SOURCE: Burckhardt, Sigurd. “‘I Am but Shadow of Myself’: Ceremony and Design in 1 Henry VI.” Modern Language Quarterly 28, no. 2 (June 1967): 139-58.

In the following essay, Burckhardt proposes that the hyperbolic, ceremonial language of Henry VI, Part 1 perfectly matches the play's dramatic action, in which the characters are impelled to disaster by their adherence to a ritualistic mode of confrontation, defiance, and combativeness.

In speaking of Shakespeare's treatment of Joan of Arc, E. M. W. Tillyard observes that “in literature the things which initially are the most troublesome [often] prove to be the most enlightening.”¹ The observation is an excellent one—provided we allow ourselves to be troubled by the right things. Tillyard himself, for example, is much concerned to show that 1 Henry VI, far from being an episodic, chronicle-style dramatization of exciting events, is a carefully designed whole within the larger whole of the First Tetralogy. In keeping...