The First Part of King Henry VI (The New Cambridge Shakespeare)

Shakespeare's plays about the reign of Henry VI were for a long time undervalued, but a recent series of outstanding productions by the Royal Shakespeare Company and others has demonstrated their theatrical vitality. This is the first major edition in over twenty-five years. It takes account of recent discoveries concerning Shakespeare's early career and the problems of authorship, and pays particular attention to recent theatrical history. This textually authoritative edition reveals King Henry VI as a dramatically innovative and politically radical account of key events in the Hundred Years War.

The First Part of King Henry VI, which gives us Shakespeare's portrait of Joan of Arc, is revealed as a successful venture in its own exploratory style, and as a necessary account of key events in the Hundred Years War without which the Wars of the Roses, anatomised in the following two plays, cannot be understood.