Play Manuscripts, Vectors of Transmission, and Shakespeare’s Henry the fifth

Abstract

F more than a century, The Chronicle History of Henry the fift has been almost universally regarded as a “bad quarto.” In fact, it was a charter member of that category, included in the 1909 initial articulation of the distinction between “good” and “bad” quartos by A.W. Pollard. The five original “bad quartos” were Romeo and Juliet (1597), Henry the fift (1600), Sir Iohn Falstaff and the Merry Wiues of Windsor (1602),