The First Part of King Henry the Fourth: Texts and Contexts (Bedford Shakespeare)

by William Shakespeare (Author), William Shakespeare (Author)

• New

  Illustrated
  1997

  $24.72

• Used

  Paperback
  1998

  $3.27

  As Henry's throne is threatened by rebel forces, England is divided. The characters reflect these oppositions, with Hal and Hotspur vying for position, and Falstaff leading Hal away from his father and towards excess. During Shakespeare's lifetime Henry IV, Part I was his most reprinted play, and it remains enormously popular with theatregoers and readers. Falstaff still towers among Shakespeare's comic inventions as he did in the late 1590s. David Bevington's introduction discusses the play in both peformance and criticism from Shakespeare's time to our own, illustrating the variety of interpretations of which the text is capable. He analyses the play's richly textured language in a detailed commentary on individual words and phrases and clearly explains its historical background.

• New

  Paperback
  2007

  $14.23

  The New Cambridge Shakespeare appeals to students worldwide for its up-to-date scholarship and emphasis on performance. The series features line-by-line commentaries and textual notes on the plays and poems. Introductions are regularly refreshed with accounts of new critical, stage and screen interpretations. This second edition of The First Part of King Henry IV offers a theatrical perspective on the origins of Shakespeare's play and the history of its interpretation. In their introduction the editors, Herbert and Judith Weil, clarify the play's de-centred dramatic structure and call attention to the effects of civil war on a broad range of relationships. Falstaff's unpredictable vitality is also explored, together with such important contemporaneous values as honour, friendship, festivity and reformation. Lexical glosses make the rich wordplay accessible, while the notes provide a thorough commentary on Shakespeare's transformation of his sources. A supplementary section by Katharine Craik focuses on important modern interpretations.