Excerpt from Shakespeare, Select Plays: The Life of King Henry the Fifth

Registered, along with As You Like It, at the Stationers" on the 4th of August, 1600, but locked up from the press under an injunction "to be stayed." In regard to As You Like It the stay seems to have been continued; but not so in regard to the other, as this was entered again on the 14th of the same month, and was published in the course of that year. The same text was reissued in 1602, and again in 1608. In these editions the authors name was not given; the play, moreover, was but about half as long as we have it; the Choruses, the whole of the first scene, and also many other passages, those too among the best in the play, being wanting altogether. All these were supplied in the folio of 1623; which, accordingly, is our only authority for the text.

In the Epilogue to King Henry the Fourth the speaker says, "humble author will continue the story, with Sir John in it, and make you merry with fair Catharine of France." Whether this promise was directly authorized by Shakespeare we cannot positively say, as that Epilogue was probably not of his writing; but there is little doubt that the play to which it is affixed was written as early as 1597. That the play now in hand was written soon after the date of that promise, and written in pursuance we of it, is highly probable. On the other hand, in the Chorus to Act V. we have the following:

Were now the general of our gracious Empress -

As in good time he may - from Ireland coming,

Bringing rebellion broached on his sword,

How many would the peaceful city quit,

To welcome him!

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