Quarto version has obviously been abridged, probably deliberately,
Table 1 presents
significant new evidence that the reporters began with performances directly
related to the Folio version rather than to a lost intermediate
abridgment.
[8]
