Works of Shakespeare

"For this updated edition, Alexander Leggatt has written a wholly new introduction to Russell Fraser's edition of one of Shakespeare's most puzzling, ambiguous and demanding plays. Leggatt's interest in performance informs his introduction and his account of the instability of the main characters. He offers a full, illustrated and thoughtful account of the play's critical and theatrical fortunes to the end of the twentieth century, and of our experience as an audience of seeing and hearing it performed. An updated reading list completes the edition."--Jacket.

'King Henry IV Part 1' is the second play in Shakespeare's Henriad tetralogy, following on from 'King Richard II'. The play was first printed in the First Quarto of 1598 (Q1), as 'The History of Henrie the Fovrth ... '. It seems that it was an extremely popular play as it was reissued in a second edition in the same year, a rare occurrence. The Arden text is taken from Q1 and from Q0, the surviving fragment of the quarto from which Q1 appears to have been taken. The action of the play is based on part of the king's reign, from 1402-3, and deals extensively with the idea of kingship.