Henry IV Part 1, fragment edition

This edition of Henry IV Part 1 survives only as a single gathering of four leaves from a copy of the quarto published in 1598. Identified by its signature as gathering C, this fragment consists of eight pages of printed text, featuring the passages that modern editions usually designate as act 1, scene 3, line 200 to act 2, scene 2, line 108. Because it is so incomplete, scholars traditionally classify this fragment quarto as “Q0,” and the second quarto as “Q1.”

Produced the same year as five other editions of Shakespeare's history plays, this quarto of Henry IV Part 1 appeared at the height of the popularity of histories in the book trade. Andrew Wise, who published this edition, entered the play in the Stationers' Register on February 25, 1598, suggesting it was printed early in the year. Wise was responsible for publishing nearly every edition of Shakespeare's plays up to that point, most of which were eventually included in the “Histories” section of the 1623 First Folio.

Wise commissioned Peter Short to print the first two quartos of Henry IV Part 1. Although no title page including Short’s name survives, David Scott Kastan argues that his role in this edition can be “ascertained from the common stock of type that appears” in this quarto and the one following (Kastan 108). Short had worked with Wise previously on the first edition of Richard III (1597), and he would continue to print several more of Wise's books through 1600. However, Short would not be involved in Wise's third edition of Henry IV Part 1, published the following year.

In the 1860s, James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps discovered this fragment in the binding of William Thomas' Rules of the Italian Grammar (1567). It is now part of the Folger Shakespeare Library collection. To learn more about Henry IV Part 1, see the Folger 's Shakespeare’s Works, and the British Library’s Shakespeare in Quarto.