Read more
Zusatztext “A remarkable edition! one that makes Shakespeare’s extraordinary accomplishment more vivid than ever.”—James Shapiro! professor! Columbia University! bestselling author of A Year in the Life of Shakespeare: 1599 “A feast of literary and historical information.”— The Wall Street Journal Informationen zum Autor William Shakespeare (1564-1616) was a poet, playwright, and actor who is widely regarded as one of the most influential writers in the history of the English language. Often referred to as the Bard of Avon, Shakespeare's vast body of work includes comedic, tragic, and historical plays; poems; and 154 sonnets. His dramatic works have been translated into every major language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. Jonathan Bate is a professor of Shakespeare and Renaissance literature at the University of Warwick. Widely known as a critic, award-winning biographer, and broadcaster, Bate is the author of several books on Shakespeare. He is also the principal editor of the Modern Library's and Royal Shakespeare Company's highly acclaimed William Shakespeare: Complete Works. Eric Rasmussen , a professor of English at the University of Nevada, is one of today's leading textual experts on Shakespeare. Klappentext Displaying the bold vision and growing skill of a young playwright! these are Shakespeare's first three history plays! covering some sixty tumultuous years of English history. Their pageantry! violence! and stirring speeches excite audiences with action as well as character! and midway through the final play in this trilogy! a shocking! clever! inimitably evil new voice is heard--that of Richard of Gloucester! destined to become England's most fearsome and hated ruler of all time! Richard III. "From the Paperback edition." Part One Introduction Throughout much of the fifteenth century, England had suffered the ravages of civil war. From the long struggles between the Lancastrians and the Yorkists, the so-called Wars of the Roses, the country had emerged in 1485 shaken but united at last under the strong rule of the Tudors. To Elizabethans, this period of civil war was still a recent event that had tested and almost destroyed England’s nationhood. They were, moreover, still troubled by political and dynastic uncertainties of their own. Queen Elizabeth, granddaughter of the first Tudor king, Henry VII, was unmarried and aging, and her successor unchosen. Her Catholic enemies at home and abroad plotted a return to the ancient faith renounced by Henry VIII in his reformation of the church. Spain had attempted an invasion of England with the great Armada in 1588, perhaps two years before Shakespeare began writing his Henry VI plays. It was in such an era of crisis and patriotic excitement that the Henry VI plays first appeared. Indeed, they helped to establish the vogue of the English history play, which was to flourish throughout the 1590s. England’s civil wars could be studied and analyzed now, from a perspective of over one hundred years later, and perhaps could provide a key to the present time. At hand was a new edition of Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles, 1587, along with the earlier chronicle writings of Robert Fabyan, John Stow, and Richard Grafton, as well as Edward Hall’s Union of the Two Noble and Illustrate Families of Lancaster and York, John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments of Martyrs, and A Mirror for Magistrates. How had these wars begun? Elizabethans searched for an answer, not in economic or social terms, but in religious and moral ones. According to a traditional and government-sponsored explanation, reflected to a large extent (though with many contradictions) in the chronicles of Edward Hall, and familiar to Shakespeare whether he agreed with it or not, the Wars of the Roses were a manifestation of God’s wrath, a divine punishment inflicted on...
