SOURCE: “The Death of John Talbot,” in Shakespeare's English Histories: A Quest for Form and Genre, edited by John W. Velz, Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1996, pp. 11-30.

In the following essay, Leggatt evaluates the deaths of Lord Talbot and his son John in 1 Henry VI as Shakespeare's earliest portrayal of tragic heroes meeting their end.

Our habitual division of Shakespeare's plays into comedies, histories, and tragedies, each play fitting one category, is largely based on the Folio of 1623. But title-page evidence suggests that in Shakespeare's time the lines could be drawn differently and the divisions were not so absolute. The Quarto texts of Richard III and Richard II identify them as tragedies. The play we know as 3 Henry VI was first published as “The true Tragedie of Richard Duke of Yorke, and the death of good King Henrie the Sixt. …” King Lear in its Quarto version is a...