Editors have often fashioned their own narratives to explain what lies behind the quartos and Folio. They have said that Heminge and Condell meant to criticize only a few of the early quartos, the ones that offer much shorter and sometimes quite different, often garbled, versions of plays. Among the examples of these are the 1600 quarto of Henry V (the Folio offers a much fuller version) or the 1603 Hamlet quarto. (In 1604 a different, much longer form of the play got into print as a quarto.) Early-twentieth-century editors speculated that these questionable texts were produced when someone in the audience took notes from the plays’ dialogue during performances and then employed “hack poets” to fill out the notes. The poor results were then sold to a publisher and presented in print as Shakespeare’s plays. More recently this story has given way to another in which the shorter versions are said to be re-creations from memory of Shakespeare’s plays by actors who wanted to stage them in the provinces but lacked manuscript copies. Most of the quartos offer much better texts than these so-called bad quartos. Indeed, in most of the quartos we find texts that are at least equal to or better than what is printed in the Folio. Many Shakespeare enthusiasts persuaded themselves that most of the quartos were set into type directly from Shakespeare’s own papers, although there is nothing on which to base this conclusion except the desire for it to be true. Thus speculation continues about how the Shakespeare plays got to be printed. All that we have are the printed texts.

  The book collector who was most successful in bringing together copies of the quartos and the First Folio was Henry Clay Folger, founder of the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. While it is estimated that there survive around the world only about 300 copies of the First Folio, Mr. Folger was able to acquire more than seventy-five copies, as well as a large number of fragments, for the library that bears his name. He also amassed a substantial number of quartos. For example, only fourteen copies of the First Quarto of Love’s Labor’s Lost are known to exist, and three are at the Folger Shakespeare Library. As a consequence of Mr. Folger’s labors, scholars visiting the Folger Library have been able to learn a great deal about sixteenth- and seventeenth-century printing and, particularly, about the printing of Shakespeare’s plays. And Mr. Folger did not stop at the First Folio, but collected many copies of later editions of Shakespeare, beginning with the Second Folio (1632), the Third (1663–64), and the Fourth (1685). Each of these later folios was based on its immediate predecessor and was edited anonymously. The first editor of Shakespeare whose name we know was Nicholas Rowe, whose first edition came out in 1709. Mr. Folger collected this edition and many, many more by Rowe’s successors.

  An Introduction to This Text

  Henry VI, Part 3 was first printed, in a version far different from the one edited here, in 1595 as an octavo with the title The true Tragedie of Richard Duke of Yorke, and the death of good King Henrie the Sixt, with the whole contention betweene the two Houses Lancaster and Yorke, as it was sundrie times acted by the Right Honourable the Earle of Pembrooke his seruants. This octavo was reprinted as a quarto in 1600 and again, with corrections that bring its text closer to the First Folio version, in 1619. In the 1623 collection of Shakespeare’s plays now known as the First Folio there appeared a much fuller and very different text, this one titled The third Part of Henry the Sixt, with the death of the Duke of Yorke.

  The relation between Folio and octavo texts of this play has been a matter of speculation and discussion for centuries. In the eighteenth century it came to be believed that the octavo was the non-Shakespearean source for the Folio play. Then, early in the twentieth century, the text printed in the octavo was properly recognized as being later than the text printed in the Folio, from which it was derived. However, the process of derivation remains a vexed question. Particular passages in the octavo—4.2.1–18, 5.7—reproduce the Folio text verbatim or nearly verbatim. Nevertheless, the closeness of the octavo to the Folio in these passages may not mean that there the manuscript printer’s copy for the octavo reproduced the Folio’s text most carefully; instead it may indicate that the Folio typesetters consulted the printed octavo or, more likely, one of the derivative quartos for these passages, where perhaps the typesetters found their manuscript printer’s copy deficient. Some editors and critics have invoked the theory of memorial reconstruction to account for the octavo’s differences from the Folio. However, the octavo does not differ from the Folio in the same way that, say, the 1602 quarto of The Merry Wives of Windsor does from the Folio text of that play; the Wives quarto is the only one that seems to be in any substantial part a memorial reconstruction of its Folio counterpart. Thus memorial reconstruction seems irrelevant to the case of Henry VI, Part 3, which therefore remains unresolved. (For a different judgment on this problem, see Randall Martin’s “The True Tragedy of Richard Duke of York and 3 Henry 6: Report and Revision,” summarized in “Further Reading.”)

  The present edition is based directly on the First Folio text of 1623, and resorts to the octavo only for occasional readings when the sense of the Folio breaks down.I For the convenience of the reader, we have modernized the punctuation and the spelling of the Folio. Sometimes we go so far as to modernize certain old forms of words; for example, usually when a means he, we change it to he; we change mo to more, and ye to you. But it is not our practice in editing any of the plays to modernize words that sound distinctly different from modern forms. For example, when the early printed texts read sith or apricocks or porpentine, we have not modernized to since, apricots, porcupine. When the forms an, and, or and if appear instead of the modern form if, we have reduced and to an but have not changed any of these forms to their modern equivalent, if. We also modernize and, where necessary, correct passages in foreign languages, unless an error in the early printed text can be reasonably explained as a joke.

  Whenever we change the wording of the First Folio or add anything to its stage directions, we mark the change by enclosing it in superior half-brackets (< >). We want our readers to be immediately aware when we have intervened. (Only when we correct an obvious typographical error in the First Folio does the change not get marked.) Whenever we change either the First Folio’s wording or its punctuation so that meaning changes, we list the change in the textual notes at the back of the book, even if all we have done is fix an obvious error.

  This edition differs from many earlier ones in its efforts to aid the reader in imagining the play as a performance rather than as a series of actual events. Twice in Henry VI, Part 3, characters refer to a molehill. Once Queen Margaret orders that the captured Duke of York be made to “stand upon this molehill here” (1.4.67), and once King Henry, watching a battle, decides “Here on this molehill will I sit me down” (2.5.14). Because the stage seldom aims for the realism of film, most productions will not feature a molehill. Yet, given the marvelous creativity found in the theater and the widely different venues in which Shakespeare is performed, we have sought to write stage directions for these moments that will not limit possible stagings. Thus we use in these directions the deliberately indefinite word prominence, meaning no more than an area raised above its surroundings: “They place York on a small prominence”; “He sits on a small prominence.”

  Whenever it is reasonably certain, in our view, that a speech is accompanied by a particular action, we provide a stage direction describing the action, setting the added direction in brackets to signal that it is not found in the Folio. (Occasional exceptions to this rule occur when the action is so obvious that to add a stage direction would insult the reader). Stage directions for the entrance of a character in mid-scene are, with rare exceptions, placed so that they immediately precede the character’s participation in the scene, even though these entrances may appear somewhat earlier in the early printed texts. Whenever we move a stage direction, we record this change in the textual notes. Latin stage directions (e.g., Exeunt) are translated into English (e.g., They exit).

  We regularize spellings of a number of the proper names in the dialogue and stage directions, as is the usual practice in editions of the play. For example, the First Folio uses the forms “Mountague,” “Montague,” and “Mountacute” for the character that we invariably designate “Montague.” We expand the often severely abbreviated forms of names used as speech headings in early printed texts into the full names of the characters. We also regularize the speakers’ names in speech headings, using only a single designation for each character, even though the early printed texts sometimes use a variety of designations. Such variety is evident in connection with several characters. Richard Plantagenet, duke of York is sometimes “Plant.” and sometimes “Yorke.” in the Folio speech prefixes, but always “YORK” in this edition. King Henry sometimes speaks as “Hen.” and sometimes as “King.” in the Folio, but speaks only as “KING HENRY” in our edited text. The exception to this rule occurs when a character in the play changes status so significantly that he or she is given a new name (as with LADY GREY, who becomes QUEEN ELIZABETH, and GEORGE, who becomes Duke of CLARENCE). For the problems with the names of Richard and George/Clarence, see the longer note to 3.2.14 SP.

  In the present edition, as well, we mark with a dash any change of address within a speech, unless a stage direction intervenes. When the -ed ending of a word is to be pronounced, we mark it with an accent. Like editors for the past two centuries, we print metrically linked lines in the following way:

  CLARENCE

  To who, my lord?

  KING EDWARD   Why, Clarence, to myself.

  (3.2.113–14)

  However, when there are a number of short verse-lines that can be linked in more than one way, we do not, with rare exceptions, indent any of them.

  The Explanatory Notes

  The notes that appear in the commentary at the end of the text, are designed to provide readers with the help that they may need to enjoy the play. Whenever the meaning of a word in the text is not readily accessible in a good contemporary dictionary, we offer the meaning in a note. Sometimes we provide a note even when the relevant meaning is to be found in the dictionary but when the word has acquired since Shakespeare’s time other potentially confusing meanings. In our notes, we try to offer modern synonyms for Shakespeare’s words. We also try to indicate to the reader the connection between the word in the play and the modern synonym. For example, Shakespeare sometimes uses the word head to mean source, but, for modern readers, there may be no connection evident between these two words. We provide the connection by explaining Shakespeare’s usage as follows: “head: fountainhead, source.” On some occasions, a whole phrase or clause needs explanation. Then, if space allows, we rephrase in our own words the difficult passage, and add at the end synonyms for individual words in the passage. When scholars have been unable to determine the meaning of a word or phrase, we acknowledge the uncertainty. Bible quotations are from the Geneva Bible (1560), modernized.

  * * *

  I. We have also consulted the computerized text of the First Folio provided by the Text Archive of the Oxford University Computing Centre, to which we are grateful.

  HENRY VI

  Part 3

  English Ancestry of King Henry VI

  Characters in the Play

  KING HENRY VI

  QUEEN MARGARET

  PRINCE EDWARD

  Lord CLIFFORD

  Lancastrian supporters

  Earl of NORTHUMBERLAND

  Earl of WESTMORLAND

  Duke of EXETER

  Earl of OXFORD

  Sir John SOMERVILLE

  Earl of WARWICK

  Supporters first of York,

  then of Lancaster

  Marquess of MONTAGUE

  Duke of SOMERSET

  Richard Plantagenet,

   duke of YORK

  EDWARD, earl of March,

  Sons of Richard, duke of York

   later KING EDWARD IV

  GEORGE, later duke of CLARENCE

  RICHARD, later duke of Gloucester

  RUTLAND

  SIR JOHN Mortimer, York’s uncle

  LADY GREY, later QUEEN ELIZABETH

  Earl RIVERS, brother to the queen

  Duke of NORFOLK

  Yorkist supporters

  Earl of PEMBROKE

  Lord STAFFORD

  Lord HASTINGS

  Sir William STANLEY

  Sir John MONTGOMERY

  KING LEWIS of France

  LADY BONA, his sister-in-law

  Rutland’s TUTOR

  A SON that has killed his father

  A FATHER that has killed his son

  FIRST GAMEKEEPER

  SECOND GAMEKEEPER

  A NOBLEMAN

  POST

  FIRST WATCH

  SECOND WATCH

  THIRD WATCH

  HUNTSMAN

  LIEUTENANT at the Tower of London

  FIRST MESSENGER

  SECOND MESSENGER

  Other MESSENGERS

  MAYOR of York

  SOLDIER

  Soldiers, Servants, Attendants, Drummers, Trumpeters, Sir Hugh Mortimer, Henry, earl of Richmond, Aldermen of York, Mayor of Coventry, Nurse, the infant prince, and Others

  HENRY VI

  Part 3

  * * *

  ACT 1

  ACT 1

  * * *

  Scene 1

  Alarum. Enter Plantagenet, ;

  Edward; Richard; Norfolk; Montague; Warwick; and

  Soldiers,

  WARWICK

  I wonder how the King escaped our hands.

  1

  YORK

  While we pursued the horsemen of the north,

  2

  He slyly stole away and left his men;

  3

  Whereat the great lord of Northumberland,

  4

  Whose warlike ears could never brook retreat,

  5

  Cheered up the drooping army; and himself,

  6

  Lord Clifford, and Lord Stafford, all abreast,

  7

  Charged our main battle’s front and, breaking in,

  8

  Were by the swords of common soldiers slain.

  9

  EDWARD

  Lord Stafford’s father, Duke of Buckingham,

  10

  Is either slain or wounded dangerous.

  11

  I cleft his beaver with a downright blow.

  12

  That this is true, father, behold his blood.

  13

 

  MONTAGUE,

  And, brother, here’s the Earl of Wiltshire’s blood,

  14

  Whom I encountered as the battles joined.

  15

  RICHARD,

  Speak thou for me, and tell them what I did.

  16

  YORK

  Richard hath best deserved of all my sons.

  17

  But is your Grace dead, my lord of Somerset?

  18

  NORFOLK

  Such hope have all the line of John of Gaunt!

  19

  RICHARD

  Thus do I hope to shake King Henry’s head.

  20

  WARWICK

  And so do I, victorious prince of York.

  21

  Before I see thee seated in that throne

  22

  Which now the house of Lancaster usurps,

  23

  I vow by heaven these eyes shall never close.

  24

  This is the palace of the fearful king,

  25

  And this the regal seat. Possess it, York,

  26

  For this is thine and not King Henry’s heirs’.

  27

  YORK

  Assist me, then, sweet Warwick, and I will,

  28

  For hither we have broken in by force.

  29

  NORFOLK

  We’ll all assist you. He that flies shall die.

  30

  YORK

  Thanks, gentle Norfolk. Stay by me, my lords.—

  31

  And soldiers, stay and lodge by me this night.

  32

  They go up