Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-s2hrs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-06T07:58:54.016Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

THE COPY FOR HENRY VIII, 1623

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2010

Get access

Summary

The Folio text of Henry VIII is, in the main, extremely tidy, and affords little help towards solving the problem of authorship discussed in the Introduction. The accepted view about it is cautiously summarized by Sir Walter Greg: ‘The copy for F was clearly a carefully prepared manuscript, in whose hand or hands there is no evidence to show. It could have been used as a prompt-book, but there is no indication that it was.’ No evidence for more than one scribal hand has been found, and, as will be seen, the case against use as a prompt-book is perhaps stronger than Sir Walter allows. If the evidence for divided authorship drawn from pronominal forms and from colloquial abbreviations is valid, the scribe cannot have gone far in imposing his own preferences, if any, on his original. On the other hand, there are very few odd spellings or irregular punctuations to suggest the persistence of authorial characteristics. There are, however, a few variations in speech-prefixes, though not of an elaborately ‘functional’ kind. Wolsey is ‘Cardinall Wolsey’ in the stagedirection for his first entry (1. 1. 114), and ‘Car.’ in his three speeches in the first scene. In 1. 2 and 1. 4 he enters as ‘The Cardinall”, and is then ‘Card.’, but in 2. 2, where confusion with Campeius must be avoided, he is ‘Wolsey’ in his entry and ‘WoL’ in prefixes.

Type
Chapter
Information
King Henry the Eighth
The Cambridge Dover Wilson Shakespeare
, pp. 113 - 117
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2009
First published in: 1962

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×