King Henry VI, Part 2

The gentle, pious King Henry VI marries the proud Margaret of Anjou, who soon rules him, and the lords around the throne destroy one another: the good Duke Humphrey of Gloucester is murdered, the Duke of Suffolk is killed by pirates, and Richard, Duke of York, secretly encourages a popular rebellion led by Jack Cade, whose follower Dick the Butcher cries, 'The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.' At the end York openly claims the crown and the Wars of the Roses begin.

Written around 1591, the play is a vivid study of a weak king and a kingdom falling into chaos. A shorter version was printed in 1594 as The First Part of the Contention; this is the fuller First Folio text of 1623. Read Henry VI, Part 1 and Part 3.

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.