King Henry VI, Part I, II, and III

King Henry VI, Part I, II, and III brings together Shakespeare's three great history plays on the collapse of English rule in France, the weakness of Henry VI's reign, and the violent rise of the Wars of the Roses. Written early in Shakespeare's career, these plays form one of his most ambitious political sequences, moving from the aftermath of Henry V's conquests to factional struggle, civil war, rebellion, dynastic rivalry, and the emergence of the ruthless Richard, Duke of Gloucester.Together, the three parts of King Henry VI show Shakespeare developing the historical imagination that would later produce Richard III, Richard II, Henry IV, and Henry V. These plays are not tragedies in the narrow catalogue sense, though they contain tragic events throughout; they are English history plays concerned with monarchy, legitimacy, war, national decline, political ambition, and the destructive logic of inherited power. For readers of Shakespeare, classic drama, Tudor history, the Wars of the Roses, and English Renaissance literature, this collected volume gives the full arc of Henry VI's troubled reign in one edition.