Henry VI Part 1 by William Shakespeare

 

Henry VI

Part 1

by William Shakespeare

Henry VI, Part 1, often referred to as 1 Henry VI, is a history play by William Shakespeare—possibly in collaboration with Thomas Kyd and Thomas Nashe or Christopher Marlowe—believed to have been written in 1591. It is set during the lifetime of King Henry VI of England. 

Whereas Henry VI, Part 2 deals with the King's inability to quell the bickering of his nobles and the inevitability of armed conflict and Henry VI, Part 3 deals with the horrors of that conflict, Henry VI, Part 1 deals with the loss of England's French territories and the political machinations leading up to the Wars of the Roses, as the English political system is torn apart by personal squabbles and petty jealousy. 

Although the Henry VI trilogy may not have been written in chronological order, the three plays are often grouped together with Richard III to form a tetralogy covering the entire Wars of the Roses saga, from the death of Henry V in 1422 to the rise to power of Henry VII in 1485. It was the success of this sequence of plays that firmly established Shakespeare's reputation as a playwright. 

Some regard Henry VI, Part 1 as the weakest of Shakespeare's plays. Along with Titus Andronicus, it is generally considered one of the strongest candidates for evidence that Shakespeare collaborated with other dramatists early in his career. 

Shakespeare's primary source for 1 Henry VI was Edward Hall's The Union of the Two Noble and Illustre Families of Lancaster and York (1548). Also, as with most of Shakespeare's chronicle histories, Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (1577; 2nd edition 1587) was also consulted. Holinshed based much of his Wars of the Roses information in the Chronicles on Hall's information in Union of the Two Noble and Illustre Families, even to the point of reproducing large portions of it verbatim. However, there are enough differences between Hall and Holinshed to establish that Shakespeare must have consulted both of them.

Excerpted from Henry VI, Part 1 on Wikipedia.

War of the Roses Saga: Henry VI Part 1, Henry VI Part 2 , Henry VI Part 3, Richard III

Henry VI Part 1

person Author	William Shakespeare
language Country	England
api Genre	Drama, History Play
copyright Copyright	Public domain worldwide.
camera_alt Book cover	-
book_online Ebooks	Project Gutenberg
description Scans	Google-digitized
headphones Audio	Librivox | Internet Archive Reader: Group, Dramatic Readings 00 01 02 03 04 05
auto_stories Read online	Henry VI Part 1