(3) The earlier (pre-Shakespearean) versions of 2 and 3 Henry VI were printed in 1594 and 1595 respectively, these texts presumably becoming accessible to the publishers after the revised dramas supplanted them for stage purposes. The fact that no such text of the early 1 Henry VI was printed would suggest that that play was reserved either till it was too late to warrant publishers to trade upon its former popularity or till Shakespeare's company began to take more stringent measures to prevent the publication of any play-texts.
(4) A mutual connection exists between 1 Henry VI and Henry V (cf. note on IV. ii. 10, 11). Several passages in our play seem reminiscent of the other (written in 1599). It is a plausible hypothesis at least that 1 Henry VI was revised in order on the one hand to profit by the popular interest in Henry V and on the other to link that play with 2 Henry VI, thus completing the chain of history dramas from Richard II to Richard III.[1]
- ↑ It is often argued that the priority of 1 Henry VI to Henry V is proved by the closing lines of the epilogue to the latter play:
'Henry the Sixth, in infant bands crown'd King
Of France and England, did this king succeed;
Whose state so many had the managing,
That they lost France and made his England bleed:
Which oft our stage hath shown; and, for their sake,
In your fair minds let this acceptance take.'Dogmatism on the point is not justifiable, but the performance of Harry the Sixth in 1592 (and afterward) by Shakespeare's company explains the allusion quite as well as the assumption that the revised 1 Henry VI had already been acted. I find it easier to read in the lines of the epilogue a modestly veiled hint that if Henry V proved a success, Shakespeare was thinking of following it up by a revised version of Harry the Sixth, than to believe that he really meant to imply that the Henry VI plays as now known were such excellent works as to make amends for any defects in Henry V. The epilogue to 2 Henry IV promised
