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Histories: Volume 1
Shakespeare’s histories—containing within their crowded tableaux all of the tragedies, confusions, and beauties of human life—are not only drama of the highest order. They also serve as windows through which generations have made themselves familiar with crucial episodes in English history. For an Elizabethan England that had already emerged onto the stage of world power and was hungry to understand the sources and nature of its identity, Shakespeare provided a grandeur born of the transforming power of his art.
This volume contains Henry VI, Parts 1, 2, and 3; Richard III; and King John. The texts, authoritatively edited by Sylvan Barnet, are supplemented with textual notes, bibliographies, a detailed chronology of Shakespeare’s life and times, and a substantial introduction in which Tony Tanner discusses each play individually and in the context of Shakespeare’s work.
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752 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1597
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About the author
William Shakespeare
28k books47.2k followersWilliam Shakespeare was an English playwright, poet, and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon" (or simply "the Bard"). His extant works, including collaborations, consist of some 39 plays, 154 sonnets, three long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. Shakespeare remains arguably the most influential writer in the English language, and his works continue to be studied and reinterpreted.
Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Sometime between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part-owner ("sharer") of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men after the ascension of King James VI and I of Scotland to the English throne. At age 49 (around 1613), he appears to have retired to Stratford, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive; this has stimulated considerable speculation about such matters as his physical appearance, his sexuality, his religious beliefs, and even certain fringe theories as to whether the works attributed to him were written by others.
Shakespeare produced most of his known works between 1589 and 1613. His early plays were primarily comedies and histories and are regarded as some of the best works produced in these genres. He then wrote mainly tragedies until 1608, among them Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth, all considered to be among the finest works in the English language. In the last phase of his life, he wrote tragicomedies (also known as romances) and collaborated with other playwrights.
Many of Shakespeare's plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy during his lifetime. However, in 1623, John Heminge and Henry Condell, two fellow actors and friends of Shakespeare's, published a more definitive text known as the First Folio, a posthumous collected edition of Shakespeare's dramatic works that includes 36 of his plays. Its Preface was a prescient poem by Ben Jonson, a former rival of Shakespeare, that hailed Shakespeare with the now famous epithet: "not of an age, but for all time".
Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Sometime between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part-owner ("sharer") of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men after the ascension of King James VI and I of Scotland to the English throne. At age 49 (around 1613), he appears to have retired to Stratford, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive; this has stimulated considerable speculation about such matters as his physical appearance, his sexuality, his religious beliefs, and even certain fringe theories as to whether the works attributed to him were written by others.
Shakespeare produced most of his known works between 1589 and 1613. His early plays were primarily comedies and histories and are regarded as some of the best works produced in these genres. He then wrote mainly tragedies until 1608, among them Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth, all considered to be among the finest works in the English language. In the last phase of his life, he wrote tragicomedies (also known as romances) and collaborated with other playwrights.
Many of Shakespeare's plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy during his lifetime. However, in 1623, John Heminge and Henry Condell, two fellow actors and friends of Shakespeare's, published a more definitive text known as the First Folio, a posthumous collected edition of Shakespeare's dramatic works that includes 36 of his plays. Its Preface was a prescient poem by Ben Jonson, a former rival of Shakespeare, that hailed Shakespeare with the now famous epithet: "not of an age, but for all time".
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
January 28, 2016
While going through my library when moving, I realized I have all the Shakespeare Everyman's Library editions. They are the most loveliest of books. Treasures. (Just filling in my books here on GR, no need to *like* this non-review...)
January 16, 2022
So look. I ain’t no Shakespearean scholar. I’ve seen a grand total of two Shakespeare plays performed in a theatre (although for lack of access rather than lack of desire). I came to these particular plays out of idle personal interest – and I also thought this particular set were the ones with Falstaff. They’re not: they’re the Henries that concern the War of the Roses. The compliers of this collection placed Henry VI (I-III) with Richard III – reasonable – and tacked King John on the end, even though historically King John comes before them, because it was written after them. From a continuity standpoint, that was annoying.
Now, it so happens that this time last year I read and was hugely influenced by Sharon Penman’s The Sunne in Splendour, a thousand-page work of historical fiction with the sole aim of rehabilitating the nasty reputation of Richard III. I was easily swayed by Penman's arguments, but I also didn’t realise till about halfway through that we were dealing with that Richard – the humpback (who wasn’t) who killed two child princes in the Tower (probably didn’t). (Cf: not a scholar; also not very bright.) Last year I also watched and loved The Lion in Winter (about King John’s parents) and read Alison Weir’s biography of Eleanor of Aquitaine. So I was surprisingly well-grounded in the historical periods the plays cover.
From a non-scholarly standpoint, these plays are … weird. I mean, obviously they suffer from the constraints of playwriting, so that all the battles, treaties, coronations, assassinations, and parlaying happen in one scene (and by extension, on one day). But there’s also the fact that, as far as Shakespeare was concerned, the War of the Roses had only recently been ‘won’ by sort-of Team Lancaster. In a very convoluted way, Henry VIII – the father of the monarch to whom Shakespeare owed his success – took his legitimacy from the Lancaster side. Penman avers that after Richard III’s death on Bosworth Fields, Henry VII (Henry VIII’s dad) undertook a brutal and effective smear campaign against Richard that was taken as gospel by subsequent historians. Undoubtedly, this is true for Shakespeare as well. He was many things, but he was also a hack for hire. He had a vested interest in portraying the Lancasters well and the Yorks badly, yet it’s also true that history painted Henry VI as too gentle and weak for leadership and Edward II as a cool dude. Shakespeare’s having to juggle a lot of influences here, at the intersection of received wisdom and propaganda.
There’s also a lot of ghosts and prophetic dreams. Henry VI’s and Richard III versus Richmond’s ghostly visitors actually work quite well, in terms of getting information across in an engaging fashion. The dreams I have less truck with, but clearly in Elizabethan times they put great store by them.
Henry VI, Part One
“WARWICK: And here I prophesy: this brawl today,
Grown to this faction in the Temple garden,
Shall send, between the red rose and the white,
A thousand souls to death and deadly night.”
Nice.
“KING: Believe me, lords, tender years can tell
Civil dissension is a viperous worm
That gnaws the bowels of the commonwealth.”
Hmm, is it? Is it though??
“KING: When Gloucester says the word, King Henry
goes,
For friendly counsel cuts off many foes.”
“PUCELLE: Care is no cure, but rather corrosive,
For things that are not to be remedied.”
Throughout all five plays, there’s a strain of Stoic resilience in the face of bad fortune, and I for one am here for it.
Henry VI, Part Two
“SUFFOLK: A jewel, locked into the woefull’st cask
That ever did contain a thing of worth.
Even as a splitted bark, so sunder we:
This way fall I to death.”
Obviously, sometimes it’s just good.
“CADE: I thank you, god people – there shall be no
money; all shall eat and drink on my score; and I
will apparel them all in one livery, that they may
agree like brothers, and worship me their lord.”
Cade the proto (and historically incorrect – he enters way earlier in history) Communist? ilit.
“STAFFORD: Villain, thou father was a plasterer,
And thou thyself a shearman, art thou not?
CADE: And Adam was a gardener.”
I mean. All these bloody plays are about one dude saying he’s better than another dude because of who his father was, while all the while Shakespeare – son of a glovemaker and future Most Famous Briton – is sitting here going, I have notes.
Henry VI, Part Three
“EDWARD: But for a kingdom any oath may be broken.
I would break a thousand oaths to reign one year.”
None of these plays address what it is all these warring would-be kings want to do with the kingship. I see this so often in stories about power. I wonder, is the power itself sufficient – like the high off drugs? Because the way I see it, it’s what you do with the power that counts, and only Cade had a plan of what to do with it.
“YORK: Women are soft, mild, pitiful, and flexible;
Thou stern, obdurate, flinty, rough, remorseless.
Bid’st thou me rage? Why, now thou hast thy wish.
Would’st thou have me weep? Why, now thou hast thy will.”
I don’t think even Shakespeare believed what he wrote about women.
“CLARENCE: But when we saw our sunshine made thy
spring,
And that thy summer bred us no increase,
We set the axe to thy usurping root;
And though the edge hath something hit ourselves,
Yet, know thou, since we have begun to strike,
We’ll never leave till we have hewn thee down,
Or bathed thy growing with our heated bloods.
EDWARD: And in this resolution, I defy thee;
Not willing any longer conference,
Since thou deniest the gentle King to speak.
Sound trumpets! Let our bloody colours wave!
And either victory, or else a grave.
QUEEN MARGARET: Stay, Edward.
EDWARD: No, wrangling woman, we’ll no longer stay.
These words will cost ten thousand lives this day.”
I just love this exchange.
“KING HENRY: My crown is in my heart, not on my
head;
Not decked with diamonds and Indian stones,
Nor to be seen. My crown is called content:
A crown it is that kings seldom enjoy.”
He’s not wrong.
“KING EDWARD: What fates impose, that men must
needs abide;
It boots not to resist both wind and tide.”
“KING HENRY: Teeth hadst thou in they head when thou wast born,
To signify thou cam’st to bite the world;”
OMG WHAT AN ENTRANCE FOR RICHARD. Richard III is hands down the best play in the sequence. Richard is a fantastic villain – smart and witty and entertaining. Everyone else is background to him.
Richard the Third
I MEAN HELLO HE GETS THE WINTER OF OUR DISCONTENT SPEECH? Shakespeare stans Richard secretly, I know he does.
“RICHARD: Simple plain Clarence, I do love thee so
That I will shortly send thy soul to heaven,
If heaven will take the present at our hands.”
“ANNE: Villain, thou know’st nor law of God nor man.
No beast so fierce but knows some touch of pity.
RICHARD: But I know none, and therefore am no beast.”
“RICHARD: But then I sigh, and with a piece of Scripture
Tell them that God bids us do good for evil;
And thus I clothe my naked villainy
With odd old ends stol’n forth of holy writ,
And seem a saint when I most play the devil.”
“KING RICHARD: March on, join bravely, let us to it pell-mell,
If not to heaven, than hand in hand to hell.”
Face god and walk backwards into hell?
KING JOHN
“CONSTANCE: And he will look as hollow as a ghost,
As dim and meagre as an ague’s fit,
And so he’ll die; and rising so again,
When I shall meet him in the court of heaven
I shall not know him: therefore never, never
Must I behold my pretty Arthur more.”
Oof. This reminds me of A Grief Observed, which I’m concurrently reading. C.S. Lewis dismisses the idea of ‘meeting again on a further shore’ after death, contending we couldn’t recognise a loved one that way. Constance’s lament reminds me of that.
“KING JOHN: A fellow by the hand of nature marked,
Quoted and signed to do a deed of shame,”
HAHAHA The Blue Castle has been one of my favourite books for decades and today I finally discover the origin of this quote from one of Valancy’s horrible uncles.
Now, it so happens that this time last year I read and was hugely influenced by Sharon Penman’s The Sunne in Splendour, a thousand-page work of historical fiction with the sole aim of rehabilitating the nasty reputation of Richard III. I was easily swayed by Penman's arguments, but I also didn’t realise till about halfway through that we were dealing with that Richard – the humpback (who wasn’t) who killed two child princes in the Tower (probably didn’t). (Cf: not a scholar; also not very bright.) Last year I also watched and loved The Lion in Winter (about King John’s parents) and read Alison Weir’s biography of Eleanor of Aquitaine. So I was surprisingly well-grounded in the historical periods the plays cover.
From a non-scholarly standpoint, these plays are … weird. I mean, obviously they suffer from the constraints of playwriting, so that all the battles, treaties, coronations, assassinations, and parlaying happen in one scene (and by extension, on one day). But there’s also the fact that, as far as Shakespeare was concerned, the War of the Roses had only recently been ‘won’ by sort-of Team Lancaster. In a very convoluted way, Henry VIII – the father of the monarch to whom Shakespeare owed his success – took his legitimacy from the Lancaster side. Penman avers that after Richard III’s death on Bosworth Fields, Henry VII (Henry VIII’s dad) undertook a brutal and effective smear campaign against Richard that was taken as gospel by subsequent historians. Undoubtedly, this is true for Shakespeare as well. He was many things, but he was also a hack for hire. He had a vested interest in portraying the Lancasters well and the Yorks badly, yet it’s also true that history painted Henry VI as too gentle and weak for leadership and Edward II as a cool dude. Shakespeare’s having to juggle a lot of influences here, at the intersection of received wisdom and propaganda.
There’s also a lot of ghosts and prophetic dreams. Henry VI’s and Richard III versus Richmond’s ghostly visitors actually work quite well, in terms of getting information across in an engaging fashion. The dreams I have less truck with, but clearly in Elizabethan times they put great store by them.
Henry VI, Part One
“WARWICK: And here I prophesy: this brawl today,
Grown to this faction in the Temple garden,
Shall send, between the red rose and the white,
A thousand souls to death and deadly night.”
Nice.
“KING: Believe me, lords, tender years can tell
Civil dissension is a viperous worm
That gnaws the bowels of the commonwealth.”
Hmm, is it? Is it though??
“KING: When Gloucester says the word, King Henry
goes,
For friendly counsel cuts off many foes.”
“PUCELLE: Care is no cure, but rather corrosive,
For things that are not to be remedied.”
Throughout all five plays, there’s a strain of Stoic resilience in the face of bad fortune, and I for one am here for it.
Henry VI, Part Two
“SUFFOLK: A jewel, locked into the woefull’st cask
That ever did contain a thing of worth.
Even as a splitted bark, so sunder we:
This way fall I to death.”
Obviously, sometimes it’s just good.
“CADE: I thank you, god people – there shall be no
money; all shall eat and drink on my score; and I
will apparel them all in one livery, that they may
agree like brothers, and worship me their lord.”
Cade the proto (and historically incorrect – he enters way earlier in history) Communist? ilit.
“STAFFORD: Villain, thou father was a plasterer,
And thou thyself a shearman, art thou not?
CADE: And Adam was a gardener.”
I mean. All these bloody plays are about one dude saying he’s better than another dude because of who his father was, while all the while Shakespeare – son of a glovemaker and future Most Famous Briton – is sitting here going, I have notes.
Henry VI, Part Three
“EDWARD: But for a kingdom any oath may be broken.
I would break a thousand oaths to reign one year.”
None of these plays address what it is all these warring would-be kings want to do with the kingship. I see this so often in stories about power. I wonder, is the power itself sufficient – like the high off drugs? Because the way I see it, it’s what you do with the power that counts, and only Cade had a plan of what to do with it.
“YORK: Women are soft, mild, pitiful, and flexible;
Thou stern, obdurate, flinty, rough, remorseless.
Bid’st thou me rage? Why, now thou hast thy wish.
Would’st thou have me weep? Why, now thou hast thy will.”
I don’t think even Shakespeare believed what he wrote about women.
“CLARENCE: But when we saw our sunshine made thy
spring,
And that thy summer bred us no increase,
We set the axe to thy usurping root;
And though the edge hath something hit ourselves,
Yet, know thou, since we have begun to strike,
We’ll never leave till we have hewn thee down,
Or bathed thy growing with our heated bloods.
EDWARD: And in this resolution, I defy thee;
Not willing any longer conference,
Since thou deniest the gentle King to speak.
Sound trumpets! Let our bloody colours wave!
And either victory, or else a grave.
QUEEN MARGARET: Stay, Edward.
EDWARD: No, wrangling woman, we’ll no longer stay.
These words will cost ten thousand lives this day.”
I just love this exchange.
“KING HENRY: My crown is in my heart, not on my
head;
Not decked with diamonds and Indian stones,
Nor to be seen. My crown is called content:
A crown it is that kings seldom enjoy.”
He’s not wrong.
“KING EDWARD: What fates impose, that men must
needs abide;
It boots not to resist both wind and tide.”
“KING HENRY: Teeth hadst thou in they head when thou wast born,
To signify thou cam’st to bite the world;”
OMG WHAT AN ENTRANCE FOR RICHARD. Richard III is hands down the best play in the sequence. Richard is a fantastic villain – smart and witty and entertaining. Everyone else is background to him.
Richard the Third
I MEAN HELLO HE GETS THE WINTER OF OUR DISCONTENT SPEECH? Shakespeare stans Richard secretly, I know he does.
“RICHARD: Simple plain Clarence, I do love thee so
That I will shortly send thy soul to heaven,
If heaven will take the present at our hands.”
“ANNE: Villain, thou know’st nor law of God nor man.
No beast so fierce but knows some touch of pity.
RICHARD: But I know none, and therefore am no beast.”
“RICHARD: But then I sigh, and with a piece of Scripture
Tell them that God bids us do good for evil;
And thus I clothe my naked villainy
With odd old ends stol’n forth of holy writ,
And seem a saint when I most play the devil.”
“KING RICHARD: March on, join bravely, let us to it pell-mell,
If not to heaven, than hand in hand to hell.”
Face god and walk backwards into hell?
KING JOHN
“CONSTANCE: And he will look as hollow as a ghost,
As dim and meagre as an ague’s fit,
And so he’ll die; and rising so again,
When I shall meet him in the court of heaven
I shall not know him: therefore never, never
Must I behold my pretty Arthur more.”
Oof. This reminds me of A Grief Observed, which I’m concurrently reading. C.S. Lewis dismisses the idea of ‘meeting again on a further shore’ after death, contending we couldn’t recognise a loved one that way. Constance’s lament reminds me of that.
“KING JOHN: A fellow by the hand of nature marked,
Quoted and signed to do a deed of shame,”
HAHAHA The Blue Castle has been one of my favourite books for decades and today I finally discover the origin of this quote from one of Valancy’s horrible uncles.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 20, 2019
Tony Tanner's introductions to 'Richard III' and 'King John' are very incisive. His introductions to the three 'Henry VI' plays are rather cursory and address them as a prelude to 'Richard III' rather than independent works in their own right. This is a shame as they are very entertaining plays that are rarely performed individually.
On the ordering of the plays in this volume - they are ordered in supposed order of composition (1H6, 2H6, 3H6, R3, KJ) rather than order of historical period (KJ, 1H6, 2H6, 3H6, R3). I would have preferred the latter order, as in the First Folio, to avoid the confusion over which sequence the 'Henry VI' plays were written in.
On the ordering of the plays in this volume - they are ordered in supposed order of composition (1H6, 2H6, 3H6, R3, KJ) rather than order of historical period (KJ, 1H6, 2H6, 3H6, R3). I would have preferred the latter order, as in the First Folio, to avoid the confusion over which sequence the 'Henry VI' plays were written in.
September 21, 2023
Henry VI Part I - *****
Henry VI Part II - ****
Henry VI Part III - *****
Richard III - ******
King John - *****
Ave - *****
Henry VI Part II - ****
Henry VI Part III - *****
Richard III - ******
King John - *****
Ave - *****
July 8, 2014
What can you say that hasn't been said about the works of one of the most brilliant minds who ever lived? All superlatives elude me. Only the Ancient Greek playwrights are his equals. All others pale in comparison. Unfortunately, so many are turned-off to Shakespeare because of their introduction to him in high school. What a pity. Shakespeare is to be watched! Reading him is a poor substitute. If you can readily understand the English language of his day, he is easy to read, but few are adept at this.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews