SOURCE: Warren, Roger, ed. Introduction to Henry VI, Part Two, by William Shakespeare, pp. 1-74. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.

In the following excerpt, Warren surveys Shakespeare's sources for Henry VI, Part 2 and examines the dramatic function of its principal figures. Warren also addresses the subject of social unrest in late medieval England through his examination of Jack Cade's rebellion in Act III of the drama.

Origins

A tetralogy, or rather two tetralogies, including the subsequently written Richard II-Henry V series, was certainly how the [Henry VI] plays [and Richard III] were seen by their most influential critic in the first half of the twentieth century, E. M. W. Tillyard.¹ He interpreted them as presenting a providential view of history in which the Wars of the Roses were England's bloody expiation of Henry IV's crime in deposing an anointed king, Richard II, an expiation that was not completed until...