King Henry VI Part 3: Third Series: Pt. 3 (The Arden Shakespeare Third Series) - Softcover

William Shakespeare

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1903436311 ISBN 13: 9781903436318

Publisher: The Arden Shakespeare, 2001

Synopsis

In their lively and engaging edition of this sometimes neglected early play, Cox and Rasmussen make a strong claim for it as a remarkable work, revealing a confidence and sureness that very few earlier plays can rival. They show how the young Shakespeare, working closely from his chronicle sources, nevertheless freely shaped his complex material to make it both theatrically effective and poetically innovative. The resulting work creates, in Queen Margaret, one of Shakespeare's strongest female roles and is the source of the popular view of Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick as 'kingmaker'. Focusing on the history of the play both in terms of both performance and criticism, the editors open it to a wide and challenging variety of interpretative and editorial paradigms.

About this title

Review:

The concluding play in Shakespeare's dramatisation of the reign of Henry V's son, Henry IV Part Three brings to a close the troubled reign of the unfortunate sovereign. As with its predecessors, the final instalment in the series finds the kingdom rife with dissension. After the Richard of York's triumph at the Battle of St. Alban's, Henry agrees that the Yorkists will inherit the throne after his death. However, this disastrous decision infuriates his wife, Margaret, who successfully goes to war against the Yorkists. However, York's sons, Edward, Clarence and Richard, raise another army, and finally defeat Henry, who is murdered, and Queen Margaret, who is banished. The eldest son of York, Edward, is crowned king in 1442, but the jockeying for power between the brothers continues, foreshadowing the bloody events of Shakespeare's subsequent dramatisation of English history, Richard III.

An enormously ambitious play, Henry IV Part Three is particularly notable for its portrayal of Margaret of Anjou, the extraordinary scene involving her torture of York, and the appearance of the wonderfully malign villain Richard, the future King Richard III, with his marvellously sinister line that "I am myself alone". --Jerry Brotton

Book Description:

John Dover Wilson's New Shakespeare, published between 1921 and 1966, became the classic Cambridge edition of Shakespeare's plays and poems until the 1980s. The series, long since out-of-print, is now reissued. Each work contains a lengthy and lively introduction, main text, and substantial notes and glossary.

About this edition

• Publisher: The Arden Shakespeare
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 1903436311
• ISBN 13: 9781903436318
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 3
• Number of pages: 480