SOURCE: Blanpied, John W. “‘Art and Baleful Sorcery’: The Counterconsciousness of Henry VI, Part 1.” Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 15, no. 2 (spring 1975): 213-27.

In the following essay, Blanpied views Henry VI, Part 1 as a subversive work that critiques historical reality.

Over the last two decades or so 1 Henry VI has attracted growing esteem. This comes both from E. M. W. Tillyard and his followers, who respect the play chiefly for its part in the presumed Grand Design of Shakespeare's English histories, and more recently from those who find the play not only structurally strong, but thematically autonomous.¹ Still, for both Tillyardite and autonomist the primary critical question about 1 Henry VI is the same: namely, what is the relationship of “history” to “play”?² The question, though it could be put generally about the relationship of any play to its sources, historical or otherwise, applies in an essential and peculiar way...