Nevertheless, the possibility exists that the scene was deliberately withheld from publication in Qa, and there has been much speculation about why that might have been so. Most of it centres on the presence of a long passage in which the King and Warwick recollect events that led to King Richard’s abdication (57 – 92): since the question of legitimate succession and the possibility of rebellion were very much in the air during the last years of Elizabeth’s reign, and since she herself is said to have remarked to her archivist William Lambarde in 1601, ‘I am Richard II, know ye not that?’, Ricardian material of any sort might have been regarded as potentially seditious.17 If Master of the Revels Edmund Tilney in 1597 found the references to Richard’s abdication in 3.1 offensive and therefore censored the scene, or if press licensers censored it in 1600, or if the printer himself, anticipating possible offence, removed the scene pre-emptively, such action could account for its absence.

  But there are problems with assuming censorship. First, even though the deposition scene had been suppressed in early Q copies of Richard II and was not printed until 1608, there is no evidence that the deposition was not performed onstage at least until 1601 (Chambers, Shakespeare, 2.326 – 7). Furthermore, even without the deposition scene, R2 vividly dramatizes political content that is only narrated in 2H4, so one must question why narrated material should be removed from the quarto of 2H4 as potentially seditious when three quartos of R2, potently topical even without the deposition scene, had been allowed to be printed.18 Second, the theory that 3.1 might have been censored is complicated by the fact that four of the remaining eight passages omitted in Q but printed in F also include Ricardian references. If political sensitivities led to the censorship of these potentially offensive passages, why was 3.1 allowed to pass muster and be included in Qb so soon after the printing of Qa?19 Moreover, why was the whole of 3.1 initially withheld, when conceivably the offending 36 lines might have been excised and the rest of the scene left intact, as was the case with the four other Ricardian passages? Weis speculates that the scene was temporarily withheld by Shakespeare’s company in an act of self-censorship but, when the licensers proved unexpectedly lenient, was quickly reinstated (84). This scenario, however, assumes a process more complicated than the simple misplacement or disregard of a manuscript sheet at the time of initial printing. In the absence of a compelling case for the removal of the scene in anticipation of a censorship that was never exercised, accidental omission appears, though far from a certainty, a more credible explanation.

  Apart from its inclusion of 3.1, Qb is not preferable to Qa. In resetting the text as needed to accommodate 3.1 – involving a total of 153 lines, from 2.4.345 (in Qa, ‘Host. No I warrant you.’) to 3.2.103 – 4 (in Qa, ‘Sha. What think you sir Iohn, a good limbd fellow, yong, strong, and of good friends.’) – Valentine Simmes’s Compositor A, who has been identified as responsible for both issues of Q,20 introduced 165 variants in accidentals (spelling and punctuation), averaging more than one per line, and eight more substantial variants – four additions of words or phrases, one notation for an exit, two deletions and one transposition.21 Unless these variants were corrections that resulted from checking Qa against the manuscript (and only in the provision of an exit for Falstaff at 2.4.386 may they be said to improve Qa), they provide incontrovertible evidence of compositorial inaccuracy and also suggest how frequently this compositor may have erred in his reading of the manuscript on which the text for Qa was based (Humphreys, xii, n.1). Using the ratio of eight substantive variants per 153 lines, I calculate that the compositor would have introduced 157 substantive variants in a Q text of 3,000 lines – and this if he was setting from print, as he most probably did with the text surrounding the cancel. When he worked from manuscript, however, as he did in setting Qa, the compositor’s rate of error is likely to have been much higher. G.W. Williams estimates that Compositor A was ‘probably responsible for introducing nearly two hundred corruptions by varying from his copy’ (‘Text’, 174), and this is a conservative estimate. Thus, while the logic of compositorial typesetting makes Qa a more reliable text than Qb because it is one step closer to the manuscript, an editor seeking to produce a reliable text must be alert to how fraught with error Qa may be as well.

  THE FOLIO

  The eight long passages contained exclusively in F bear all the hallmarks of Shakespearean authorship. The decision of which text, Q or F, has greater authority may therefore hinge on whether one concludes that these passages were originally in the copy-text for Q but cut before its printing or, alternatively, that they were added later as authorial revisions. Examination of the eight passages traditionally divides them into two groups (cf. Weis, 85 – 7): four involve political material recapitulating events dramatized in Richard II that are now lamented by the rebels who participated in them; the other four are less explicable cuts possibly made for theatrical purposes, to reduce the burden of actors who were doubling roles or to shorten the text for performance. The division of the two groups is as follows:

  Political:

  (a) 1.1.189 – 209 Morton argues that since the Archbishop claims power from God and ‘enlarge[s] his rising with the blood / Of fair King Richard’, his religious insurrection should succeed where Hotspur’s failed;

  (b) 1.3.85 – 108 The Archbishop comments on the fickleness of the mob who first overthrew King Richard and now, ‘enamoured on his grave’, have been swayed to overthrow King Henry as well. Although he will use the mob to achieve his goal, he laments the inconstancy of the political process by which insurrection is achieved;

  (c) 4.1.55 – 79 The Archbishop compares the current ‘burning fever’ to the ‘disease’ that caused the death of Richard, vowing to ‘purge’ the kingdom with the articles of grievance that he has thus far been prevented from presenting to Henry or, barring that, with arms;

  (d) 4.1.103 – 39 Westmorland and Mowbray argue about the aborted duel between Bolingbroke and Mowbray’s father that precipitated the rebellion against Richard.

  Theatrical:

  (e) 1.1.166 – 79 Morton admonishes Northumberland to restrain his grief over the death of Hotspur, reminding him that he knew the risks of rebellion before he sanctioned it;

  (f) 1.3.21 – 4 Lord Bardolph warns against proceeding to battle without reinforcement by Northumberland;

  (g) 1.3.36 – 55 In a long and strained architectural analogy, Lord Bardolph compares rebellion to the building of a house;

  (h) 2.3.23 – 45 Lady Percy delivers a heroic elegy on her husband, the aim of which is to persuade Northumberland not to desecrate Hotspur’s memory by lending aid to the Archbishop when he failed to do so for his own son.

  Is there evidence that any of these lines were once included in Q or in the manuscript upon which Q was based? Indeed, such evidence is provided in some cases by the fact that the verse lines in the surrounding text of Q are rendered metrically complete only by inclusion of the excised passage. The omission of passage b, for instance, leaves a metrically incomplete line for Hastings at 1.3.85, the omission of passage d leaves Mowbray with an incomplete line at 4.1.103, and the omission of passage h leaves Northumberland with an incomplete line at 2.3.45. In other cases, meaning is obscured or images rendered unintelligible by the omission of the passage. The lines surrounding passage a make no sense without the missing lines: there is no explanation of what Morton ‘hear[s] for certain’ and ‘dare[s] speak’ (1.1.188), and Northumberland’s ‘I knew of this before’ (210) has no antecedent. The excision of passage e means that Bardolph’s ‘this loss’ (1.1.180) likewise has no antecedent. The excision of passage f involves a ‘Till’ clause whose omission makes unclear the Archbishop’s response that ‘It was young Hotspur’s cause’ (1.3.26), for ‘It’ has no antecedent. Similarly, the excision of passage h, in which Lady Percy remonstrates with her father-in-law for forsaking Hotspur, leaves little motivation for Northumberland’s reply, ‘you do draw my spirits from me / With new lamenting ancient oversights’ (2.3.46 – 7). More significantly, the omission of passage c all but eviscerates the Archbishop’s justification for rebellion, and the omission of passage d leaves Westmorland’s ‘But this is mere digression from my purpose’ (4.1.140) without a referent, for he has said nothing prior to this line.

  In all but one instance, therefore, the omission of F-only passages from Q obscures either the metrics or the meaning of surrounding lines in Q. Even the remaining passage of twenty lines (g) precedes a speech (56 – 62) in which Lord Bardolph continues the architectural analogy begun in those lines, and the final line of the omitted passage ends with the conjunctive ‘or else’ (55), suggesting that it once was contiguous with what follows. One may therefore confidently conclude that at least seven of the passages, and probably all eight, were once a part of the manuscript which served as the copy for Q.

  On closer inspection, furthermore, the familiar scholarly distinction between the passages cut for political reasons and those cut for more practical theatrical purposes appears to break down, for all eight passages occur in scenes with the rebels – a total of 168 out of 621 F lines in the affected scenes, or 27% of the total – suggesting that at some point there was a concerted effort to de-emphasize scenes involving the conspiracy. All the cuts, therefore, may have been politically motivated. But why? Omission of the four passages containing references to Richard has typically been ascribed to censorship, though sensitivity to Ricardian material had not prevented the continued performance of Richard II as late as 1601 nor the printing of 3.1, with its numerous references to Richard, in Qb of Part Two. One could postulate that the printer of Part Two, who may have withheld 3.1 pre-emptively as likely to offend authorities, did the same with the other Ricardian passages, and that when they were found not to be offensive, decided that it would be too much trouble for the compositor to reinstate them along with 3.1 in the rush to publish Qb. But this would pile conjecture upon conjecture.

  Alternatively, Weis hypothesizes that the reason these passages may have failed to pass muster with the licensers is not that they mention Richard, but that they dramatize the involvement of the Archbishop of York in a treasonous rebellion.22 This anti-episcopal emphasis might have proved distasteful to the correctors of the press who licensed printed material on behalf of the Privy Council, the Bishop of London, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lord Chamberlain. It might therefore have provided reason enough to prompt the shortening of rebel scenes; for despite the fact that not all of the omitted passages involve the Archbishop (though the omission of b and c dramatically reduces his role), they cumulatively serve to de-emphasize the Prelate’s Rebellion, and their excision would therefore have been predicated on reasons different from the temporary withholding of 3.1.

  The date at which cuts were made may be significant, for if censorship did in fact occur, some have speculated that it was motivated in part by the attempt in 1600 of a Franciscan monk to foment rebellion in Ireland with the gift of six thousand pounds from Spain and the promise of further Spanish military aid.23 Scenes in Part Two that dramatize an archbishop plotting against an established monarch under the guise of religion thus may have cut dangerously close to the bone, reminding authorities of the recent situation in which a bishop colluded with Irish chieftains to rise up against Elizabeth in the name of the Roman Church. But there are problems with this theory. First, as Cyndia Susan Clegg observes, there is no evidence that the Bishop of Dublin was actually fomenting rebellion (‘Liberty’, 474 – 5). Further, there is far greater likelihood that playtexts were subject to scrutiny by the Master of the Revels before their performance (in this case 1597) than that they were censored by press licensers at the time of their publication.

  The immediate situation in 1600 was hardly dire enough to have warranted seeing a threat in the excised passages: typically licensers of print censored only material that had a direct and explicit bearing on the crown. The books censored during this time did not offend through analogy and innuendo: they actually libelled government officials, challenged the monarch’s authority in matters political, ecclesiastical and parliamentary, or championed successors to the monarch (Clegg, ‘Liberty’, 477).24 Moreover, the threat of rebellion by Catholics had been bruited for years – it had become the obsession of Lord Burleigh – and would have been felt just as potently in 1597 as in 1600. Thus there is no more reason to think that the particular situation of the Dublin bishop would have provoked censorship of the Q text before its publication than that the political climate three years earlier would have caused the Master of the Revels to insist on those cuts prior to performance. In 1597, furthermore, the representation of the Prelate’s Rebellion as a broadly popular response to abuses of power might have been found even more objectionable because it potentially invoked an analogous injustice, inflated prices for corn paid by the poor caused by landowners’ hoarding it for profit – conditions similar to those that Dutton reports led to rioting in London in 1593 and 1595 and consequently to the censorship of Sir Thomas More (Mastering, 84 – 6; also Clegg, ‘Liberty’, 476 – 7). Thus, if censorship was involved at all in the cutting of the Q text, one might more reasonably assume that cuts were made by the Master of the Revels (or, pre-emptively, by the company itself) before the play’s first performance in 1597 than that they were made at the time of its publication three years later.

  But what of the possibility that in 1600, the Earl of Essex’s displeasure over his treatment by the Queen in the conduct of the Irish wars might have led to suppression of the Ricardian passages in Part Two as covert references to the current situation? Conceivably, passages about sedition heretofore ignored were suddenly found to be inflammatory.25 Furthermore, the passage in which Lady Percy glorifies Hotspur (h) – identifiable as an Essex figure in his misguided heroism – may have been deemed potentially offensive: the Essex association would explain the removal of a passage which, apart from shortening a boy actor’s role, is otherwise inexplicable. It might also have prompted the excision of passage e, in which Morton discusses the likelihood that Hotspur might ‘drop’ because ‘he walked o’er perils’, ‘his forward spirit … lift[ing] him where most trade of danger ranged’. The shadowy figure of Essex may lurk in these excised passages more substantially than has previously been recognized. Nevertheless, as Clegg reminds us, Essex was not yet in royal disfavour when Q was printed in 1600 (‘Liberty’, 475). It is tempting to read back into the text what occurred afterwards – the abortive rebellion of February1601 – and assume that Essex was already at odds with the Queen, but such retrospection is historically suspect. The available evidence refutes such an assumption. Censorship thus remains an unproven and highly speculative reason for cuts to have been made in the Q text.

  An alternative hypothesis, first advanced by Pope and recently taken up by Jowett and Taylor, is that 3.1 and most – though not all – of the other eight passages were not deleted from but added to the text that had served as copy for Q in an effort to shore up the historical material in Part Two and to bind the play more closely to those histories that had preceded it. In other words, these additions were the result of Shakespeare’s reworking of material before it was transcribed in a fair copy. In the late twentieth century, interest in this hypothesis sprang from two critical impulses: a determination to view the history plays as a cycle, and a belief that variant texts of the same play often provide evidence of authorial revision. Jowett and Taylor argue that 3.1 and six of the eight passages (all but b and c, which they claim were censored and whose excision they acknowledge damages surrounding text) may be

  convincingly explained as additions made in the Folio text… . Shakespeare seems to have begun to expand the historical matter of the play, and in particular the links with the events he had dramatized in Richard II and 1 Henry IV, whilst still working on the foul papers. He evidently continued this process of expansion and consolidation, perhaps shortly afterwards when preparing or by adding to the fair copy which was to serve as the prompt-book, a direct or indirect transcript of which must accordingly have eventually served as the printer’s copy for F.

  (TxC, 351)26

  The influence of the cycle mentality on textual editing finds its fullest expression in a study of Shakespearean revision by Grace Iopollo, who, writing five years after publication of the Oxford Complete Works, asserts that the purpose of Shakespeare’s additions was for characters to ‘recall events already presented in the early plays in order to provide a sense of dramatic and theatrical unity and continuity among all four of the plays … perhaps in anticipation of performing the four plays together in repertory’. The additions thus constitute ‘Shakespeare’s deliberate attempt to provide a type of unified structure and cross-referencing’ among them (Iopollo, 130).