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Whereas we might, at the moment, tentatively conclude that the Quarto staging looks distinctively older than
the Folio version and that there is no reason to doubt Shakespeare’s authorship (or, to be safe, the authorship
of the author, or one of the authors, of the whole of the original text), the case of the authorial origins of the
revised version is slightly more complicated.
The opening stage direction of Scene 25 of the Octavo of 3 Henry VI (showing the murder of King Henry VI by
Richard of Gloucester) – a text staged around the same time as the Quarto of 2 Henry VI – reads: ‘Enter Gloster to
king Henry in the Tower.’ 20 From the content of the scene, it is clear that Henry is in his prison cell, where he is
approached by Richard, so we might expect staging similar in form to Duke Humphrey’s bedroom in the
previous play (with the bed, of course, replaced in this case). When discharging the discontinued scenography,
the Folio version of the play, however, replaced the stage direction with the rather bizarre ‘Enter Henry the sixt,
and Richard, with the Lieutenant on the Walles’ (Comedies, Histories and Tragedies, sig. Q4 r [original italics]). The
correct meaning of ‘the Tower’ (the prison cell in the Tower or some other small interior) was obviously, in the
revision process, replaced by the wrong of the two possibilities in this context – that is, the upper plane of the
stage, whatever it might now be with the absence of the mansion. Since it is hardly conceivable that the original
author would make such an obvious mistake, the question arises as to whether the dramatist had any word in
the final shape of the play and to what extent we can, having previously established the authenticity of the
Quarto reading, rely upon the Folio variant of the murder scene in 2 Henry VI at all. In order to try and answer
this question, we therefore have to examine both versions of the dialogue between the murderers and the Duke
of Suffolk as well.
Moving from the unspoken portion of the situation to the spoken one, we immediately note several interesting
differences between the two versions of Duke Humphrey’s murder. In the Quarto reading, the conversation
following the murder is shorter than the Folio equivalent by almost a half (the textual ratio Q:F is 8:14 lines).
The murderers’ share in the exchange is, in Q, limited to a frugal announcement of Duke Humphrey’s death,
which, after Suffolk’s instruction to tidy the bed with the corpse, is followed by an equally brief answer that the
command has been executed. Although the scenic direction is missing, we might assume from the context and
from the fact that the conversation is taking place over the Duke of Gloucester’s dead body that the tidying of
the bed by one of the murderers happens in the audience’s view as well. The rôle of the assassins is therefore
purely instrumental, adding little to the atmosphere of the scene.
In the Folio text, although the murderers’ rôle still remains a minor one, several notable details are added. First
of all, the second murderer shows regret – a topos to which Shakespeare returned several times in his later
works: when Othello realises that he was tricked by Iago into killing an innocent, he desperately cries out, ‘O
cursèd, cursèd slave! / Whip me, ye devils, / From the possession of this heavenly sight’ (V.2.283–85); when, in
Richard III, the hired murderers assassinate the Duke of Clarence, sleeping in the Tower, one of the cut-throats
immediately starts regretting what has just been done: ‘A bloody deed, and desperately dispatched! / How fain,
like Pilate, would I wash my hands / Of this most grievous, guilty murder done’ (I.4.266–68); when, in the same
play, Tyrrell gives the audience a detailed account of the murder of the little princes in their beds, he says about
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