Henry VI, Parts 1, 2, and 3 (Vol. 85) | Michael Hattaway (essay date 1991)
Michael Hattaway (essay date 1991)
SOURCE: Hattaway, Michael, ed. Introduction to The Second Part of King Henry VI, by William Shakespeare, pp. 1-69. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
[In the following excerpt, Hattaway views Henry VI, Part 2 as a radical political work that features Shakespeare's sweeping reconstruction of English history concentrated on the power of the mighty.]
FROM 1 HENRY VI TO 2 HENRY VI
1 Henry VI may well have been written to show how the history of a nation is never to be understood in isolation. The Wars of the Roses, which form the subject of the second two parts of the sequence, can be fully understood only in the context of the Hundred Years War, dramatised incidents from which formed the substance of the first play. 1 Henry VI portrayed the decline of England's empire over France and the accompanying decay of the ideals of feudalism that had sustained...
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