The Authorship of " King Henry VI." 149 



I. 2 Henry VI is first mentioned in the following entry on the 

 Stationers' Register for March 12, 1593/4 : " Thomas Millington 

 Entred for his copie vnder the handes of bothe the wardens a booke 

 intituled, the firste parte of the Contention of the tivoo famous houses 

 of York and Lancaster with the death of the good Duke Humfrey, 

 and the banishement and Deathe of the Duke of Suffolk, and the 

 tragicall ende of the proud Cardinall of Winchester, with the notable 

 rebellion of Jack Cade and the Duke of Yorkes ffirste clayme vnto the 

 Crowne. " In the same year (1594), the play was printed, by Thomas 

 Creed for Thomas Millington, with a title identical, except for spelling 

 and the change of one preposition, with that given in the Register. 



The earliest version of 3 Henry VI does not appear to have been 

 registered before publication ; but it was printed for Millington by 

 P. S. (Peter Short) in the following year (1595), with the title : " The 

 true Tragedie of Richard Duke of Yorke, and the death of good 

 King Henrie the Sixt, with the whole contention betweene the two 

 Houses Lancaster and Yorke, as it was sundrie times acted by the 

 Right Honourable the Earle of Pembrooke his seruants." 



In the year 1600, Millington published reprints of both plays, in- 

 volving no essential alterations. 



II. In 1603, Millington retired from business. On April 19 of the 

 previous year (1602), doubtless with the idea of winding up his affairs, 

 he assigned over to Thomas Pavier his interest in the two plays 

 we are considering, which he terms " the first and second parte of 

 Henry the vi^ ij bookes." It is not known that Pavier attempted 

 to make commercial use of the copyright which he had thus obtained 

 till 1619, for his only extant edition of the plays, though it bears no 

 date on its title-page, appears to have been brought out simultane- 

 ously \vith his 1619 edition of Pericles.'^ Pavier's version combined 

 the two plays received from INIillington in a single quarto with the 

 title : " The Whole Contention betweene the two Famous Houses, 

 Lancaster and Yorke. With the Tragicall ends of the good Duke 

 Humfrey, Richard Duke of Yorke, and King Henrie the sixt. Diuided 

 into two Parts : And newly corrected and enlarged. Written by 

 William Shakespeare, Gent." The text here printed introduced 

 a number of more or less trivial alterations, which will be discussed 



^ The signatures at the bottoms of the leaves in the two quartos are 

 continuous ; that is, the leaves in the Whole Contention are signed with the 

 letters, A — Q, while the 1619 Pericles begins with R. The probable reason 

 for Pavier's long delay in issuing an edition of our plays is that he took 

 over in 1602, along with the copyright, a number of unsold copies of Milling- 

 ton's 1600 quartos. 



