Henry the Fourth, Part One (The Annotated Shakespeare)

The Annotated Shakespeare series enables readers to fully understand and enjoy the plays of the world’s greatest dramatist
 
While England is threatened by the Earl of Northumberland, Young Prince Hal cavorts in London’s taverns, accompanied by the dissolute, entertaining Falstaff and his band of rogues. Much of this play’s tension involves Prince Hal and Falstaff, as the former tries to live up to his duties and responsibilities. In creating Falstaff, Shakespeare gave us one of the theater’s most enduring and memorable characters.
 
This fully annotated version of Henry the Fourth, Part One makes the play completely accessible to readers in the twenty-first century. Eminent linguist and translator Burton Raffel offers generous help with vocabulary, pronunciation, and prosody and provides alternative readings of phrases and lines. His on-page annotations give readers all the tools they need to comprehend the play and begin to explore its many possible interpretations.

Burton Raffel (1928–2015) was professor of arts and humanities emeritus and professor of English emeritus at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Among his many edited and translated publications are Poems and Prose from the Old English, Cligès, Lancelot, Perceval, Erec and Enide, and Yvain. Harold Bloom (1930–2019) was Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University and Berg Professor of English at New York University. His many books include The Western Canon, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, and Genius: A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds.