Note 15 — Chapter IV

The collaborators on Part I (1623) are unknown, and Shakespeare's contribution to the present form seems likely to have been written later than the bulk of the play, a not very impressive example of chronicle history. Parts II and III (1623) exist also in the abridged and altered forms of the two quartos of 1594, The First Part of The Contention and The True Tragedy of Richard Duke of York. The problems of the relations of these two quarto plays to the folio texts are among the most puzzling encountered by Shakespearean scholars.