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As y'all can see, I've done a small bit of work on the article! What I’ve done is pretty self explanatory really. I've reorganised it so that it's laid out correctly as per the standard layout of the WikiShakespeare project. I've added material everywhere. I've added some pictures, added a pretty thorough bibliography and added a couple of external links. I'm reading through the Oxford edition of Henry VI, Part 3 now, and then I'll do Henry VI, Part 1, so I'll probably pick up bits and pieces of info in them which I'll add here as I come across them. I'm pretty happy with how it's turned out, and as with The Two Gentlemen of Verona and The Taming of the Shrew, I welcome feedback. Bertaut (talk) 00:23, 22 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've made several changes to the page, most of which I hope will prove unobjectionable:

• Notes have been separated from citations.
• A citation style has been introduced that should make it easier to find the appropriate item in the list of secondary sources.
• Quotations have been compared with their originals and amended accordingly.
• Several new citations have been added.
• All citations have been templated and given sfnrefs; ISBN numbers, DOIs, URLs, &c., have been added where appropriate.
• I've removed several repetitious passages, some quotations and examples that appear superfluous, and words (mostly adverbs) that add little to the structure of the argument.

Alexrexpvt (talk) 17:05, 2 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The articles on the three Henry VI plays are lengthy, and it seems superfluous to have the same material repeated in all of them. I've therefore deleted the material in italics below, and added a link to the identical material in the article on Henry VI, Part 1. Hopefully this streamlining of the article will meet with approval. NinaGreen (talk) 03:13, 22 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

There is a separate question concerning the date of composition however. Owing to the quarto title (The First Part of the Contention), and with the publication of True Tragedy in 1595, which makes no reference to 1 Henry VI, some critics have argued that 2 Henry VI and 3 Henry VI were written before 1 Henry VI. This theory was first suggested by E. K. Chambers in 1923, and revised by J. Dover Wilson in 1952. The theory is that The Contention and True Tragedy were conceived as a two-part play, but owing to their success, a prequel was created. Ronald Brunlees McKerrow argues that "if 2 Henry VI was written to continue the first part, it seems incomprehensible that it should contain no allusion to the prowess of Talbot."^[1] McKerrow also comments on the lack of reference to the symbolic use of roses in 2 Henry VI, whereas in 1 Henry VI and 3 Henry VI the device is mentioned numerous times. McKerrow concludes that 1 Henry VI was written closer to 3 Henry VI, and as we know 3 Henry VI was a sequel, it means that 1 Henry VI must have been written last. Eliot Slater comes to the same conclusion in his statistical examination of the vocabulary of all three Henry VI plays, arguing that 1 Henry VI was written either immediately before or immediately after 3 Henry VI, and so must have been written last.^[2] Likewise, Gary Taylor in his analysis of the authorship of 1 Henry VI, argues that the many discrepancies between 1 Henry VI and 2 Henry VI (such as the lack of reference to Talbot) coupled with similarities in the vocabulary, phraseology and tropes of 1 Henry VI and 3 Henry VI suggest 1 Henry VI was probably written last.^[3]

One argument against this theory is that 1 Henry VI is the weakest of the trilogy and therefore, logic would suggest it was written first. This argument suggests that Shakespeare could only have created such a weak play if it was his first attempt to turn his chronicle sources into drama.^[4] The standard response to this theory, and the one used by Dover Wilson in 1952 is that 1 Henry VI is significantly weaker than the other two plays, not because it was written first but because it was co-authored, and may have been Shakespeare's first attempt to collaborate with other dramatists. As such, all of the play's problems can be attributed to its co-authors rather than Shakespeare himself, who may have had a limited hand its composition.^[5]

As this implies, there is no critical consensus on this issue. Samuel Johnson, writing in his 1765 edition of The Plays of William Shakespeare, pre-empted the debate and argued that the plays were written in sequence; "It is apparent that [2 Henry VI] begins where the former ends, and continues the series of transactions, of which it presupposes the first part already written. This is a sufficient proof that the second and third parts were not written without dependence on the first."^[6] Numerous more recent scholars continue to uphold Johnson's argument. E.M.W. Tillyard, for example, writing in 1944, believes the plays were written in order, as does Andrew S. Cairncross in his editions of all three plays for the 2nd series of the Arden Shakespeare (1957, 1962 and 1964). E.A.J. Honigmann also agrees, in his 'early start' theory of 1982 (which argues that Shakespeare's first play was Titus Andronicus, which Honigmann posits was written in 1586). Likewise, Michael Hattaway, in both his 1990 New Cambridge Shakespeare edition of 1 Henry VI and his 1991 edition of 2 Henry VI argues that the evidence suggests 1 Henry VI was written first. In his 2001 introduction to Henry VI: Critical Essays, Thomas A. Pendleton makes a similar argument, as does Roger Warren, in his 2003 edition of 2 Henry VI for The Oxford Shakespeare.

On the other hand, Edward Burns, in his 2000 Arden Shakespeare 3rd series edition of 1 Henry VI and Ronald Knowles, in his 1999 Arden Shakespeare 3rd series edition of 2 Henry VI make the case that 2 Henry VI probably preceded 1 Henry VI. Similarly, Randall Martin, in his 2001 Oxford Shakespeare edition of 3 Henry VI argues that 1 Henry VI was almost certainly written last. In his 2003 Oxford edition of 1 Henry VI, Michael Taylor agrees with Martin. Additionally, it is worth noting that in the Oxford Shakespeare: Complete Works of 1986 and the 2nd edition of 2005, and in the Norton Shakespeare of 1997 and again in 2008, both 2 Henry VI and 3 Henry VI precede 1 Henry VI.