King Henry VI, Part 1

King Henry V has died young, leaving a baby son, Henry VI, and England's conquests in France begin to slip away. While the brave English general Lord Talbot fights on, the French are inspired by Joan of Arc, shown here as a witch called Joan la Pucelle, and at home the nobles quarrel; in a famous scene in the Temple Garden, the Duke of Somerset and Richard Plantagenet pick red and white roses to show their sides, beginning the Wars of the Roses.

Probably among Shakespeare's earliest plays, written around 1591, perhaps with other writers, it begins the four-play sequence that ends with Richard III. Its picture of Joan reflects the English propaganda of its time; compare Shaw's Saint Joan. The play's only early text is the First Folio of 1623, which this edition follows.

William Shakespeare (1564–1616), born in Stratford-upon-Avon, actor, playwright and shareholder of a London company, wrote about thirty-seven plays and 154 sonnets.

The tragedies Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello and King Lear, and comedies such as A Midsummer Night's Dream, are here in full, with hundreds of editions and studies from HathiTrust.