SOURCE: “The Hero in History: A Reading of Henry VI,” in Shakespeare's Heroical Histories: Henry VI and Its Literary Tradition, Harvard University Press, 1971, pp. 100-139.

In the excerpt below, Riggs traces Shakespeare's general theme of the deterioration of heroic idealism that took place between the Hundred Years' War and the Yorkist accession in Henry VI.

1 Henry Vi

The first part of Henry VI recasts the latter part of the Hundred Years' War as an exercise in “parallel lives.” The opening funeral oration indicates that the emphasis will be upon an ideal of heroic conduct, and the ensuing sequence of two council scenes (one English, the other French), three battle scenes, a “triumph,” and a second funeral confirms this impression while introducing us to the two principal antagonists, Talbot and Joan la Pucelle. It is clear from Edward III and The Wounds of Civil War that Shakespeare would have...