3.4 Cuts and Casting

The examples of Dering’s visible cuts to the text of the manuscript are instructive in their own right, and they offer an insight into how he would have marked up the printed quartos before Carington made his first transcription of them. The cuts Dering imposed on the quartos, and especially 2 Henry IV, would need to have been much heavier. 

In marking up the quartos and the manuscript, Dering succeeded in meeting two objectives: to shorten two plays into one, and to ensure that the play was capable of being performed straightforwardly by a limited number of players. Shortening does not necessarily lead to economy of casting, as it can have the effect of crowding the action more intensely. But Dering’s cuts were strategic. He eliminated episodes and sections of plot with multiple minor roles. The overall effect was certainly far less colourful than the vast and varied canvas of Shakespeare’s plays. Indeed, they suggest something of the play Shakespeare himself might have written if, following the example of Richard II, he had limited himself to writing a single Henry IV play. Dering’s cuts were considered and effective interventions that produced a compact drama. Furthermore, they resulted in a piece that could be played by amateurs without undue complication.

His main cuts to roles are as follows:

Gadshill episode: Gadshill, Carriers, Chamberlain, Ostler, Travellers. The Rochester tavern scene and the robbing of the travellers are omitted.

Tavern scenes: Vintner, Doll Tearsheet, Pistol, Peto, [Snare,] [Fang]. The roles are cut in Dering’s pared-down version. In the original plays the tavern scenes are demanding in terms of casting, though Doll Tearsheet and Pistol may also have been omitted for reasons of decorum. Either Fang or Snare or an equivalent constable has a residual presence.

Glyndŵer scene: Lady Mortimer. Her role is probably eliminated because it calls for a Welsh speaker and a singer. The scene is otherwise preserved.

Northern rebellion: Archbishop of York, Sir Michael, Northumberland’s Wife, Northumberland’s Porter, Travers, Mowbray, Gower, Coleville. This section of the plot is cut almost entirely, saving a significant number of roles.

Lord Chief Justice plot: Lord Chief Justice, his Servant, Gower, Sir John Falstaff’s Page. Cut entirely.

“2 Henry IV” framing scenes: Rumour, Epilogue. Both scenes are omitted.

Gloucestershire scenes: Shallow, Silence, Davy, Mouldy, Shadow, Wart, Feeble, Bullcalf. The recruiting scene places heavier demands on the number of actors than any other part of 2 Henry IV.¹ The Gloucestershire scenes are completely cut.

Other minor roles: Beadles, Grooms.

Dering focuses on the play as political history, interspersed with a heavily reduced version of the Falstaff episodes. The depiction of England as a nation is reduced in three ways. First, the social fabric is restricted to the gentry and aristocracy. Only one named roles is an exception, Francis the drawer at the tavern, a small part in a single scene. The second social field that is reduced in Henry IV is women. Only the Hostess and Lady Hotspur survive. Casualties include the memorable and dramatically important Doll Tearsheet, Lady Mortimer, who helps define the tone of her one scene in 1 Henry IV, and Northumberland’s wife. At no point is more than one woman present on stage. 

Finally, the geo-social range of England is severely limited. Symptomatic here is the reduction of the Northern rebellion against King Henry to almost nothing, and the omission of the Gloucestershire scenes of 2 Henry IV. The Welsh scene of 1 Henry IV survives, though the Welsh language does not. Necessarily, the march to Bridgnorth and the battle there are preserved. Nevertheless, Shakespeare’s depiction of social diversity and of provincial life that is largely independent of London and Westminster is largely lost.

One of the differences between professional and amateur actors is that professionals are far more adept at playing roles that are far removed from their social selves. Dering seems mindful of this limitation presented by his performers. The curtailing of women, plebeians, and provincials draws Henry IV into the social ambit of the performers listed in the Spanish Curate slip. 

That slip might represent a catalogue of potential rather than actual performers, and Henry IV can if necessary be played by significantly fewer actors, perhaps no more than ten. One minimal arrangement, allowing for breaks in the action at act intervals, is this:

1. King Henry, Sheriff
2. Prince, Messenger 4.1
3. Falstaff, Glendower, Servant 2.1, Messenger 3.5
4. Poins, Douglas, Morton, Warwick
5. Bardolph, Humphrey
6. Hostess, Lady Hotspur, Vernon, Harcourt
7. Worcester, Lord Bardolph
8. John of Lancaster, Westmorland
9. Blunt, Francis, Clarence
10. Mortimer, Northumberland

This contrasts with the eighteen names in the Spanish Curate slip. It is fewer too than, approximately, the ten principle actors plus three boys that would be the absolute minimum to perform either of Shakespeare’s Henry IV plays, to which may be added hired men to play non-speaking roles such as soldiers in battles and perhaps minor speaking roles.² Dering’s list of fifteen performers may be mindful of the basic size of a theatre company required to perform a Shakespeare play professionally. Although he reduced the minimum number of players, he may have been motivated equally or more by the need to make the play compact in terms of the demands it made on his performers.

1. Jowett, “Cuts and Casting”
2. Kastan 354-7; Jowett, “Cuts and Casting”; Bulman 505-9