Some Brief Thoughts on Shakespeare

Shakespeare's Henry VI trilogy, part of a tetralogy if you add the logical next installment Richard III, never fails to provide something new upon each reading. The Henry plays span his lifetime, from cradle to Tower. Even though the plays bear his name, Henry is not a central character in any of them. The Henry plays were Shakespeare's first performed plays, so I read. The scope of the end of the Hundred Years War to the end of the Wars of the Roses was daunting, to be sure.

Henry himself always makes me want to either cry or shake him. I don't know if I really see Henry the way Shakespeare does, but Shakespeare probably defined the way Henry was viewed in Elizabethan times. Ah, the myth of the royal saint! Miracles were attributed to him for a century or so following his murder. But, somehow, Henry just doesn't make it as a saint. His ineffectuality is rampant throughout the play, becoming more of a contrast to those around him as the trilogy marches on.

I have read through the plays six or seven times now, with an emphasis on Part 3. That play has a plethora of action, and the best soliloquies. I am sure I will read through them all again soon.