The Plays We Overlook – Introduction

Oh no, a shame you can’t go! Fingers crossed they post these plays on http://thespace.org/ – I’ve just been watching the Russian Measure here! Pete Orford is responding to all three Henry VIs for our Year of Shakespeare project – he did the triple header yesterday and has just posted his response to part 1. Would love to hear your thoughts too.

And yes, I was interested to hear Gordon McMullan’s thoughts on HVIII on TV last week. Must reread that play!

Randall, thanks so much for this generous and illuminating comment. It’s very gratifying to learn from one who’s engaged as deeply with these plays as you have. Please continue as we proceed–but do leave something for me to do! (A pleasantry, of course; there’s so much to discover in the plays it would take many posts to exhaust them.)

And thanks Erin, though I seem to have created the misimpression that I’m actually at G2G. If only! I’m just cheering along with the reports here. I’ll certainly talk about Henry VIII/All Is True, though. I’ve only seen it once, in the production the RSC brought to Brooklyn in 1998, which I only vaguely remember as rather heavy on the pageantry. It’ll be interesting to see whether it kindles the enthusiasm Gordon McMullan expresses in his Arden Third introduction and his appearance on James Shapiro’s series.

There’s no doubt, James, that the lines of Edward’s in 3HenryVI you cite are pretty workmanlike. But they would have meant a little more to audiences in 1591 when the first version of the play was being staged and when England was fighting wars in France and Ireland, and still officially at war with Spain. The line about ‘large pay’ would have resonated with Rose spectators aware of soldiers *not* being paid because of endemic army corruption of the kind we see associated with Falstaff in the later Henry IV plays. Edward’s other line about making hay is typical of his fondness for agricultural metaphors in 3H6. As elsewhere in Sh (e.g. Richmond’s speeches at the end of R3, and Burgundy’s in H5), they code desires for peace, as opposed to war. But the dramatic context often makes such speeches ironic too, as here with Edward.

None of this makes the lines any better as dramatic poetry. But they might not have sounded quite so banal in their Elizabethan context.

I’m writing this on a shuttle to the airport for tonight’s flight to London and the first of my Globe productions, the Bangla Tempest tomorrow evening. See you at H6.

Randall Martin