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Section 3: Omissions and Alterations
Other indications of intentional adaptation include alterations in plot structure and a series of arguably intentional omissions that shape the Quarto as well as simply abridging it.
| Q | Q | F Act, Sc., | Capsule description |
| scene | signature | TLN | |
| (1.0, 1-35) | (Chorus) | ||
| (1.1, 36-142) | (Canturbury & Ely conference) | ||
| 1 | A2r-B1r | 1.2, 143-461 | Court; decision re: French war |
| (2.0, 462-504) | (Chorus) | ||
| 2 | B1r-B2v | 2.1, 505-626 | Pistol, etc.; Falstaff's illness |
| 3 | B2v-B4r | 2.2, 627-822 | Henry with three traitors |
| 4 | B4v-C1r | 2.3, 824-884 | Pistol, etc; Falstaff's death |
| 5 | C1r-C2v | 2.4, 885-1042 | French nobles; Exeter as messenger |
| (3.0, 1043-1080) | (Chorus) | ||
| (3.1, 1081-1118) | ("Once more unto the Breach") | ||
| 6 | C2v-C3r | 3.2, 1119-1258 | Pistol, etc.; Fluellen, Gower (F only: Jamy & MacMorris) |
| 7 | C3r | 3.3, 1259-1319 | Henry at gates of Harfleur |
| 8 | C3r-C3v | 3.4, 1320-1377 | French lesson |
| 9 | C3v-C4r | 3.5, 1378-1448 | French nobles; Dauphin to stay at Rouen |
| 10 | C4r-D2v | 3.6, 1449-1623 | Gower, Fluellen, Pistol; Henry, Montjoy |
| 11 | D2v-D3r | 3.7, 1624-1787 | French nobles; Bourbon, not Dauphin in Q |
| (4.0, 1788-1843) | (Chorus) | ||
| 12 | D3v-E1v | 4.1, 1844-2164 | Henry & soldiers on eve of Agincourt |
| (4.2, 2165-2236) | (French nobles; 2 lines only in Q 3.7/sc. 11 | ||
| 13 | E1v-E3r | 4.3, 2237-2383 | English prepare for Agincourt |
| 14 | E3r | 4.5, 2457-2482 | French nobles near defeat |
| 15 | E3v | 4.4, 2385-2456 | Pistol and French soldier, Boy |
| 16 | E3v-E4r | 4.6, 2483-2523 | Exeter re. end of battle; Henry orders prisoners killed |
| 17 | E4v-F2v | 4.7, 2524-2712 | Gower, Fluellen; Henry, others; Montjoy's surrender for French |
| 18 | F2v-F3v | 4.8, 2713-2848 | Conclusion of glove challenge; list of dead |
| (5.0, 2849-2896) | (Chorus) | ||
| 19 | F3v-F4v | 5.1, 2897-2983 | Gower, Fluellen, Pistol: leek |
| 20 | F4v-G4r | 5.2, 2984-3382 | English & French courts; wooing scene (F only: epilogue) |
Table 5 summarizes major differences in plot structure between Q and F. As indicated in Table 5, three scenes are missing from Q (along with the Choruses): 1.1 (over 100 of Canturbury's and Ely's lines), 3.1 (Henry's 35-line "Once more unto the Breach"), and 4.2 (around 70 lines spoken by the French nobles.)[17]
Only two lines remain from the end of 4.2, which were moved to the end of Q's parallel to 3.7. Following the messenger's warning in 3.7 that the English are very close to the French camp (1500 paces in F, only 100 paces in Q), the Quarto scene ends quickly with Constable's "Come, come away. / The Sun is hie, and we weare out the day" (D3r). The Folio's 3.7 ends with Orleans's "It is now two a Clock: but let me see, by ten / Wee shall haue each a hundred English men" (TLN 1786-87). At first glance the lines in Q may appear to be a minor substitution like those common in all of the "bad" quartos, for, as noted, a few lines earlier Q had substituted 100 paces for 1500. But in fact these two lines appear at the end of 4.2 in the Folio (TLN 2235-36), spoken by the Constable—the only lines of this scene retained by the Quarto version. Presence of this tiny bit from an omitted scene is a significant piece of evidence that the reporters knew a script linked to the Folio rather than an intermediate lost abridgment.[18]
Unfortunately, moving these lines forward from the later French nobles' scene seems to make the sun rise at midnight in Q's 3.7, which immediately precedes Henry's nocturnal visits to his soldiers in (Q's) 4.1.[19] At the end of 4.1 the reporter/adapters introduced another apparent error—one that, like the transposition, again links Q to the version preserved in the Folio. In a
The Quarto's Act 4 also switches the order of F's 4.4 and 4.5, for in Q the scene with the four defeated French lords occurs before Pistol's scene with his French prisoner. The Q reversal of 4.4 and 4.5 may not have been intentional; either order could be effectively staged. At the end of Q's 4.4, however, Pistol leaves the stage, only to return immediately in 4.6, along with Henry and his train. This quick reentry is another clue that the reporters were adapting a version linked to the Folio, for such reentries are exceptional in Shakespeare's scripts.[21] In the Folio version staging, Pistol may also have entered with Henry and his train, as his presence in Q's 4.6 suggests. But only Q mentions him by name—and even gives him the last word, "Couple gorge," a transposition from 2.1 (B2r, TLN 573) and certainly a clever addition here.[22]
Table 6 charts other possible evidence of purposeful abridgment as well as additional evidence of memorial reconstruction. This table shows the relative number of lines in Q and F of each of the key characters. For example, Henry speaks 53% as many lines in Q as he does in F, just above average (50%). But Exeter speaks 85% as many lines in the Quarto as in the Folio, a key indication that the actor playing Exeter knew his complete Folio-linked role rather than an abridgment of it. Parts of the other likely reporters, Pistol (77%) and Gower (67%), are also represented more fully than the average, although some of these lines, as Table 1 indicated, do not correspond as
- Scrope 100%
- Governor 100%
- York 100%
- Nym 87%
- Exeter 85%
- Quickly 85%
- French Amb. 82%
- Pistol 77%
- Fluellen 72%
- Bates 71%
- Gower 67%
- Bardolph 67%
- Williams 64%
- Alice 59%
- Kate 53%
- Henry 53%
- AVERAGE 50%
- Montjoy 48%
- Canterbury 48%
- Cambridge 47%
- French Soldier 47%
- Constable 45%
- Grey 42%
- Boy 43%
- Charles 34%
- Orleans 31%
Table 6: Comparison of the Number of Q to F Lines by Role (expressed as a percentage of Q to F)
Table 6, along with Tables A and B in the appendix, also contributes evidence to the view that the reporters deliberately abridged a version related to the Folio as they reconstructed it, for Table 6, Table A, and Table B all indicate potentially intentional omissions from F.
The Chorus—223 lines, 7% of the Folio—is the most obvious omission. Because of other evidence that the reporter/abridgers were working from performances linked to the Folio, I believe this was an intentional cut: three actors experienced enough to recall so much of their own parts—and the parts of others—would not simply forget so important a role as the Chorus. Even if the Chorus's part was simply read at performances rather than memorized by one of the players, the reporters would still have heard these lines delivered, as they did other lines in the play. It is possible, as some have suggested, that the Choruses were added to the text underlying F after the publication of the Quarto in 1600.[23] In one case, however, the omission of a
The entire sequence involving Jamy and MacMorris (almost 75 lines from 3.2) is also missing in Q, thus eliminating the need for two more actors (in addition to Fuellen) who needed to be proficient in dialects, another likely theatrical cut reasonable for a less ambitious production. Ely (33 lines), Westmorland (19 lines), Isabel (24 lines), Grandpre (18 lines), Bedford (9), Britanny (9), Rambures (9), Erpingham (8), and the English Herald (2) are also eliminated as speaking roles in Q (as shown in Table A in the appendix), though some of their lines are reassigned to others. But most of the 138 Folio lines spoken by these characters have been cut in the Quarto, allowing Q to eliminate nine more speaking roles. These nine characters have no lines in Q—but three others who do not speak in F, Clarence, Gebon, and the Lord, have a few lines in Q as a result of various cuts and rearrangements, as noted above. The net result, however, is seven fewer speaking parts in Q than F, including the elimination of the Chorus.[24]
Perhaps even more significant are omissions in scenes involving the French nobles. In what is almost certainly a deliberate change, as discussed above, the Dauphin is replaced by Bourbon in 3.7 and 4.5; the Dauphin's role is reduced from 117 lines in the Folio to 22 in the Quarto, while Bourbon's role increases from 9 in F to 29 in Q. Table 6 indicates the significant cuts in the roles of the other French nobles, including Constable (124 lines in F, 56 in Q), Charles (95 in F, 32 in Q), and Orleans (49 in F, 15 in Q); all three roles are pruned more than the average, especially those of Charles and Orleans.
Above average reductions in at least three other roles may also have been deliberate, for Exeter was present for all of these lines: Montjoy (52 in F, 25 in Q), Cambridge (15 in F, 7 in Q), and Grey (12 in F, 5 in Q). Although Montjoy's lines in 3.6 are rather fully represented in Q, some eight lines are neatly cut from his part in 4.3, another nine consecutive lines from 4.7. Similarly, the lines spoken by Cambridge and Grey in 2.2 are well represented—except for a neat cut of eleven consecutive lines (TLN 784-794), six spoken by Cambridge in F, five by Grey.
Table 6 also shows above average omissions in the roles of the Boy and the French soldier (Pistol's prisoner), some of them possibly intentional. The actor playing Pistol witnessed their Folio-version lines, but only thirty of the Boy's sixty-nine F lines and seven of the French soldier's fifteen remain in Q. Nearly all of the Boy's lines in 2.1 and 2.4 reappear in Q (though Nym paraphrases one of them), but thirteen lines are neatly cut in the beginning of his long speech in 3.2 (when Pistol is still on stage in Q), and all eleven lines in his final speech (4.4), delivered as Pistol exits. Other lines in 4.4—the scene with the French prisoner—are also cut, perhaps deliberately, including sequences of six, seven, and seven lines, shared in F by the Boy, Pistol, and the French soldier.
Nine of these lines omitted from 4.4 are in French—and a glance at the other scenes with patches of French shows that the reporter/adapters of Q were not completely fluent in French. Even so, as Table 6 indicates, the scenes with Katherine and Alice are not reduced more than the average in Q: though the grammar is sometimes odd and the spelling usually phonetic, these scenes are not cut more than the rest of the play.
But the Quarto is cut drastically, reducing the Q text to only half the length of the Folio. The FX (F Only) column of Table A in the appendix shows that 1593 of the 3253 lines spoken in F are missing in the Quarto, which includes only 55 lines unique to the shorter version (QX, Table B). Of the lines missing in Q, by far the largest number have been cut from Henry's part: 474 lines or almost 15% of the Folio.
Since Henry is almost always on stage with either Exeter, Pistol, or Gower, many of these cuts may have been deliberate. Indeed the reporters often reproduced Henry's lines with considerable accuracy (see the QA and QM entries for Henry in Table B in the appendix). As with other omissions mentioned above, many of the cuts in Henry's part are in long sequences: missing in the Quarto are 2.2, TLN 734-770 (37 lines) from Henry's speech
The wooing scene is also considerably shorter in Q, although cuts in this scene may not have been intentional: no likely reporter was present, and the scene is rearranged in a way unusual for Q Henry V, as if the reporters had had difficulty recalling this scene. Yet in spite of its differences from F, the scene is perfectly coherent in Q and even contains a charming alteration of the F version: in Q, Henry explains in English (as in F, TLN 3164-65),
and I am yours,
Then France is yours,
And you are mine. (G2v)
Other possibly deliberate alterations or omissions involve lines spoken in F by the likely reporters but missing from Q. Of Exeter's 12 lines omitted in the Quarto, 8 occur in patches of two or three lines. One of these, TLN 269-271, is embedded in a twenty-one-line cut that does indeed seem deliberate, as Q omits a long sequence in 1.2 (TLN 262-282), in which Canterbury, Exeter, and Westmorland (eliminated entirely from Q) urge Henry to wage war on France.
Of the thirty-five Folio lines spoken by Pistol but omitted from Q, some twenty-three may be deliberate cuts, as they occur in passages of four or more lines omitted in the Quarto. Though in general Pistol's lines (and those his actor witnessed) are not so well reported as those of Exeter or even Gower, some of these omissions may have been deliberate.
Among Gower's twenty-three Folio lines omitted in the Quarto, twenty occur in long passages that must have been deliberate cuts. Ten of these lines appear in the seventy-five-line passage involving Jamy and MacMorris, 3.2, TLN 1183-1258. Ten other lines were apparently cut from 5.1, TLN 2965-74, in which Gower scolds Pistol for cowardice and deceit; with two likely reporters on stage, this seems an especially good example of a deliberate cut, for it seems improbable that both would simply forget all ten of these lines.
| # of lines | F Act, Sc. TLN | Capsule Description | Evidence passage pre-dates 1600? |
| 223 | (See Table 5) | Choruses | yes |
| 102 | 1.1, 36-142 | Canturbury & Ely conspire | |
| 21 | 1.2, 262-282 | Exeter, others urge French war | |
| 37 | 2.2, 734-770 | Henry with traitors | |
| 35 | 3.1, 1083-1118 | "Once more unto the Breach" | yes |
| 75 | 3.2, 1183-1258 | Jamy & MacMorris | yes |
| 38 | 3.3, 1270-99, 1311-18 | Henry before Harfleur | |
| 40 | 4.1, 1845-80, 2135-40 | Henry with Erpingham | yes |
| 55 | 4.1, 2079-2134 | Henry & burdens of kingship | |
| 71 | 4.2, 2165-2236 | French nobles | yes |
| 11 | 4.4, 2446-2456 | Boy's final soliloquy | |
| 10 | 5.4, 2965-2974 | Gower scolds Pistol | |
| 82 | 5.2, 3022-54, 3271-319 | Burgundy (and others) | |
| 23 | 5.2, 2999-3007, 3080-3, 3380, 3350-59 | Queen Isabel | yes |
Key omissions in Q are summarized in Table 7. Some of these omissions are so neat—and so lengthy—that at first glance they may seem to support the hypothesis that an early script of the play might have been substantially expanded and revised after Q was printed, a variation of the once widely-held view that Q represents (or is a reconstruction of) an early Shakespearean draft.[25] But a closer look at the omissions listed in Table 7 shows that this theory is untenable. According to this hypothesis, certain passages missing in Q might have been added to an early script at some time between 1600 and 1623 (or at least 1616), making the Quarto a witness to a short early draft of the play. Given recent interest in the likelihood that Shakespeare, like other writers, sometimes revised his work, this hypothesis might at first seem possible,
The Chorus, as noted above, might seem to be a possible late addition to the version underlying F. But apart from other objections raised over the years by various critics, the immediate reentry of Fluellen and Gower in 5.1, discussed earlier, signals the removal of a Chorus from Q, undercutting the view that the Choruses were added after 1600. The next three omissions listed in Table 7, from 1.1, 1.2, and 2.2, could be, potentially, either omissions in Q or additions to F, for there is no internal evidence in Q either way. But the next long omission, Henry's famous "Once more unto the Breach" must have been cut in the Quarto version, for both Q and F include Fluellen's amusing echo of the speech, as he urges Pistol and the others, in Q's rendition, "Godes plud vp to the breaches" (C2v).
It seems likely that the Jamy/MacMorris segment was also cut for the Quarto version rather than added after 1600. Though the presence of the Scotsman Jamy might appear to be a kind of compliment to King James, added, perhaps, after his accession in 1603, the King was certainly not amused by the use of a Scots accent in Eastward Ho (1605); it would have been safer to cut the passage for Q, even perhaps as early as 1600, than to add it later to the text underlying F.[27]
Omissions in 3.3, Henry's long sequences before the gates of Harfleur, as well as his soliloquy on the cares of kingship in 4.1, might have been either neat cuts or later additions, as far as we can tell from Q, but the sequences involving Erpingham must have been omitted in Q. Though Q cuts all of Erpingham's 8 Folio lines and the long sequence in 4.1 in which he appears, the erroneous stage direction in Q's 4.1 is an important clue that Erpingham was a character in the version known by the reporters, as pointed out earlier. Similarly, the presence in the Quarto of the last two lines in F's 4.2, moved
The next three examples listed in Table 7 left no traces in Q, but the last, including most of Isabel's lines, must have been the result of cuts in Q, for the Quarto entry direction for 5.2 specifies "Queene Katherine" (F4v), apparently a vestige of the Folio-linked staging in which both Queen Isabel and Princess Katherine entered at this point.
Thus of the passages listed in Table 7 as potential additions to F, there are significant indications that several were present in the version the reporters had performed, and no signs that any of the others were later additions, thus casting very serious doubts on the hypothesis that some of the omissions reflected in Q might have been late additions to the text underlying F. Equally significant, evidence in the Folio suggests that F was based on Shakespeare's foul papers: additions as extensive as those listed in Table 7 presumably would have created a very different sort of base text.[29] These passages, then, must have been omitted by the reporter/adapters as part of the reconstruction and abridgment that resulted in the First Quarto.
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