HENRY VI
PART I.
This play is of doubtful parentage. Many would ascribe it either singly or in conjunction to Greene, Peele, Marlowe, Nash, and Shakespeare. It appears in the First Folio amongst the collected works of Shakespeare, and for that reason is admitted in the Shakesperean canon of modern editions. There exists grave doubts whether Shakespeare ever wrote a single line of this composition. This play was written as early as 1590, thirty years before Heminge and Condell, the editors of the First Folio, issued their book. Perhaps Shakespeare revised the work of others, and thus it appeared in its latest form under his name. The altering of a play by another hand without acknowledgment did not constitute in those days any literary offence, although at times an author objected to his work being so treated, and was not mealy-mouthed in proclaiming the fact. An excellent instance of this tampering with another’s property can be read in Greene’s Groatsworth of Wit, 1592, where he denounces Shakespeare in no measured terms “as an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers,” in reference to his treatment of the three parts of “Henry VI.” Greene may have been mistaken in identifying Shakespeare as the author. Every critic understands by the “only Shake-scene in the country” as referring to Shakespeare. The entire question is one of the most difficult problems in Shakesperean studies.
HEAVENS.
I, 1, 1.
The heavens were part of the stage buildings. It was built over the stage in shape of a sloping roof. The stage being open to the sky, it protected the actors against the inclemency of the weather, and also acted as a sounding board. An illustration of the “heavens” can be seen in De Witt’s drawing of the Swan Theatre, c. 1596. Contemporary documents prove that all the theatres were provided with this necessary commodity. Cotgrave, in his French and English Dictionary, 1611, has under the word “volerie,” a robbery, also a place over a stage, which we call the Heaven. In Hatzfeld and Darmsteter’s Modern French Dictionary there is no reference to such a meaning as given by Cotgrave, but under the word “volet” one definition is given as a kind of shutter before a window.
I, 1, 1.
When a tragedy was played, the stage was draped with black; many references to this custom are found in contemporary authors. In Sidney’s Arcadia, 1598: “There arose even with the sun a veil of dark clouds, before his face, had blacked all over the face of heaven, preparing as it were a mournful stage for a tragedy to be played on.” In Marston’s The Insatiate Countess: “The stage of heaven is hung with solemn black. A time best fitting to act tragedies,” and in A Warning for Faire Women, 1599: “The stage is hung with black, and I perceive the auditors prepared for Tragedy.”
PLAYED. PART.
III, 3, 88.
MASQUERS. REVEL.
III, 3, 224.
This passage is repeated in IV, I, 94:
Masquers were those performers who took part in a masque. As a rule they were gorgeously costumed. The performers were chiefly chosen for their agility and grace in dancing. In later years a dialogue was added to the masque, which the masquers took part in.
There are no theatrical allusions either in Part II or Part III of “Henry VI.”