Content area
Full Text
The Arden Shakespeare King Henry VI, Part 2. Edited by RONALD KNOWLES. London: Thomas Nelson, 1999. Illus. Pp. xvi + 491. $47.99 cloth, $13.99 paper.
The Arden Shakespeare King Henry VI, Part 3. Edited by JOHN D. COX and ERIC RASMUSSEN. London: Thomas Nelson, 2001. Illus. Pp. xviii + 460. $47.99 cloth, $13.99 paper.
The most obvious difference between these new Arden editions of 2 and 3 Henry VI and the volumes edited by Andrew S. Cairncross for Arden's second series (1957-64) is the large amount of introductory material devoted to performance history. In the case of these plays, the difference is more than procedural: it documents a substantial change of critical opinion as the result of landmark performances of the Henry VI trilogy in the later twentieth century. As Roger Warren puts it in his recent Oxford edition of 2 Henry VI (not under review here), "in this blood-soaked century, . . . the uncompromising violence of these plays, from which earlier generations have shrunk, [has] clearly struck a chord with modern performers and audiences."1 Ronald Knowles is offering a similar evaluation (and no mere historical observation) when he says that if Shakespeare had died in 1592, "2 Henry VI would remain as the greatest history play in early modern drama and one of the most exciting and dynamic plays of the English Renaissance theatre" (2).
Both new Arden volumes chronicle this theatrical rediscovery in useful detail, from Douglas Seale's Birmingham Repertory versions (brought to the Old Vie in 1953 and 1957) and Peter Flail and John Barton's groundbreaking Wars of the Roses trilogy (RSC, 1963) to the versions of Terry Hands (RSC, 1977), Michael Bogdanov (English Shakespeare Company, 1987-89), Adrian Noble (RSC, 1988), and Michael Boyd (RSC, 2000). Knowles accords greater prominence to the role of television in this revival of the plays, but Rasmussen more successfully conveys the topicality of these productions, in which Thatcherism, the Falklands War, and Bosnia supplied points of reference. Neither of these Arden3 editions appeared in time to take account of Edward...