Page:Henry VI Part 2 (1923) Yale.djvu/154



The only real source of the Second Part of King Henry VI is the earlier play, The First Part of the Contention betwixt the two famous Houses of York and Lancaster, of which imperfect and slightly varying printed editions appeared in 1594, 1600, and 1619. The reviser, Shakespeare, worked with a manuscript text probably superior in a number of passages to that produced by the printers of 1594.

The First Part of the Contention is itself based upon the story of the chroniclers Halle and Holinshed, whose narratives are here so nearly identical that it is hardly important to determine which was employed by the original dramatist. For the episode of Gloucester and the impostor Simpcox a dialogue of Sir Thomas More (1580) may have been used; the story was repeated by the chronicler Grafton (1568) and the martyrologist Foxe (1576), but is not found in Halle or Holinshed.

In revising the play Shakespeare's method was exceedingly painstaking. The 1594 version of the Contention contains only about 1250 metrical lines, which in 2 Henry VI are supplemented by some 2000 lines of new or largely revised material. But there seems to be no evidence that the reviser made use of new source matter. He merely elaborated out of his own fancy scenes and speeches with which the basic play presented him. He added no new character or im-