Cade's rebellion and the first battle of St. Albans, are drawn from 2 Henry VI.[1] Crowne romanticizes the story in the spirit of his age, making Warwick the unsuccessful lover of Lady Grey and adding further amatory interest by an episodic love affair between King Edward and Lady Eleanor Butler, who in the last act dons male disguisings and meets her death at Edward's hands on the battle field. Only 75 lines out of 2793 in this long piece are drawn directly from Shakespeare.[2]
That critical interest in Shakespeare's plays of Henry VI was not altogether lacking in Crowne's day appears from a note on the three plays in Gerard Langbaine's account of Shakespeare (Account of the English Dramatic Poets, 1691): 'These three Plays contain the whole length of this King's Reign, viz. Thirty Eight Years, six Weeks, and four Days. Altho' this be contrary to the strict Rules of Dramatick Poetry; yet it must be owned, even by Mr. Dryden himself, That this Picture in Miniature, has many Features, which excell even several of his more exact Strokes of Symmetry and Proportion.' It is probable that the Henry VI plays of Shakespeare were read more generally at this time, and with less sense of their inferiority, than in later periods.
In the next generation Theophilus Cibber produced a strange medley of Crowne's Miseries of Civil-War and Shakespeare's Henry VI under the title: 'An Historical Tragedy of the Civil Wars in the Reign of King Henry VI (Being a Sequel to the Tragedy of Humfrey Duke of Gloucester:[3] And an Introduction to the
- ↑ For further details of this play and of Crowne's other piece, Henry the Sixth, or the Murder of the Duke of Glocester, see Appendix B to 2 Henry VI in this edition.
- ↑ The figures are those given by G. Krecke in his useful dissertation: Die englischen Bühnenbearbeitungen von Shakespeares 'King Henry the Sixth,' Rostock, 1911.
- ↑ I.e. Ambrose Philips' tragedy, based on 2 Henry VI, acted February 15, 1723.
