Dec 15, 2009

Henry VI, Part 1 | Modern Connections

Although Shakespeare's Henry VI, Part One was written over four hundred years ago and deals with events almost two hundred years before that, it speaks in so many ways to modern audiences. It talks about war, marriage, politics, religion, and family in very contemporary language.

In the last century and more, people have witnessed the extraordinary brutality of armed conflict. The Civil War, World Wars I and II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the war of Yugoslavian disintegration among others have become the stuff of shared cultural experience. So, when Salisbury is...