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James P. Bednarz, Dekker's Response to the Chorus of Henry V in 1599, Notes and Queries, Volume 59, Issue 1, March 2012, Pages 63–68, https://doi.org/10.1093/notesj/gjr225
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SINCE the first quarto of William Shakespeare's Henry V was published in 1600 without its Prologue or Choruses, some contemporary scholars, intent on locating examples of revision in the Shakespeare canon, have advanced the thesis that this stunning feature of the drama—its linked choruses—either might have been composed years after the play's premier in 1599 or might never have been acted before being printed in the 1623 Shakespeare First Folio.1 But does the absence of the Prologue and Choruses from the first quarto of Henry V mean that they were subsequently added to the fuller text that we find in the Folio, as the revisionists claim, or were they originally performed in 1599? Does the hitherto little regarded 1600 quarto of Henry V afford a privileged record of how the play was first staged or does its missing Prologue and Choruses deprive readers of an element theatregoers had previously experienced?
