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KING HENRY VI.. PART HIL

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KING HENRY VI, PART III.

WITH NOTES

CRITICAL AND

EXPLANATORY.

Adapted for Scholastic or Private Study.

BY THE REV. JOHN HUNTER, M.A.

One of the National Society's Examiners of Middle-Class Schools: Formerly Vice-Principal of the Society's Training College, Battersea.

LONDON:

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.

1873.

All rights reserved.

LONDON: PRINTED BY

SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE AND PARLIAMENT STREET

REMARKS ON SHAKSPEARE'S

'KING HENRY VI.'

'SHAKSPEARE'S choice fell first on this period of English history, so full of misery and horrors of every kind, because the pathetic is naturally more suitable than the characteristic to a young poet's mind. We do not yet find here the whole maturity of his genius, yet certainly its whole strength. Careless as to the apparent unconnectedness of contemporary events, he bestows little attention on preparation and development: all the figures follow in rapid succession, and announce themselves emphatically for what we ought to take them; from scenes where the effect is sufficiently agitating to form the catastrophe of a less extensive plan, the poet perpetually hurries us on to catastrophes still more dreadful.

'The First Part contains only the first forming of the parties of the White and the Red Rose, under which blooming ensigns such bloody deeds were afterwards perpetrated; the varying results of the war in France principally fill the stage. The wonderful saviour of her country, Joan of Arc, is pourtrayed by Shakspeare with an Englishman's prejudice: yet he at first leaves it doubtful whether she has not in reality a heavenly mission; she appears in the pure glory of virgin heroism; by her supernatural eloquence (and this circumstance is of the poet's invention) she wins over the Duke of Burgundy to the French cause; afterwards, corrupted by vanity and luxury, she has recourse to hellish fiends, and comes to a miserable end.

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