1 00:00:00,140 --> 00:00:05,840 So this is the Putting Shakespeare series in this week, I'm going to talk about the early history of play. 2 00:00:05,840 --> 00:00:15,900 The second part of Henry, the sixth one going to be asking is how far or in what ways could we see this as an independent play? 3 00:00:15,900 --> 00:00:20,430 Do you remember when Alan Bennett's play, The Madness of George the Third was made into a film? 4 00:00:20,430 --> 00:00:27,180 It had to be retitled The Madness of King George because apparently American producers saw no 5 00:00:27,180 --> 00:00:31,670 one would go and see it if they hadn't seen the madness of George and the madness of George, 6 00:00:31,670 --> 00:00:37,920 too. What I want to try and think about is that question of surreality in this play. 7 00:00:37,920 --> 00:00:48,420 Who would go to a play called 206? And to think about Syria ality in Shakespeare's history more generally and then to ask how and in what ways, 8 00:00:48,420 --> 00:00:53,370 with what methods we might be able to interpret a play whose title tells us right 9 00:00:53,370 --> 00:01:01,910 from the start that it is incomplete or provisional or dependent on other texts. 10 00:01:01,910 --> 00:01:06,530 So the second part, Hemley, the sixth, is an early play. 11 00:01:06,530 --> 00:01:13,160 New Oxford Shakespeare that I've been talking about quite a bit this term, which came out in 2016. 12 00:01:13,160 --> 00:01:20,570 And these are sort of latest look at the chronology and the authorship of Shakespeare's plays. 13 00:01:20,570 --> 00:01:28,080 So that edition, the new Oxford Shakespeare, dates the second pilot, Henry, the sixth to around 15, 19, 15, 19. 14 00:01:28,080 --> 00:01:33,650 So that makes it the first history play, Shakespeare wrote. It comes the Oxford Shakespeare. 15 00:01:33,650 --> 00:01:38,550 It's preceded only by two gentlemen of Verona and Tax Tronic. 16 00:01:38,550 --> 00:01:48,420 That's. I talked a couple of weeks ago about recent arguments about collaboration, all's well that ends well. 17 00:01:48,420 --> 00:01:54,270 And in this play, too, we have a recent intervention on collaborative writing. 18 00:01:54,270 --> 00:02:06,120 The suggestion in the new Oxford Shakespeare is that Marlowe, Shakespeare and probably another writer and identified work together on this play. 19 00:02:06,120 --> 00:02:11,580 I'm not particularly going to engage with the question of joint or collaborative authorship, 20 00:02:11,580 --> 00:02:17,340 except when I talk briefly about conjuring and witchcraft later in the lecture. 21 00:02:17,340 --> 00:02:19,620 But it's a thing worth thinking about, 22 00:02:19,620 --> 00:02:32,340 not least because the critical or the interpretive implications of those new authorship designations published last year hasn't really been process. 23 00:02:32,340 --> 00:02:39,870 So you could be at the forefront of thinking, you know, in what way is 206 Malo's in play? 24 00:02:39,870 --> 00:02:45,660 How would it look different if we knew that Marlos model was one of the writers of it? 25 00:02:45,660 --> 00:02:47,610 How to Shakespeare's early work look different? 26 00:02:47,610 --> 00:02:55,980 I'm stressing that because it's one place where there's some leeway possible for you field to catch up. 27 00:02:55,980 --> 00:03:04,380 So let's start with an outline of what two Henry six is about. This is a highly episodic play, United. 28 00:03:04,380 --> 00:03:18,990 If it's united at all by the theme of disunity, basically the whole play is about dissent, disagreement and the many challenges to a weak King Henry. 29 00:03:18,990 --> 00:03:23,820 The six may have the play's title, but it doesn't have anything about it. 30 00:03:23,820 --> 00:03:35,290 Under control, factions at the court pitch Henry's formidable French wife, Margaret, against his Uncle Gloster. 31 00:03:35,290 --> 00:03:41,790 A rebellion of the people led by Jack Cade makes inroads into London. 32 00:03:41,790 --> 00:03:51,330 The Duke of York leads an army against King Henry. So the Commonwealth is at war in a turmoil of different groupings, 33 00:03:51,330 --> 00:03:57,760 which will eventually resolve themselves in the play's final battle sequence into the Yorkist. 34 00:03:57,760 --> 00:04:06,850 And the Lancaster wins the white roses and the red that we know as the protagonists in the Wars of the Roses. 35 00:04:06,850 --> 00:04:11,620 The shape of this play is broadly about the rise and fall of different characters. 36 00:04:11,620 --> 00:04:19,390 So rather than being upped around one character, it's a series of kind of waves of rise and fall. 37 00:04:19,390 --> 00:04:24,830 Gloucester, Suffolk, the Cardinal Jack Cade. 38 00:04:24,830 --> 00:04:32,320 And thus it follows something of the shape of mediaeval tragedy, which is known as Dade County bus tragedy. 39 00:04:32,320 --> 00:04:48,020 Catapults the genre of the four the princes. But it does that in a kind of wave effect, which includes several characters rather than just one. 40 00:04:48,020 --> 00:04:50,840 These characters are not necessarily literally princes, 41 00:04:50,840 --> 00:04:58,790 but the point about their county was tragedy in the mediaeval sense is that it is about socially elevated protagonists. 42 00:04:58,790 --> 00:05:00,560 The full all of these characters, 43 00:05:00,560 --> 00:05:12,350 the tragic fall of characters in a cosy bus tragedy is as much about social disgrace as it is about moral or spiritual decline. 44 00:05:12,350 --> 00:05:18,940 The play ends with a battle at St. Albans in which the Yorkist party are victorious, 45 00:05:18,940 --> 00:05:25,480 and they vowed to follow the defeated Henry and Margaret, who have fled to London. 46 00:05:25,480 --> 00:05:31,780 The play's very last lines are sound drums and trumpets and to London. 47 00:05:31,780 --> 00:05:37,210 All and more such days as these two ask before. 48 00:05:37,210 --> 00:05:42,260 So the couplet urges us to conclusion all before. 49 00:05:42,260 --> 00:05:50,950 But the actual sense of the lines is much more contingent. They promise to head off to London to continue the fight against the King. 50 00:05:50,950 --> 00:06:02,930 More such dates as these seems to establish the ending of the play as a pause for breath or a lull in the action rather than a structured conclusion. 51 00:06:02,930 --> 00:06:08,620 So I want to think a bit more about that notion of completeness or c reality for the next part of the lecture. 52 00:06:08,620 --> 00:06:11,960 Now what to think about the publishing history of the play. 53 00:06:11,960 --> 00:06:17,560 So to approach the question of spirituality in reading and then to think about the theatrical 54 00:06:17,560 --> 00:06:24,120 culture of the early fifteen nineties to think about the implications of surreality for performance. 55 00:06:24,120 --> 00:06:34,980 So first, publishing history. Last week, we saw that the Merry Wives of Windsor adapted its title between Quarto and Foleo publication. 56 00:06:34,980 --> 00:06:39,540 Something Much More Extreme happens to this week's play. 57 00:06:39,540 --> 00:06:42,960 The title to Henry six and a six. 58 00:06:42,960 --> 00:06:48,360 Part two comes from the First Folio in sixteen twenty three. 59 00:06:48,360 --> 00:06:56,260 You'll remember that this posthumous publication is divided into comedies, history and tragedies under the histories category. 60 00:06:56,260 --> 00:07:03,810 It's restricted to plays with the source material from mediaeval English history from King John 61 00:07:03,810 --> 00:07:15,120 who reigned in the man who reigned in the 13th century through to Henry the fifth in the 15th. 62 00:07:15,120 --> 00:07:21,510 It doesn't, for example, include King Lear or Macbeth, which were also based on historical sources. 63 00:07:21,510 --> 00:07:32,760 Nor does it include plays based on Roman histories. So the genre of history, as invented by the first phobia, is English and mediaeval. 64 00:07:32,760 --> 00:07:39,320 Henry the Eighth is a chronological outlier at the end of the list. 65 00:07:39,320 --> 00:07:44,370 It be what the Folio compilers have done is to reorder Shakespeare's history 66 00:07:44,370 --> 00:07:51,120 plays in chronological order of the monarchs and historical events discussed. 67 00:07:51,120 --> 00:08:03,870 So they put the plays on Richard the Second and Henry the fourth before those on Henry the Sixth, even though they were written afterwards. 68 00:08:03,870 --> 00:08:11,730 So to put it another way, like George Lucas making Star Wars, Shakespeare starts with the end of the story, 69 00:08:11,730 --> 00:08:20,250 the Wars of the Roses ending in the accession of Henry the seventh Richmond at the end of Richard the third. 70 00:08:20,250 --> 00:08:24,900 And then it has to do a series of prequels. Richard the second. 71 00:08:24,900 --> 00:08:28,860 Henry the fourth. Henry the Fifth. Like the Star Wars films. 72 00:08:28,860 --> 00:08:40,380 The order of the story trumps the order of composition when the plays are retitled or the numbered as a long series. 73 00:08:40,380 --> 00:08:49,810 And the titles change in the First Folio to focus more precisely on them that the monarchs as the organising principle. 74 00:08:49,810 --> 00:08:56,140 Thus the play that was published in CORTO in 15 98 as the history of Henry the 75 00:08:56,140 --> 00:09:01,450 fourth with the Battle of Shrewsbury between the King and Lord Harry Percy. 76 00:09:01,450 --> 00:09:11,020 Sir named Henry Hotspur of the North with the humorous conceits of Sir John Falstaff that become simply the first part of King Henry the Fourth. 77 00:09:11,020 --> 00:09:19,690 Those other titles who got title page building in the Quarto fall away to a more hierarchically ordered sense of historiography in the Folio. 78 00:09:19,690 --> 00:09:29,320 What counts is the names of the Kings. So it's the Folio catalogue that gives us the three parts of Henry the six. 79 00:09:29,320 --> 00:09:38,290 But this is the first time that the play we're talking about today as the second part of Henry the Sixth had been published under this title. 80 00:09:38,290 --> 00:09:43,810 It's the first time the play called The First Part of Henry the Six have been published at all. 81 00:09:43,810 --> 00:09:48,470 Now, this book gets a bit complicated, but let's have it. Let's have a go. 82 00:09:48,470 --> 00:09:55,160 The Foleo compilers allocate us a three part play and read the six parts one, two and three. 83 00:09:55,160 --> 00:10:02,340 Three texts which previously had different designations. There's a two part play plus a single play. 84 00:10:02,340 --> 00:10:08,210 So the trilogy in the Folio was originally two plus one. 85 00:10:08,210 --> 00:10:19,770 The Folios Part two was originally published as the first part of the contention betwixt the two famous houses of York and Lancaster. 86 00:10:19,770 --> 00:10:24,780 With the death of the good due comfrey, the punishment and death of the Duke of Suffolk, 87 00:10:24,780 --> 00:10:30,960 the tragical end of the proud Cardinal of Winchester with the notable rebellion of Jack Cade. 88 00:10:30,960 --> 00:10:42,540 That's in fifteen ninety four. So the first part of the contention betwixt the two famous houses of Lancaster, the play the Folio calls part three, 89 00:10:42,540 --> 00:10:49,080 came out the following year in fifteen ninety five as the true tragedy of Richard Duke of York and the 90 00:10:49,080 --> 00:10:59,050 death of good King Henry the sixth with the whole contention between the two houses of York and Lancaster. 91 00:10:59,050 --> 00:11:05,830 In 16, 19, these two plays the plays broadly that the FOLIA calls Henry six, 92 00:11:05,830 --> 00:11:12,820 Part two and three were published together as the whole contention between the two famous houses, 93 00:11:12,820 --> 00:11:17,830 Lancaster and York, with the tragical ends of the good Duke Humphrey, 94 00:11:17,830 --> 00:11:25,930 Richard Duke of York and Henry, the six divided into two parts, a newly corrected and enlarged. 95 00:11:25,930 --> 00:11:34,000 So the title, the whole contention and the idea of divided into two parts suggests that these two parts 96 00:11:34,000 --> 00:11:40,300 comprise a single narrative movement rather than being two distinct and separate plays. 97 00:11:40,300 --> 00:11:43,720 You can follow all this tightly from the website I've mentioned before. 98 00:11:43,720 --> 00:11:50,610 Shakespeare documented the org, which has title pages of all Shakespeare's plays in print, as well as other documents. 99 00:11:50,610 --> 00:12:02,860 Parker's Life and Works. The play that the Foleo prefixes to this part as Henry, the six part one, had not been previously published, 100 00:12:02,860 --> 00:12:12,520 and thus both compositional chronology and Titli have been redrawn in order to produce a three part play in the Folio. 101 00:12:12,520 --> 00:12:20,200 One of the functions of the Folio sustained retitling here is to foreground the character of Henry the Six, perhaps implicitly, 102 00:12:20,200 --> 00:12:32,320 to consolidate his hold on the throne despite or perhaps because the king's relatively minor role in these three plays that bear his name. 103 00:12:32,320 --> 00:12:40,280 The business of the three phrase is the sustained, dramatic and political challenges to Henry's sovereignty. 104 00:12:40,280 --> 00:12:47,140 But the Folio reinstates the king's name. The head of his plays against the flow of the stories within the plays, 105 00:12:47,140 --> 00:12:53,800 which are really about the extent to which Henry does not control the narrative of his own country. 106 00:12:53,800 --> 00:13:01,420 Now, performing Shakespeare's history plays in longer or shorter sequences became in the twentieth century, 107 00:13:01,420 --> 00:13:08,180 but not before the most common way to see them on stage. 108 00:13:08,180 --> 00:13:15,890 I'll talk about in a minute. It's pretty unusual to see Henry the sixth Part two as a stand alone play in a theatre repertory. 109 00:13:15,890 --> 00:13:26,860 Now. Serial performance in the theatre was in step with a certain line of critical thinking. 110 00:13:26,860 --> 00:13:34,990 He NWT Yards influential reading of Shakespeare's history plays in a book published in 1944. 111 00:13:34,990 --> 00:13:39,010 Established Sequential Interpretation as the norm, 112 00:13:39,010 --> 00:13:47,560 Tilyard read Shakespeare's history plays as two distinct series, which had a collective political interpretation. 113 00:13:47,560 --> 00:13:53,740 He divided the history, plays into two tech challenges groups of four. 114 00:13:53,740 --> 00:13:59,740 The first was the Henry the six plays and Richard the third and the second Richard the second. 115 00:13:59,740 --> 00:14:03,730 Henry the fourth. Part one and two. And Henry the fifth. 116 00:14:03,730 --> 00:14:11,410 And what Juilliard stressed was the cumulative unfolding of what he influentially called the Tudor myth, 117 00:14:11,410 --> 00:14:18,100 the Tudor myth, the after idea about the obsession of the Tudors on the defeat of Richard. 118 00:14:18,100 --> 00:14:27,250 The third was narrative bias across all the history plays as the providential restitution of rightful sovereignty accorded, to tell ya. 119 00:14:27,250 --> 00:14:35,620 This had been interrupted by the murder of Richard for a second and then expiated through all the bloodletting of the wars of the roses. 120 00:14:35,620 --> 00:14:41,890 So it was an argument about sequential reading, which was very much Foleo base, 121 00:14:41,890 --> 00:14:46,690 because it was about reading the plays in the chronological order of historical 122 00:14:46,690 --> 00:14:51,400 events rather than experiencing them in the order of their composition. 123 00:14:51,400 --> 00:14:57,160 And we might just in brackets, note the dates of Tilyard Book 1944. 124 00:14:57,160 --> 00:15:03,550 It might have been exactly the point at which you would have wanted to see a whole series of terrible, 125 00:15:03,550 --> 00:15:09,190 violent events leading inexorably, providentially to a happy conclusion. 126 00:15:09,190 --> 00:15:17,140 So Tilyard writing as much about the end of the Second World War as he is about the wars of the roses. 127 00:15:17,140 --> 00:15:26,110 But the printed sequence of history plays had for too large an ideological under conservatively ideological interpretation. 128 00:15:26,110 --> 00:15:35,210 Broadly, everything was gonna be okay if you took the history as a unit and kept on reading to the end. 129 00:15:35,210 --> 00:15:39,550 And fertility at the end was the coronation of Richmond, December the 7th. 130 00:15:39,550 --> 00:15:49,230 First to the monarch at the end of the play, Richard the third. So Tilyard is an extreme formal and ideological surreality. 131 00:15:49,230 --> 00:15:57,570 The moral and structural conclusion of the action is deferred until the play he imagines as the final episode in the sequence. 132 00:15:57,570 --> 00:16:11,670 Richard, the third. So the whole sequence of the history plays into the artery is to your optical and the turnoffs is the accession of the Tudors. 133 00:16:11,670 --> 00:16:17,830 I talk a little bit about this high pressure teleology and how it distorts or even deforms. 134 00:16:17,830 --> 00:16:27,970 Richard, the third in the lecture on that plane and it might be worth remembering in passing that the use of the word tetralogy as a subdivision 135 00:16:27,970 --> 00:16:41,260 to Shakespeare's history plays comes from Tilyard and is already perhaps inflected with this conservative Taleo logical ideology. 136 00:16:41,260 --> 00:16:46,520 So let's look back to the Corto complications, bringing out the second part time, 137 00:16:46,520 --> 00:16:52,090 Henry, the sixth, as the first part of the contention betwixt the two houses of York. 138 00:16:52,090 --> 00:16:56,140 And Lancaster also acknowledges it's not a complete perp play. 139 00:16:56,140 --> 00:17:05,090 It's the first part, part of a series. But the suggestion that something will come after the play is less destabilising, 140 00:17:05,090 --> 00:17:10,040 I think, to its integrity than the suggestion that something has already come before. 141 00:17:10,040 --> 00:17:18,820 So that's to say a political part. One has a claim to work on its own terms, even if unfinished, to play playful part two perhaps doesn't. 142 00:17:18,820 --> 00:17:25,740 Because you already feel you're running to catch up. If you if you if you pick up the story with part two. 143 00:17:25,740 --> 00:17:30,580 That quarter publication also doesn't mention King Henry at all. 144 00:17:30,580 --> 00:17:34,180 We get to as part of the extended title that I read out, 145 00:17:34,180 --> 00:17:43,180 that series of episodic rise and fall narratives that I already mentioned, Humphrey Suffolk, the Cardinal, the rebel Jack Cage. 146 00:17:43,180 --> 00:17:51,260 And the play is titled For Struggle Contention between York and Lancaster Rather Than After the Nominal King. 147 00:17:51,260 --> 00:18:00,740 So the quarter makes it clear that what the subject of the play is is struggle and dissent, not a monarch. 148 00:18:00,740 --> 00:18:06,930 And I think the title also emphasises the linear connectedness of its events, the destruction of the good view. 149 00:18:06,930 --> 00:18:14,470 Humphrey leads to the destruction of those who brought him down, suffered and the cardinal without Humphrey. 150 00:18:14,470 --> 00:18:22,260 York is left unchecked and the rebellion of Jack Kemp players and foreshadows his rise. 151 00:18:22,260 --> 00:18:26,260 The publication in 16 19 of this play, together with Part three, 152 00:18:26,260 --> 00:18:33,160 the play published as the true tragedy of Richard Duke of York as a two part play called The Whole Contention, 153 00:18:33,160 --> 00:18:35,110 suggests that in the early 17th century, 154 00:18:35,110 --> 00:18:41,980 these two plays and these two plays alone in Shakespeare's histories were thought to have a particular serial affinity. 155 00:18:41,980 --> 00:18:47,380 There are no other joint publications of Shakespeare's history plays during this period. 156 00:18:47,380 --> 00:18:52,270 There's no Henry. The fourth part one and two published together, for instance. 157 00:18:52,270 --> 00:18:57,400 So many critics have felt that the claims to serial unity of the Henry the Sixth 158 00:18:57,400 --> 00:19:04,210 plays are stronger than any similar claims we might make for the later historians. 159 00:19:04,210 --> 00:19:11,890 So the publishing history of this play seems, I think, to point to its intrinsic dependence on other plays. 160 00:19:11,890 --> 00:19:22,840 It does not look like a stand alone play in print. The Folio suggests that there is a necessary episode both before and after this one. 161 00:19:22,840 --> 00:19:29,650 The 50 94 Quarto suggests this is the opening part of a longer sequence, 162 00:19:29,650 --> 00:19:41,290 and the 16 19 publication suggests that that sequence consists of two plays the plates the Folio calls having the six parts, two and three. 163 00:19:41,290 --> 00:19:47,590 I hope you still make too many numbers in this election. 164 00:19:47,590 --> 00:19:52,630 Let's move from thinking about publication to thinking about performance. 165 00:19:52,630 --> 00:20:01,300 Now, we know that from the beginning of the 15 nineties, there is a vogue for two part plays in the theatre, 166 00:20:01,300 --> 00:20:10,660 most famous, perhaps a marlos to Tamburlaine plays printed by Richard Jones in 50 90 as Tamburlaine, 167 00:20:10,660 --> 00:20:20,740 the great title page says, divided into two tragical discourses as there were sundry times showed upon stages 168 00:20:20,740 --> 00:20:27,460 in the city of London to tumble in the great divided into two tragical discourses. 169 00:20:27,460 --> 00:20:36,940 So some two part plays are presented as this one is in print, at least as one big play divided into two. 170 00:20:36,940 --> 00:20:47,050 But probably there were as much about the commercial success of the first part as they were a preplanned, artistically motivated structural decision. 171 00:20:47,050 --> 00:20:53,980 That's to say they were more like Legally Blonde two or X-Men two sequels that tried to recap 172 00:20:53,980 --> 00:21:00,490 the financial success of the first part than they were like Peter Jackson's Tolkien trilogies, 173 00:21:00,490 --> 00:21:05,950 films conceived from the start as multipart narratives. Now, 174 00:21:05,950 --> 00:21:11,470 we know from modern examples of Part two films that the relationship between the 175 00:21:11,470 --> 00:21:17,830 two parts tends to be less about narrative completion than about repetition. 176 00:21:17,830 --> 00:21:22,060 The second part tries to do what was so successful about the first part. 177 00:21:22,060 --> 00:21:31,000 Again, you don't really need to know the first part because the second part does it essentially the same. 178 00:21:31,000 --> 00:21:35,680 And that, incidentally, is probably why Part two tend not to succeed, 179 00:21:35,680 --> 00:21:45,740 because the aspect of the first part that by definition they cannot reproduce is its originality. 180 00:21:45,740 --> 00:21:49,250 But Henslow, his diary. The Diary of Philip Henslow, 181 00:21:49,250 --> 00:21:57,470 which is a document of performance and of the finances of the admiral's man at the rose at the rivals to Shakespeare's company, 182 00:21:57,470 --> 00:22:00,180 gives us some different information. 183 00:22:00,180 --> 00:22:12,020 Pantalones list of performances in the early 50s, 90s, give a number of examples of two part or sequel plays being performed on consecutive days. 184 00:22:12,020 --> 00:22:15,110 So that's something much closer to the modern performance tradition. 185 00:22:15,110 --> 00:22:25,070 We might be able to get tickets for plays that don't seem to be in a sequential relation to each other for the same day or for consecutive days. 186 00:22:25,070 --> 00:22:33,360 Plays called the first part of Hercules and the second part of Hercules plays don't exist anymore. 187 00:22:33,360 --> 00:22:42,740 Were regularly performed in tandem, as if really to get the full story of Hercules, you would want to go to both parties. 188 00:22:42,740 --> 00:22:49,490 And there are similar entries for parts one and two of Tamburlaine and of a play Hensler called Caesar. 189 00:22:49,490 --> 00:22:59,240 During that period. So that makes it clear that for Henslow, at least consecutive programming of related plays or serial plays was relatively common. 190 00:22:59,240 --> 00:23:06,140 But the diary also makes clear that PAD or sequel plays could also be performed independently. 191 00:23:06,140 --> 00:23:13,240 There are numerous separate entries divided by days or weeks for each distinct part of Tumblin, 192 00:23:13,240 --> 00:23:22,640 so that suggests you could go and see Tomberlin Part one in May and Tomberlin Part two in June, or indeed vice versa. 193 00:23:22,640 --> 00:23:28,340 The evidence from performance scheduling does suggest both that there was a commercial space for 194 00:23:28,340 --> 00:23:35,750 consecutive programming and that both parts of two part planes were seen as autonomous and sound standing. 195 00:23:35,750 --> 00:23:41,600 So there was apparently an audience for a serial experience and an audience for separate experiences. 196 00:23:41,600 --> 00:23:47,940 The players could be, but weren't necessarily seen as interdependent. 197 00:23:47,940 --> 00:23:52,130 Now, we don't have any similar evidence about Shakespeare's history plays, 198 00:23:52,130 --> 00:23:57,740 and we don't know whether they were ever originally performed on consecutive days 199 00:23:57,740 --> 00:24:03,890 or in a kind of scheduling programme which stresses the fact that are serial. 200 00:24:03,890 --> 00:24:12,300 Instead, we can see that see reality in the Foleo is an editorial process, rather perhaps than a theatrical one. 201 00:24:12,300 --> 00:24:23,180 The specific editorial interventions of the Foleo text serve to build a sequence of plays out of a number of previously separately printed, 202 00:24:23,180 --> 00:24:28,670 variously performed, individually titled Works. 203 00:24:28,670 --> 00:24:40,310 More recent collected editions of the plays in the 20th late 20th century tend to organise Shakespeare's plays by chronology rather than by genre. 204 00:24:40,310 --> 00:24:46,430 And if you look at two in addition, which does die, you can see a much more broken up pattern for these plays. 205 00:24:46,430 --> 00:24:51,470 The Oxford edition gives us the second and third parts of Henry the six Titus Andronicus, 206 00:24:51,470 --> 00:24:56,220 then the first part of Henry the six, then Richard the third, which is the second Merry Wives of Windsor. 207 00:24:56,220 --> 00:25:05,780 So you can see that that's a very different order of plays from what the Folio gives us, which suggests the history are grouped together. 208 00:25:05,780 --> 00:25:11,960 This fractured experience of the English history plays in time gives more structural 209 00:25:11,960 --> 00:25:18,080 and dramatic significance to the individual plans as complete theatrical experiences. 210 00:25:18,080 --> 00:25:26,510 It suggests that if you a play goer in the early 50 nineties, you may well have seen these historical plays spread out at long intervals, 211 00:25:26,510 --> 00:25:30,590 interspersed by lots of other plays by Shakespeare and by others. 212 00:25:30,590 --> 00:25:37,220 So it wouldn't really necessarily experience them in the theatre as a series. 213 00:25:37,220 --> 00:25:42,570 But there are ways in which the history plays content, not just the stuff I've been talking about, 214 00:25:42,570 --> 00:25:48,470 but titles and publishing lend them to forms of serial reading. 215 00:25:48,470 --> 00:25:58,580 So in the second part of Henry the Six, for instance, we begin with the introduction of the French Princess Margaret, who is married to King Henry. 216 00:25:58,580 --> 00:26:08,590 She's been brought from France by the Earl of Suffolk, who has wooed and married her by proxy for King Henry. 217 00:26:08,590 --> 00:26:12,770 So that's the play. That's the way the second part of the six begins. 218 00:26:12,770 --> 00:26:23,250 Now, the end of the first part of Henry the Six gives us Suffolk wooing Makara because it gives us the bit immediately before this. 219 00:26:23,250 --> 00:26:30,230 And and it's the scene in which we realised that Suffolk is not only wooing by proxy, but he's wound for himself. 220 00:26:30,230 --> 00:26:37,580 Suffolk and Margaret's affair continues until his death in part two. 221 00:26:37,580 --> 00:26:41,540 So we might feel that when the second part of Henry the Sixth begins with the 222 00:26:41,540 --> 00:26:48,800 introduction of Margaret to Henry with Suffolk present that we ought to know about, 223 00:26:48,800 --> 00:26:55,340 that this is already you know, we look at how this has happened in the French court from the end of the previous play. 224 00:26:55,340 --> 00:27:05,000 I'm not completely sure that's true. The fact that we know there is a part one makes us feel that Part two must be dependent on it. 225 00:27:05,000 --> 00:27:12,480 But in fact, the major theme of Part one, which is Tolbert victories over Joan of Arc, is never mentioned again. 226 00:27:12,480 --> 00:27:22,400 It's never mentioned in part two, nor is Joan of Arc, because if we've completely forgotten that backstory. 227 00:27:22,400 --> 00:27:27,800 Perhaps we could see Suffolk's wooing of Marguerita something similar. 228 00:27:27,800 --> 00:27:35,360 After all, from the opening part of Henry, the six part to the introduction of Margaret to Henry, 229 00:27:35,360 --> 00:27:41,900 we can easily imagine back what must have happened before, because that's what we do in all of Shakespeare's plays. 230 00:27:41,900 --> 00:27:46,790 All Shakespeare's plays begin in media res in the in the middle of things. 231 00:27:46,790 --> 00:27:55,820 And we have to deduce what happened before the play begins, just as we have to imagine that something may happen after the play ends. 232 00:27:55,820 --> 00:28:03,200 Part of the job of interpreting plays is to get a handle on the part of the plot that is just out of sight. 233 00:28:03,200 --> 00:28:10,220 For example, why does King Lear set up the love test to test his daughters? 234 00:28:10,220 --> 00:28:14,830 If we knew there was a King Lear part one, we might expect that that would tell us. 235 00:28:14,830 --> 00:28:22,250 And that therefore, the King Lear we've got to now call King Lear part two looks incomplete. 236 00:28:22,250 --> 00:28:29,510 But we know that's not the case. The point about King Lear is that we don't know for sure what happened before. 237 00:28:29,510 --> 00:28:33,890 Part of our job in reading the play is to try and put it together from what we 238 00:28:33,890 --> 00:28:40,130 have and from what we can glean from the characters in the in the current plan. 239 00:28:40,130 --> 00:28:44,660 That's part of the work of the pleasure of Shakespeare's drama. 240 00:28:44,660 --> 00:28:53,540 So the fact that there are plot elements and events that precede this play called the second part of the six isn't at all unique to a history play. 241 00:28:53,540 --> 00:29:02,500 It's an aspect of Shakespeare plays more generally, which have a strong sense that things have happened before we came in on that story. 242 00:29:02,500 --> 00:29:10,810 And similarly, the idea that not everything is tied up and finished at the end has its parallels in other Shakespeare plays, 243 00:29:10,810 --> 00:29:17,800 where we're not expecting that there will literally be another play that will tell us what comes next. 244 00:29:17,800 --> 00:29:21,310 These narrative hooks backwards and forwards starts to say, 245 00:29:21,310 --> 00:29:26,950 take on more prominence in our understanding of the history of play structure because we're already conditioned 246 00:29:26,950 --> 00:29:34,300 to think that the plays connected to the other players that follow or precede it in historical sequence. 247 00:29:34,300 --> 00:29:40,630 And these are these are the same forming devices that in a different kind of play would be read as gesturing 248 00:29:40,630 --> 00:29:49,720 outside the frame of the drama to an ongoing life for the characters before and after this particular segment. 249 00:29:49,720 --> 00:29:54,860 So so far then, I've been talking about Henry 206 as a serial drama, 250 00:29:54,860 --> 00:30:05,720 using some of the information from its publishing history in individual then serial quarto form and its inclusion in retitling in the 16th 23 folio. 251 00:30:05,720 --> 00:30:13,130 We can see from this that there's lots of evidence to suggest that the play isn't quite a fully autonomous artistic creation, 252 00:30:13,130 --> 00:30:15,950 but that it is part of a larger narrative. 253 00:30:15,950 --> 00:30:27,590 And depending on your narrative tastes, you could say that that larger narrative comprises one additional play or two or three or eight, 254 00:30:27,590 --> 00:30:32,680 depending how extend if you want the historical serial to be to. 255 00:30:32,680 --> 00:30:38,680 What Tilyard felt was that this was a sequence of eight plays. 256 00:30:38,680 --> 00:30:43,960 But what I wanted to try and do now for the rest of the lecture is to try and argue for the opposite of that, 257 00:30:43,960 --> 00:30:51,790 to argue for an internal coherence and consistency to this play that would enable us to look at it, 258 00:30:51,790 --> 00:30:56,770 to experience it and to enjoy it as an autonomous play. 259 00:30:56,770 --> 00:31:09,490 That's just one one play that we might read or go and see and not a play which is automatically dependant and therefore incomplete. 260 00:31:09,490 --> 00:31:12,250 I've said that the elements of that second part of the six, 261 00:31:12,250 --> 00:31:20,320 that gesture backwards to prior events or forwards to future ones look like the formal properties of serial narrative 262 00:31:20,320 --> 00:31:29,790 making use of prolapse sense or anticipation and other lapses or retrospection to structure a larger sweep of history. 263 00:31:29,790 --> 00:31:38,530 But I've also suggested that similar gestures outside the frame of a particular play in other genres look like aspects of verisimilitude. 264 00:31:38,530 --> 00:31:44,080 We're just getting a slice of these characters lives or like the unknowability about motives. 265 00:31:44,080 --> 00:31:48,850 That is such an important part of Shakespeare's plays. We very rarely know in Shakespeare. 266 00:31:48,850 --> 00:31:54,060 Why characters do certain things. We know instead what the consequences are. 267 00:31:54,060 --> 00:31:57,520 There is no Shakespeare play I can think of that doesn't refer to events that 268 00:31:57,520 --> 00:32:04,000 happened before the play begins or leave open some aspect of what might happen next. 269 00:32:04,000 --> 00:32:07,660 So if we were to try and ignore those elements of the second part of Hannant, 270 00:32:07,660 --> 00:32:12,850 the sixth author suggests that they don't need the other episodes to be stabilised. 271 00:32:12,850 --> 00:32:19,360 What might the plane look like? So I want to spend the rest of this lecture talking about the claims. 272 00:32:19,360 --> 00:32:22,480 The second part of Henry the Six has on our attention. 273 00:32:22,480 --> 00:32:33,840 And I want to talk particularly about its structure, its depiction of rebellion and briefly about its female characters. 274 00:32:33,840 --> 00:32:40,600 I'm not actually sure it's in that order. Do rebellion first. Now, Jack, Cades, 275 00:32:40,600 --> 00:32:50,260 rebellion in the play is the shadow version of the numerous threats to monarchical government posed by the play's different factions. 276 00:32:50,260 --> 00:32:57,400 That's to say, oh, there is an uprising of common people who are identified by their occupations. 277 00:32:57,400 --> 00:33:07,720 I do think it's absolutely distinct in kind from the rebellions and uprisings of the noble characters in the play. 278 00:33:07,720 --> 00:33:15,880 So the popular uprising of the people amplifies and echoes other insurrections against authorities. 279 00:33:15,880 --> 00:33:24,370 Now, Kate, representation in the play is really interesting. I think he is mentioned, but he does not appear until at four. 280 00:33:24,370 --> 00:33:34,210 So one aspect of an episodic play is the characters are not woven through the entire structure, but they appear in quite localised parts of the play. 281 00:33:34,210 --> 00:33:45,350 And Kate is part of the play is really apt for. One argument about that episodic plays in the early 15 nineties is that they can be rehearsed. 282 00:33:45,350 --> 00:33:52,360 It's a practical one. They can be rehearsed separately. You don't have characters who interact with all the other characters in the play. 283 00:33:52,360 --> 00:33:58,690 You have little groupings of characters and they can rehearse that bits and then put them all together relatively easily. 284 00:33:58,690 --> 00:34:03,920 So there may be a practical reason for this episodic construction. 285 00:34:03,920 --> 00:34:10,880 When he does appear in Act four, he claims to have royal blood and boasts what he will do when he is crowned king. 286 00:34:10,880 --> 00:34:17,900 So like everybody else in the play, he wants to be king and all shall eat and drink on my skull. 287 00:34:17,900 --> 00:34:25,340 And I will apparel the mall in one livery that they may agree like brothers and worship me their Lord. 288 00:34:25,340 --> 00:34:33,530 The first thing you do remarks is Comrade in arms Dick the Butcher famously, let's kill all the lawyers. 289 00:34:33,530 --> 00:34:43,490 And this statement takes Kate's utopianism with something more violently Class-Based and distinctly anti intellectual. 290 00:34:43,490 --> 00:34:48,980 As the messenger tells the King about the rebels arrival in Sabat all scholars, 291 00:34:48,980 --> 00:34:56,810 lawyers, courtiers, gentlemen they call false caterpillars and inten their death. 292 00:34:56,810 --> 00:35:08,870 The rebels kind of clark because he is able to write and they turn to capture noblemen with the charge particularly of subsidising education. 293 00:35:08,870 --> 00:35:15,920 Thou hast most traitorously corrupted the use of the youth of the realm in erecting a grammar school. 294 00:35:15,920 --> 00:35:21,170 And whereas before our forefathers had no other books but the score on the tally, 295 00:35:21,170 --> 00:35:29,540 thou hast caused printing to be used and contrary to the king, his crown and dignity that has built a paper mill. 296 00:35:29,540 --> 00:35:39,320 Really interesting how clearly Kate's rebellion has set not in fact so much against the King as against the educated classes. 297 00:35:39,320 --> 00:35:45,470 And what's different about those classes is not the richer, but that they're educated. 298 00:35:45,470 --> 00:35:47,630 In the BBC television version of the play, 299 00:35:47,630 --> 00:36:00,260 directed by Jane Howl in the 1980s and interpolated book burning scene at this point reminiscent of Nazi Germany, demonised Kate and his rebellion. 300 00:36:00,260 --> 00:36:05,210 And there are lots of critics who argue that Shakespeare's representation of the rebels, 301 00:36:05,210 --> 00:36:15,170 especially if Kaid is notably more savage and less sympathetic than his sources in the Chronicle history by Apollinaire Shadow that would call. 302 00:36:15,170 --> 00:36:19,970 So this might fit with a general sense of anti populism in Shakespeare's plays. 303 00:36:19,970 --> 00:36:27,560 The disdain with which he treats the self-interested Roman populace in Julius Caesar and Coriolanus, for instance. 304 00:36:27,560 --> 00:36:32,540 There's lots of evidence that Shakespeare is no Democrat. 305 00:36:32,540 --> 00:36:44,320 Recent performance tradition is quite a good way to trace this negative version of Kay as a populist or thuggish leader of an ignorant mob. 306 00:36:44,320 --> 00:36:53,850 And it's also worth thinking why this character was cut entirely in the BBC, its recent Hollow Crown series. 307 00:36:53,850 --> 00:36:56,310 But as in other Shakespearean examples, 308 00:36:56,310 --> 00:37:05,190 there is a more nuanced or perhaps sympathetic Kaid in one early text than the one the editorial tradition tends to privilege. 309 00:37:05,190 --> 00:37:11,460 We've already talked about the different title and therefore the different placing of this play in the quarter, the full year. 310 00:37:11,460 --> 00:37:16,080 I just want to mention the difference in the staging of page death in these two versions 311 00:37:16,080 --> 00:37:23,010 to remind you of how worthwhile it can be to look at specific scenes in different texts, 312 00:37:23,010 --> 00:37:25,580 different early texts where they exist, 313 00:37:25,580 --> 00:37:36,480 and to suggest that these contrasting presentations give two different versions of the rebel leader in the Folio text of sixteen twenty three. 314 00:37:36,480 --> 00:37:41,130 Cade is fleeing for his life after the break up of his rebellion. 315 00:37:41,130 --> 00:37:45,840 He climbs into a walled garden to find food. 316 00:37:45,840 --> 00:37:54,330 He has a soliloquy which begins five on Ambition's Enter the landowner, 317 00:37:54,330 --> 00:38:00,840 Alexander Eden, who is musing to himself about how his garden is his own kingdom. 318 00:38:00,840 --> 00:38:12,060 You can see clearly the analogy between Kate's intrusion to this walled garden and the larger threat caused by rebellious nobles to the monarchy. 319 00:38:12,060 --> 00:38:21,510 Eden asks Who would live turmoil in the court when such pleasant walks as his garden are available? 320 00:38:21,510 --> 00:38:26,440 He proclaims himself unconcerned by wealth and worldly success. 321 00:38:26,440 --> 00:38:31,350 Cage, though, fears that Eden will earn money from killing him. 322 00:38:31,350 --> 00:38:40,410 The two men fight. Kate is slaying. It's only day Eden realises who Kate is that he's this notable rebel. 323 00:38:40,410 --> 00:38:49,050 He vows to cut off Guy most ungracious head, which I will back in triumph to the king. 324 00:38:49,050 --> 00:38:58,020 The very next scene shows the Duke of York leading a rebel Irish army coming to take the crown from Henry's head. 325 00:38:58,020 --> 00:39:07,410 So in that characteristic patterning of the play, no sooner is cage threat contained through his stack than another one rises up hydra like. 326 00:39:07,410 --> 00:39:11,290 This time it's the Duke of York. 327 00:39:11,290 --> 00:39:23,200 What this offers is a cage who is confident and assertive even as he dies, fighting the man who represents the rural landowning class in the quarter. 328 00:39:23,200 --> 00:39:27,880 The encounter is rather different. There's no wry soliloquy from Cade. 329 00:39:27,880 --> 00:39:35,710 And instead, the stage direction sets up an unequal contest. Enter Jack Cave at one door and up the other. 330 00:39:35,710 --> 00:39:39,790 Master Alexander Edan and his men and Jack Cave. 331 00:39:39,790 --> 00:39:44,470 Lines down, picking of herbs and eating them. 332 00:39:44,470 --> 00:39:52,270 It's one of a number of quite expansive stage directions in the quarter of this play that I think would be worthy of investigation on their own. 333 00:39:52,270 --> 00:39:55,240 But what it gives us is a doubly disadvantaged. Okay. 334 00:39:55,240 --> 00:40:02,620 He's outnumbered by Edon master Alexander Eaton and his men and he is overshadowed or loomed over. 335 00:40:02,620 --> 00:40:07,420 He's lying on the ground like an animal eating leaves while eating. 336 00:40:07,420 --> 00:40:18,640 Then his men stand up. You can see that that stage picture is absolutely a picture in which Eden, Eden and his men have the upper hand. 337 00:40:18,640 --> 00:40:25,150 And Cade is a pathetic, diminished rather cat. 338 00:40:25,150 --> 00:40:31,960 Even a sympathetic character is the underdog. Good Lord, how pleasant is this country? 339 00:40:31,960 --> 00:40:33,310 Says Eden. 340 00:40:33,310 --> 00:40:43,570 Which sounds when on the stage is a starving man trying to live off grass, struggling next to him, rather complacent, imagining the scene on stage. 341 00:40:43,570 --> 00:40:48,550 As I say, it's hard not to admit some pity for Kate's wretched state. 342 00:40:48,550 --> 00:40:54,750 The power balance of this version of the scene is distinctly different from the Foleo version we looked at before. 343 00:40:54,750 --> 00:40:59,070 And it seems that if we were trying to assess how Shakespeare depicts Kate, 344 00:40:59,070 --> 00:41:07,030 it would be important to analyse the emotional differences between these two possible stagings. 345 00:41:07,030 --> 00:41:16,120 Now, if Jack Kate is one of the play's most remarkable characters, perhaps it's other particularly stage worthy stage won't be a dramatic moment. 346 00:41:16,120 --> 00:41:25,000 Is the representation of Eleanor, the Duchess of Gloucester, Elena's husband, Gloucester, is Henry's uncle and the Lord Protector. 347 00:41:25,000 --> 00:41:34,030 She has ambitions to become queen. And dreams that she is being crowned in Westminster Abbey with Henry and Margaret meeting beforehand. 348 00:41:34,030 --> 00:41:43,750 There's no love lost between Queen Margaret and Eleanor, who take every opportunity to have a bit of a catfight in order to achieve her ambitions. 349 00:41:43,750 --> 00:41:51,010 Eleanor consults with a witch, Marjorie Jordan, and a conjurer called Roger Bolingbrook. 350 00:41:51,010 --> 00:42:00,130 There's a magic scene in which Bowling Brook conjures up a spirit inside a circle who answers questions about the fate of the king and his ministers. 351 00:42:00,130 --> 00:42:06,370 While Eleanor watches from above, it's been set up to discredit and destroy Eleanor. 352 00:42:06,370 --> 00:42:13,180 But it's a highly dramatic scene that could be usefully compared with Macbeth, which is perhaps more interestingly, 353 00:42:13,180 --> 00:42:18,610 given that work on the play's authorship that I mentioned at the beginning with Marlos Dr. Fasters. 354 00:42:18,610 --> 00:42:27,040 It certainly looks, Bonnie. It looks as if he sets up a magic circle to conjure spirits very much as far the stars. 355 00:42:27,040 --> 00:42:33,070 While striking about it, though, is the prominence of roles for women in this play. 356 00:42:33,070 --> 00:42:37,510 Shakespeare's histories are often criticised for their masculine cast and for 357 00:42:37,510 --> 00:42:42,010 the way they place women like Hotspurs wife Kate in the first part of Henry, 358 00:42:42,010 --> 00:42:47,140 the fourth in subservient or marginal positions away from the power play. 359 00:42:47,140 --> 00:42:54,730 That structures the main narrative. This is not true of the Henry the six plays or of Richard the third, 360 00:42:54,730 --> 00:43:05,560 and the role of powerful political women is one of the play's real sources of in-transit, i.e., not serial interests. 361 00:43:05,560 --> 00:43:11,940 The final point I want to bring out is something about the place structure. 362 00:43:11,940 --> 00:43:18,510 Throughout the second part of Henry the Six, there are shared images and the poetry of repetition is easy, 363 00:43:18,510 --> 00:43:28,470 for example, to pull out images of rising and falling that accompany and articulate that their canticles structure. 364 00:43:28,470 --> 00:43:35,840 But what might be more compelling about the play is the dramaturgical equivalent of those poetic repetitions. 365 00:43:35,840 --> 00:43:42,560 A sense of overlayed action amplified through repeated stage tumblin. 366 00:43:42,560 --> 00:43:53,180 We might call this a material or physical form of concatenation, the kind of poetic repetition, verbal repetition which is here rendered visual. 367 00:43:53,180 --> 00:44:02,160 There are lots of ways to imagine repeated a quick stage business in this play groups of characters and stage arrangements. 368 00:44:02,160 --> 00:44:14,530 But it just want to pick out two props in particular. The first prop is the bed in which to Comfrey is murdered, which becomes a few scenes later, 369 00:44:14,530 --> 00:44:22,880 the same bag who's drawn curtains reveal the MÃ¥rten cardinal who is haunted by Humphris ghost. 370 00:44:22,880 --> 00:44:28,720 The shared prop. That's to say, does the visual work of connexion and causation. 371 00:44:28,720 --> 00:44:34,990 That can be hard to follow in the play's tangled rivalries and affiliations. 372 00:44:34,990 --> 00:44:39,030 But the visual connexion makes the connexion between these two actions. 373 00:44:39,030 --> 00:44:49,270 The death of Humphrey and the death of the cards is quite clear. And the second problem is that of the severed head. 374 00:44:49,270 --> 00:44:59,200 Gloster dreams that the heads of Summerset and Suffolk were placed on his own broken stuff, and this turns out to be a kind of premonition Cades. 375 00:44:59,200 --> 00:45:03,430 As we've seen, it's taken off to London by Alexander Eden. 376 00:45:03,430 --> 00:45:13,210 Suffolk's is delivered to his lover queen Margaret. The curiously laconic stage director in the quarter reads, Enter the key reading of a letter. 377 00:45:13,210 --> 00:45:19,220 And the queen with the Duke of Suffolks Head and the Lords say with others. 378 00:45:19,220 --> 00:45:28,120 It was a rather brilliant version of these planes performed by Edward Hall's company Propellor called Rose Rage. 379 00:45:28,120 --> 00:45:42,130 And they used red cabbages and cleavers to signal that chopping off of heads was an amazing kind of a sound of chopping through that dense cabbage, 380 00:45:42,130 --> 00:45:49,330 which suggested this repeated action of cutting the cutting off of heads. 381 00:45:49,330 --> 00:45:55,540 So what these and other examples might suggest, these examples of internal repetition or Echo might suggest, 382 00:45:55,540 --> 00:45:59,830 is that there is an alternative reading at play in the second part of Hamlet, 383 00:45:59,830 --> 00:46:05,740 the sixth one that is less linear to your logical and potentially cereal. 384 00:46:05,740 --> 00:46:10,460 And instead more circular, reiterative or symbolic, 385 00:46:10,460 --> 00:46:20,620 a pattern of overlaps and reiterations and symbols rather than a linear episode in an ongoing narrative. 386 00:46:20,620 --> 00:46:28,720 Some of the associations and the horizon of expectations to use, Gerow says redolent phrase about how genre works. 387 00:46:28,720 --> 00:46:35,080 The horizon of expectations about history suggests that this is going to be eventful and purposeful, perhaps. 388 00:46:35,080 --> 00:46:43,540 What's potentially interesting for us now is to think about other critical methodologies down the cereal that might help us make sense of this blunt, 389 00:46:43,540 --> 00:46:51,670 obscurely powerful play. So we've been talking about the extent to which Henry, the six, Part two could be seen as an autonomous, 390 00:46:51,670 --> 00:47:02,570 outstanding play by investigating the ways its life in print and performance suggests interdependence and a connexion to other plays. 391 00:47:02,570 --> 00:47:07,840 But I've included some discussions of the serial of as a format and of the kinds of formal 392 00:47:07,840 --> 00:47:14,080 properties of prolapsed this and other lapses that we might expect from a serial play. 393 00:47:14,080 --> 00:47:23,350 Then I've tried to think about a more circular and less linear kind of appreciation of this play, as if what we see is actions which repeat, 394 00:47:23,350 --> 00:47:31,540 modify, deepen an emblem, ties, it seems, rather than progressed than in purely narrative terms. 395 00:47:31,540 --> 00:47:38,020 Next week's My Last Lecture. In this series, I'm going to look at the play. The new Oxford Shakespeare puts Shakespeare's very first. 396 00:47:38,020 --> 00:47:43,900 The two gentlemen of Verona haven't quite decided that the thing's going to try and talk about its best character. 397 00:47:43,900 --> 00:47:48,864 The dog they're trying to keep.