The last scene in the play, constituting the entire Actus Quintus of the Folio, clearly belongs altogether to the later recension. The writing of so purely utilitarian a scene was small game for Shakespeare, but the execution is by no means un-Shakespearean.[1]
Henneman's summary of Shakespeare's probable purpose in 1 Henry VI is, I think, fair and conservative: 'To work up or rewrite the Talbot portions of the Chronicles, probably, though not necessarily, already crystallized into an old play on the triumph of "brave Talbot" over the French, which possessed the hated Joan of Arc scenes and all; to intensify the figure and character of Talbot; to work over or add scenes like those touching Talbot's death; to connect him with the deplorable struggles of the nobles; to invent, by a happy poetical thought, the origin of the factions of the Red and White Roses in the Temple Garden; to sound at once the note of weakness in the king continued in the succeeding Parts, and thus convert the old Talbot material effectually into a Henry VI drama; and to close with the wooing of Margaret as specific introduction to Part II,—something like this seems the task that the dramatist set himself to perform.'
II. The Author of the Original Play
1. Marlowe?
Henslowe's play of Harry the Sixth, if it followed somewhat the lines just suggested, undoubtedly deserved the popularity it attained. It was probably more effective on the stage than the expanded work which supplanted it, and in 1591-92 can have been
- ↑ Gervinus pointed out (Shakespeare, 2d ed., 1850, i. 202) that if the Suffolk-Margaret scene and the last scene were omitted, and the play left to close with 'Winchester's peace' (V. iv), it would have a conclusion much better suited to the chief content.
