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The lack of a critical consensus concerning the character and origin of the two variants can be seen in the
execution of the situation (that is, whether Duke Humphrey is present in his bed on the stage or not) in modern
editions, which is not standardised and varies according to the choice of each individual editor. There had long
been a tendency to consider the Folio version as the sole reading for modern editions. H. C. Hart’s first Arden
edition of 2 Henry VI (1909), for instance, lets the murder happen off stage and only contains the Folio variant
of the dialogue, introduced by the stage direction ‘A room of state. Enter certain Murderers, hastily.’ John Dover
Wilson was the first to take the Quarto text into consideration for his Cambridge Shakespeare edition (1952).
His reading preserves the Folio scenography and dialogue between the murderers and Suffolk, but at the same
time makes use of the Quarto’s curtains, creating an unseen bedroom, possibly with the mimorum aedes at the
back of the stage in mind: ‘A room of state, with curtains at the back concealing a room beyond. Enter certain
Murderers, hastily, from behind the curtains.’ Although Michael Hattaway’s New Cambridge Shakespeare edition
of the play (1991) does not adopt this solution and reprints the original Folio stage direction, Dover Wilson’s
decision opened a question as to whether the Quarto and Folio texts do not in fact represent – in an incomplete
or corrupted form – one common version of the scene which would contain material from both readings. This
possibility is further explored in the influential second edition of the Oxford Shakespeare (1986), 10 which uses
the textual portion of the First Folio, to which it prefixes the murder of Duke Humphrey in the audience’s view
as suggested by the Quarto.
Probably the most coherent theory explaining the discrepancy between the two ways of staging the scene is
offered by the theatre historian Milan Lukeš in his study of Shakespeare’s ‘bad quartos.’ Similarly to Freeman,
Lukeš notes that the Quarto version of the play calls for a horizontal division of the playing space in Scenes 10
(the death of the Duke of Gloucester) and 11 (the death of Cardinal Beaufort), but also for a vertical division in
Scene 4, showing Duchess Eleanor conjuring spirits in order to learn about the future of the King and lords
from his circle. Whereas, in the Folio text, Eleanor in this scene enters in the course of the action ‘aloft’
(Comedies, Histories and Tragedies, sig. M5r), in the Quarto version, she enters the main stage with the rest of
the characters at the beginning of the scene, only to climb a moment later on ‘the Tower’ from where she will
watch the ceremony (The First Part of the Contention, sig. B4v). According to Lukeš, ‘the Tower’ in the Quarto
refers to the name of the stage property, a scenic structure (a mansion) with a small interior inside, separated
from the main stage by a curtain. When ‘active,’ the mansion typically served as a prison cell (i.e., the Tower of
London – hence the name) or a bedroom and thus allowed heterogeneous, simultaneous action on the stage,
whereas, when ‘inactive’ (with the curtain drawn), it was used as the upper staging plane. 11 This supposition is
indirectly supported by Alan C. Dessen and Leslie Thomson, in A Dictionary of Stage Directions in English
Drama, 1580–1642, which explains that the term ‘Tower’ was, apart from its fictional meaning, ‘used
occasionally to designate the platform above the main level of the stage.’ 12 Lukeš argues that similar discoveryspaces
were a usual staging practice in earlier phases of early-modern English drama (as another example, he
mentions Henslowe’s ‘the sittie of Rome’ from the March 1598 inventory of the properties of the Admiral’s
Men; see Lukeš, p. 65) 13 and that the technical designation of the property penetrated the theatrical text in a
similar manner to the way in which real names of minor actors used to find their way into lists of fictitious
dramatis personae. 14
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