Henry The IV Comparison

Shakespeare wrote The First Part of Henry the IV to adhere to an audience that would be familiar with the history and with the characters introduced throughout the play, because it was still considered recent history; however, he altered the storyline to gear the play in a more tragic direction rather than writing the historical events as they truly happened. Similar to all of his plays, this play had been published multiple times by several different publishers, which caused some discrepancies between the different versions; for example, the 1598 version of the play was printed by P.S. Andrew Wise, and the 1623 version was printed by Isaac Jaggard and Ed(ward) Blount. Although when one reads through the versions or watches them without great
The changes are important because for Hal, the association with the armies personally involves him in his father’s conflict with Hotspur, thus making their fight and Hotspur’s death more meaningful. For Falstaff, it changes how he interacts with and is familiar with the word honor by how he asks the questions. The discrepancies between these plays may appear to be unimportant, but when looked at closely, the small differences significantly alter what the character is trying to convey through their lines. Based on the scene mentioned in this essay, the Norton version combines several of the other versions to create their own, abridged version that conveys the meaning that the editors thought is the closest to Shakespeare’s real meaning behind the play. Although the differences in the plays are small, they hold weight in the meaning of the play as well as convey a certain message that the publisher believes to be the truest. When researching First Henry the IV, or any play, it is important to look at the small differences between the two published versions and realize how the variations affect the play as a