SOURCE: “‘I Am But Shadow of Myself’: Ceremony and Design in 1 Henry VI,” in Shakespearean Meanings, Princeton University Press, 1968, pp. 47-77.

In the essay below, Burckhardt addresses the problems of integrity and episodic design in Henry VI, Part 1, finding an aesthetic unity in the ceremonial qualities of the narrative as well as in the play's thematic analogy between dramatist and God.

It is difficult, perhaps impossible, to say anything about 1 Henry VI without raising the still vexed question of authorship. I too shall have to raise it, but I do not want to attack it frontally. I would rather state my position as a working assumption and hope that what follows will prove sound enough to bear me out. Here, then, is what I shall assume: 1 Henry VI was written or thoroughly reworked—possibly both—by Shakespeare himself. As we have it in the Folio, it represents his...