The Third Part Of Henry Vi

The New Cambridge Shakespeare appeals to students worldwide for its up-to-date scholarship and emphasis on performance. The series features line-by-line commentaries, textual notes on the plays and poems and an extensive Introduction. Shakespeare's plays about the reign of King Henry VI were written at the beginning of his career. A recent series of outstanding productions has demonstrated their theatrical vitality, and their sceptical questioning of Elizabethan orthodoxies has been understood through revisionist readings of the history of Shakespeare's own times. In The Third Part of King Henry VI, Shakespeare extends his essay on monarchical politics by contrasting two kings, the good but ineffective Henry VI with his rival, the sensual and victorious Edward IV. He also shows the perils of aristocratic factionalism in a series of scenes that display the grievous wounds caused by the Wars of the Roses.

In The Third Part of King Henry VI, Shakespeare brings the story of Henry's reign and eventual fall to Richard, Duke of Gloucester, to its unhappy close.

Henry VI, Part 3 (often written as 3 Henry VI) is a history play by William Shakespeare believed to have been written in 1591, and set during the lifetime of King Henry VI of England. Whereas 1 Henry VI deals with loss of England's French territories and the political machinations leading up to the Wars of the Roses, and 2 Henry VI focuses on the King's inability to quell the bickering of his nobles, and the inevitability of armed conflict, 3 Henry VI deals primarily with the horrors of that conflict, with the once ordered nation thrown into chaos and barbarism as families break down and moral codes are subverted in the pursuit of revenge and power. Although the Henry VI trilogy may not have been written in chronological order, the three plays are often grouped together with Richard III to form a tetralogy covering the entire Wars of the Roses saga, from the death of Henry V in 1422 to the rise to power of Henry VII in 1485. It was the success of this sequence of plays which firmly established Shakespeare's reputation as a playwright. Henry VI, Part 3 features the longest soliloquy in all of Shakespeare (3.2.124–195), and has more battle scenes (four on stage, one reported) than any other of Shakespeare's plays.