Today’s Totally Random
Lines
To Eltham will I, where the young king is,
Being ordain’d his special governor;
And for his safety there I’ll best devise.
Duke of Exeter
King Henry the Sixth Part I Act I, Scene i, Line 170
This first scene of King Henry VI Part I is set at the funeral of Henry V. However, Will wrote this play before he wrote Henry V. He wrote plays about all the kings from Edward III, who reigned in the middle of the 1300’s, covering everyone up to Henry VIII, who died in 1547. Will’s writing career began in the 1580’s, just to give you some context. Elizabeth, Henry VIII’s daughter, was queen then.
Not all the kings of this two hundred year period have their own play; some are
covered in the other plays. Edward IV, for instance is covered in Henry the Sixth
Part III and also in Richard the Third. You can read the plays in order, which
kind of makes sense, but Will didn’t write them in order; he wrote today’s play
first. In fact, today’s play, Henry the Sixth Part I, is one of the first plays
that Will wrote in his career. We’re not really sure exactly what order he wrote
all his plays in, but this one is one of the first. This one, The Comedy of
Errors, and a few others are the ones considered to be his first written plays.
Most of this conjecture is based on dates of performances that we still have.
So there’s a little Shakespeare history for you. I had to look up Edward’s and Henry VIII’s dates. I was never great at dates. But, as noted, Will covered about two hundred years of British history in his history plays. And, of course, that was a pretty turbulent time as it included the Wars of the Roses which took up a large part of the 1400’s.
What else would you like to know about? Modern U.S. pop culture? Ehhh, not so well versed on that. I’ll let my associates handle those questions.
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