Shakespeare's Henry VI, Part One--Summary and Discussion 

Thank you! I can’t help looking for theme and unifying meaning-I guess I was trained from a New Critical perspective. But they do always feel like history condensed to a structure and purpose to me. Thanks for watching! Your channel is my new favorite if it wasn’t obvious! Keep up the awesome work!

Thanks! Glad it was helpful!

It's not crazy at all. Incredibly niche topic.

Have you read the other real outlier plays like Edward III or Sir Thomas More?

It’s in the plan! Look at the schedule in the description!

@@Nancenotes Looking forward to it.

Thank you for your excellent question! I may not be able to completely assuage your feelings about these characters, but I would like to point out a few things to consider while reflecting on this problem. First, the majority of this play isn't actually written by Shakespeare, but rather by his peers in the theater. The sections we most attribute to him are the portions that are most ambiguous and complex, particularly the roots of the War of Roses. Why was this a collaborative effort? We don't really know, except that it was mostly written as a way to play of the success of parts 2 and 3, which were very popular. In any case, the flatness of some of the characters and the outrageous, dastardly evil of La Pucelle is mostly someone else's fault rather than Shakespeare's. This may be a lame excuse, but it does make me feel a little better, especially when I look at Shakespeare's other work, which gives us many opportunities to feel our villians' sides and regret our heroes' flaws. Secondly, although we are praising the English and condemning the French here in a heavily nationalistic way, we can notice that the real issue is the growing corruption and ineffectiveness of the English government. They aren't all praiseworthy--rather the main thrust of English power is killing out the heroism of the past. That's the real story of interest here--the growing seeds of brutal self-interest that will ultimately rip England apart for the next several kings. France is more the backdrop for that story, and if it's flat, it's because it's filling a mechanical purpose here rather than a dramatic one. Could Shakespeare have made even these backdrops lifelike and real to us? Sure, but as I said before, he didn't write that part. I hope this helps! This play is interesting in its place, but if you want meatier work, keep going! Don't take this as Shakespeare's best example of history, though I still enjoy it as a prologue to the others.

@@Nancenotes Thank you for the kind advice. I l keep in mind and will carry on.

@@Nancenotes Why do you need to make Shakespeare out to be this angel who never wrote anything morally questionable to the majority 500 years after his death? (And why would conformity to this random point known as our present make him any more of an angel than conformity to his own time, or conformity to 500 years before him, or 500 years after us, or conformity to some other culture at any given point in time? None of those majorities are perfect). Shakespeare wrote a whole lot of things I disagree with and I still love his work. I can read plays where I think the entire concept is ethically repugnant and still enjoy them, because I'm not selfish. I disagree with Tolstoy even more, and I also love his books. Tolstoy hated Shakespeare, I don't care, I love them both. There are modern books that are filled with opinions that I personally strongly disagree with and find abhorrent, and I still love those books because of other things about them. It's simply... the first step in not being selfish. Henry V did horrible things in France. At Agincourt, they slaughtered a whole bunch of non-combatants and did a whole bunch more atrocities. You may look at France now and see them as a European power that did all sorts of horrible atrocities to the rest of the world later on, but that doesn't make things suffered there matter less (unless you also want to say it makes the things France suffered in WWII matter less, too?). However much Shakespeare knew about those things, he wouldn't have thought they were bad. The view of... pretty much everyone in every culture up until the end of WWII... is that, if your town gets destroyed and brutally beaten and all that, well, sucks for you, but your armies should have been stronger, and it's your job to take up your sword and get revenge! And if you can't, well, you're a failure because that's your number one duty in life. Did Shakespeare (and a lot of other people) realize that this wasn't a perfect way of thinking about life? Yes. That's a big part of what Hamlet is about. For a wider look, how many characters can you think of who win a duel of honor, but that creates more problems than it solves for them? But all of those writers still finish with some bombastic thing along the lines of "fight for the fatherland!" ... because people who come from a different fatherland *really don't count as people to them*. Shakespeare never actually left England in his life. He did not care about the French, he did not see them as anything other than a joke, even in Henry V, (honestly, Henry V is one of the plays that really makes me too morally sick to go into it, even though I love Henry IV parts 1 and 2, V basically throws away all the nuance in favor of nationalism.) So, no, he's not being a decent person, but you should love the things you love about his plays anyway. Because it really shouldn't matter to you. Because if you can actually find enough published books in any language that you fully ethically agree with, then you're just a follower in the crowd and you're not thinking for yourself enough.

I like your point here, especially in conclusion. The demand that all books of all time be held to the ethics of the moment is ridiculous and leaves us with nothing to read. I apologize if I sounded like I was deifying Shakespeare; I was trying to excuse him from some of the faults of this play-particularly the pathetically flat Pucelle, which I don’t think was his writing at all. From my study on the play, I’m fairly convinced he only wrote the rose scene. That doesn’t excuse him of his other faults and prejudices, but I have trouble blaming him for Joan. There are a few of his plays that I genuinely don’t like (the end of Two Gentlemen is hard to stomach, for example), even if I get their cultural perspective. I do appreciate how frequently Shakespeare poses an ethical problem and then, instead of forcing his current answer on us, leaves it open for us to examine. I think that particular pattern is a big part of his staying relevance in many of his plays. Thanks again for your comment.

Its comic relief to characterize your enemies. Simple as that.

It’s definitely not a highlight of Shakespeare’s writing, especially since he only contributed to some of the play, and it’s certainly an unfair and inaccurate depiction of St. Joan. But as a prequel to the other two Henry VI plays, it’s interesting.

Have to agree. Joan of Arc was re pooy portrayed. As one of Shakespeares earliest plays the presentation up to ths point of women in his writing is not great. Taming of the Shrew. The treatmnt of women in the Two Gentlemann of Verona. And of cause Titus Andronicus.