In their lively and engaging edition of this sometimes neglected early play, Cox and Rasmussen make a strong claim for it as a remarkable work, revealing a confidence and sureness that very few earlier plays can rival. They show how the young Shakespeare, working closely from his chronicle sources, nevertheless freely shaped his complex material to make it both theatrically effective and poetically innovative. The resulting work creates, in Queen Margaret, one of Shakespeare’s strongest female roles and is the source of the popular view of Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick as ‘kingmaker’. Focusing on the history of the play both in terms of both performance and criticism, the editors open it to a wide and challenging variety of interpretative and editorial paradigms.


Table of contents
List of illustrations

General editors preface

Preface

INTRODUCTION
A play for the stage
The politics of adaptation on the English stage
3 Henry VI on the screen and around the globe
The first critical question: single authorship or collaboration?
Moral criticism
Character criticism
- Henry
- Richard
Historical criticism: determining sources
Historical criticism: establishing context
Psychoanalytic criticism
New criticism
Performance criticism
Feminist criticism
The texts of The True Tragedy and 3 Henry VI
- O (1595)
- Q2 (1600)
- Q4 (1619)
- F1 (1623)
- Origins of The True Tragedy
- Origins of 3 Henry VI
- Conclusions

KING HENRY VI, Part 3

Appendices
- The Octavo (1595)
- Casting
- The battles in 3 Henry VI
- Genealogical tables

Abbreviations and references
Index