Two Plays in One: Annotations in the Third Quarto of Edward IV

This essay examines the attempt of an early seventeenth-century annotator, probably a practitioner in the commercial theatre, to turn Thomas Heywood’s popular two-part play Edward IV into a single five-act drama. Rowland explores the practical and political motivations for the annotator’s interventions and deletions, comparing them with both other attempts to streamline or abbreviate early modern plays, and with other, and comparatively rare instances in which bookkeepers used printed playtexts to prepare a play for performance.