num_pages: 252
description: 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.
language: English
title: King Henry VI, Part 2
titlecomplete: King Henry VI, Part 2
characters: John Southwell, Sheriff of London, Sir John Stanley, William Stafford, Earl of Salisbury, Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York, Mayor of St Albans, Asmath, Simpcox's wife, Sir Humphrey Stafford, King Henry VI, King of England, Walter Whitmore, Cardinal Beaufort, John Hum, Thomas Horner, Edward, Earl of March, Jack Cade, Lord Saye, Lord Scales, Peter Thump, Lord Clifford, Roger Bolingbroke, Alderman of St Albans, Duke of Buckingham, George Bevis, Duchess Eleanor of Gloucester, William de la Pole, John Holland, Sander Simpcox, Richard Plantagenet, Matthew Gough, Earl of Warwick, Alexander Iden, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, Duke of Somerset, Margery Jourdayne, Queen Margaret, Young Clifford
genres: Classics, Drama, Theatre, Historical, Plays, Historical Fiction, Poetry, Literature, 16th Century, Fiction
ratings_count: 7417
series: Shakespeare's Minor Tetralogy, Henry VI, Wars of the Roses
publisher: Bloomsbury Arden