INTRODUCTION

Summary

PART I WRITTEN LATER THAN PARTS II AND III

We have no quarto, ‘good’ or ‘bad’, for 1 Henry VI, and our only substantive text is therefore that of the First Folio, published in 1623, some thirty years or more later than its earliest stage production. One of the worst plays in the canon, it is also one of the most debatable. Date, occasion, authorship, all are in doubt, even its position and relevance as regards the second and third parts are open to question. And since the answer to this last problem involves answers to the others, it must be sought for first.

The plot is composed of four strands. The most important of all, occupying indeed some three-quarters of the play, concerns Talbot's heroic struggle to prevent the tottering French empire conquered by Henry V from being reconquered by the Dauphin and his sinister ally the witch Joan—for it was as an emissary of Satan that Englishmen, and not a few Frenchmen, of the sixteenth century regarded the Patron Saint of modern France—a struggle from which, but for treacherous desertion on the part of factious noblemen in command of the main English forces, the hero might have emerged victorious. Faction again, this time at court, in the persons of the King's turbulent uncles, the Duke of Gloucester and the Bishop of Winchester, supplies a second strand.