Henry VI Part 1

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“Fight till the last gasp.” King Henry VI, Part 1 is the first in a sequence of four history plays written by renowned English playwright and national poet, William Shakespeare, between 1589 and 1592. The four plays are collectively called The First Tetralogy. The other three plays in the sequence are King Henry VI, Part 2; King Henry VI, Part 3; and King Richard III. All four plays focus on the Wars of the Roses between the houses of Lancaster and York. King Henry VI, Part 1 covers the early years of King Henry’s reign. It includes the famous scene in which Richard Plantagenet (later Duke of York), chooses a white rose and John Beaufort, Earl (and later Duke) of Somerset, picks a red rose, respectively, as the emblem of the houses of York and Lancaster. The scenes in the play flit between the power struggles at the English court and the war in France in detail. Towards the end of King Henry VI, Part I, the Earl of Suffolk, who persuades King Henry to marry Margaret of Anjou, plans to use the matrimonial union to grab power for himself.

William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's preeminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon". His surviving works, including some collaborations, consist of 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and several other poems. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire and was baptised on 26 April 1564. Thought to have been educated at the local grammar school, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he went on to have three children, at the age of eighteen, before moving to London to work in the theatre. Two erotic poems, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece were published in 1593 and 1594 and records of his plays begin to appear in 1594 for Richard III and the three parts of Henry VI. Shakespeare's tragic period lasted from around 16 to 168, during which period he wrote plays including Hamlet and Othello. The first editions of the sonnets were published in 169 but evidence suggests that Shakespeare had been writing them for years for a private readership. Shakespeare spent the last five years of his life in Stratford, by now a wealthy man. He died on 23 April 1616 and was buried in Holy Trinity Church in Stratford. The first collected edition of his works was published in 1623.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

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