Henry VI, Part 1 (The Pelican Shakespeare)

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Henry VI, Part 1 (The Pelican Shakespeare) Details

Review “Gorgeous new Shakespeare paperbacks.” —Marlon James, author of A Brief History of Seven Killings“I have been using the Pelican Shakespeare for years in my lecture course--it's invaluable, the best individual-volume series available for students.”—Marjorie Garber, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of English and Visual and Environmental Studies, Harvard University  Read more About the Author William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon in April, 1564, and his birth is traditionally celebrated on April 23. The facts of his life, known from surviving documents, are sparse. He died on April 23, 1616, and was buried in Holy Trinity Church, Stratford.  A. R. Braunmuller is Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of California at Los Angeles. He has written critical volumes on George Peele and George Chapman and has edited plays in both the Oxford (King John) and Cambridge (Macbeth) series of Shakespeare editions. He is also general editor of The New Cambridge Shakespeare.  Stephen Orgel is the Jackson Eli Reynolds Professor of the Humanities at Stanford University and general editor of the Cambridge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture. His books include Imagining Shakespeare, The Authentic Shakespeare, Impersonations: The Performance of Gender in Shakespeare’s England and The Illusion of Power. Read more See all Editorial Reviews

Reviews

As three television series and numerous versions on stage have demonstrated, the Henry VI trilogy plays very well on stage, even when given without cuts. None of the action and certainly none of the characters are particularly complex; although a good deal of background information about Richard II and Henry IV is requisite to appreciating what is happening here. And when "Richard III" follows, this play is made so much clearer appearing as it does as the logical consequence of all the events that came before it. Therefore I am delighted to report (1) are now available as late entries in the remarkable Arkangel Shakespeare series put out by Penguin Putnam, and (2) they make for some terrific listening. Using some military music and representative battle cries for the many combat scenes and the opening and closing of doors to let us know about entrances and exits, this set gives us a fast-paced account of Shakespeare's dramatic shaping of so many years of tumultuous English history. Now this play has a large cast and it is very seldom clear just who is speaking at any given moment--a problem endemic to any play on tape with several characters--and it is recommended that one have a text handy during the first hearing. Or if you have seen the magnificent BBC productions of this trilogy, you might be able to know who is speaking from your memory of that series. Suffice it to say, most of the important characters can be recognized by their voices, although (as many critics have pointed out) all the men do tend to speak alike until the very idiosyncratic voice of Richard Gloucester appears late in Part II. Since the demise of the old legendary series on Decca/London label back in the LP days, this is the only recording we have of these three plays; and we are very fortunate they are done so well. The "Richard III" came out at the same time and I will record my comments about that set on the appropriate webpage.

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