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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

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

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

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% |
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,

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

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