SOURCE: Champion, Larry S. “The Evolution of Mistress Quickly.” Papers on English Language and Literature 1, no. 2 (spring 1965): 99-108.

In the following essay, Champion details the transformation of Nell Quickly in the Henry plays from a mere sketch to “a full-sized portrait.”

One frequently encounters remarks extolling the fullness of Shakespeare's description of London low life in the comic scenes of 1, 2 Henry IV. Mark Van Doren writes, for instance, that nothing Shakespeare wrote “is more crowded with life or happier in its imitation of human talk. … History is enlarged to make room for taverns and trollops and potations of sack, and the heroic drama is modified by gigantic mockery, by the roared voice of truth.”¹ Other commentators have noted a “growing mastery of realistic delineation”² in the dramatist's “vivid transcripts of contemporary life”;³ the comic crew “move about in an English setting and provide an atmosphere of tavern life...