could only incidentally concern themselves—namely, the loss of France. It is true that in actual history this loss was not complete till an advanced period of Henry VI's reign; for the end of the Hundred Years' War has to be dated from the final loss of Bordeaux in 1453. But the author or authors of " Henry VI" fully availed themselves of the freedom in the manipulation of dates open to dramatists, so that the death of the Talbots in Gascony is advanced into Part I; and, as a matter of fact, the beginning of the end had arrived when Suffolk sacrificed Maine in order to secure for his master the hand of Margaret of Anjou (1444-45), and a further irretrievable stage in its accomplishment had been the loss of Normandy during the ascendancy of the same Suffolk (1450). The loss of France, so galling to English pride, thus brings home to the spectator or reader more effectively than this could be done in any other way a condition of things in which England itself was to slip out of the hold of the reigning house.

I propose, therefore, in the first instance to deal with the "First Part of Henry VI" as it stands, with the impressions which it creates, and with the sources to which it was indebted.

The events with which Part I is concerned are for the most part such as occurred between the accession of Henry VI to the throne, when nine months of age, in September, 1422, and his marriage to Margaret of Anjou on April 23, 1445. These are, so to speak, the chronological landmarks of the play; but since, as already indicated, its primary purpose was to exhibit the decline and fall of the English power in France, where its scene is for the most part laid, it is to this purpose that the course of affairs

and the order of events introduced have to accommodate themselves.1

It may be useful, before proceeding further, to illustrate this cardinal fact by a reference to the successive acts and scenes of the play. It opens (Act I, sc. i) with the exequies of Henry V, who died in 1422; but most of the events of which the humiliating tidings are brought to the side of the royal hero's bier happened long after his death, some, as will be seen a little further on, never happened at all. The news of Talbot's abandonment of his march on Orleans, and his retreat on Patay (though artfully dated as having taken place on "the tenth of August last"), could not have arrived before the end of June, 1429-as it was on the 18th of that month that Talbot was defeated and taken prisoner at Patay. The siege of Orleans, with which sc. ii of the same act is concerned, began in October, 1428. The quarrel between Gloucester and Beaufort, which follows in sc. iii, is not seriously misplaced, as its origin was probably the proceedings in council in the course of January, 1427.2 The release of Talbot from prison, which enables him in sc. iv to take part in the siege of Orleans (which had been raised in May, 1429) actually occurred in 1433 (or 1434).

In Act II the first historical event (for all the preceding scenes are fictitious) is the death, in sc. v, of

1 I content myself with directing attention to the very able, and in some respects very suggestive application of his method of a "Time-Analysis of the Plots of Shakespeare's Plays" by Mr. P. A. Daniel, to the trilogy of "Henry VI." See New Shakspere Society's Transactions," 1877-9, pp. 298, seq. He brings the First Part into eight days (with certain intervals), while the actual historical period covered by its main course may be reckoned at two years and four months.

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2 A short account of the quarrel is to be found in the anonymous “Chronicle of London" (Cleopatra, CIV), which is alone in stating that "the Mayor of london," with his city following, "stood by" Gloucester "ageyne the Bysshop of Winchester." In "Chronicles of London," ed. by C. L. Kingsford, Oxford, 1905, p. 130.

Mortimer (1425); though it actually took place in Ireland, and not, as in the play, in the Tower. The quarrel in Parliament between the king's "uncles of Gloucester and of Winchester," in sc. i of Act III, follows on well enough; though its actual outbreak was not in London, but in Leicester at the "Parliament of Bats" (so called because, other weapons being prohibited, those who entered the town were armed with clubs, like London 'prentices). But the events in France are again very "mixed "mixed" as to their dates. A French attempt to take Rouen was made in August, 1431, but some months after the death of the Pucelle, who in sc. ii "joineth Rouen with her countrymen"; and Bedford, who dies in the same scene, did not actually expire (at Rouen, after his repulse at Lagny) till 1435. The Duke of Burgundy's desertion of the English side (sc. iii) follows on appropriately, inasmuch as it actually occurred in this year 1435; but it is needless to observe that the Pucelle had no concern in it- she had been martyred four years earlier. After this it seems but a trifling inaccuracy that, in sc. iv, Talbot should be created Earl of Shrewsbury at Paris; the peerage was really conferred on him at home in England, in 1442.

In Act IV, sc. i, we are taken back to the year 1431, when the young King Henry VI was crowned at Paris (in Notre Dame, not in "a hall of state"), as a counter-demonstration to the coronation of Charles VII at Rheims; but we very suddenly move forward, as already pointed out, in scenes ii-vii, which are concerned with the expedition, in 1452, of Shrewsbury (Talbot) to Gascony, his recovery of Bordeaux, and his defeat and death before Chatillon. Act V with further audacity gathers up such threads of the narrative as remain to be collected

for the purposes of the play, and especially for establishing a continuity with the action that is to follow in the later Parts. In sc. i we hear of the project of marrying King Henry to a daughter of Count John of Armagnac,' which was put forward in 1442; and in the same scene the Bishop of Winchester appears as a newly created cardinal, whereas the historical Henry Beaufort had been granted permission to accept the long coveted hat as far back as 1427. In sc. iii the English attack Angers, of which Salisbury abandoned the siege in 1428; and in the same scene the Pucelle, who first came forward in 1429, and was not made a captive till the following year, is taken prisoner by the English (she was really taken by the Burgundians). Suffolk's capture of and by Margaret in the same scene is of course fictitious; but between scenes iv (the condemnation of the Pucelle) and v (Henry's commission to Suffolk to secure Margaret's hand for the King) there intervened in history a period of thirteen years (1431-44).

Though the chronology of the " First Part of Henry VI is thus desperately confused, and almost suggests the notion that every notable incident of the reign not dramatised in the "Contention" and "True Tragedy," and accordingly used in the Second or the Third Part, has been forced into service, yet all the scenes are taken direct from the chroniclers, with three exceptions of importance. These are the three romantic scenes which have not hitherto proved traceable to any known source; namely, Act II, sc. ii (Talbot and the Countess of Auvergne); Act II, sc. iv (the

1 In the play he has but one daughter; he actually had three, and Henry VI, with an exercise of volition uncommon in him, insisted that, after seeing the portraits of each, he should be allowed to choose between them.

famous plucking of the roses in the Temple Garden); and Act V, sc. iii (the capture of Margaret by Suffolk and his falling in love with her). The substance of the play is, as already stated, to be found in both Halle and Holinshed ; but one incident (Act I, sc. ii) occurs in Holinshed alone; another (Act IV, scenes v and vi) in Halle alone; and a third (Act III, sc. i) only in Fabyan. The vindication of Gloucester and the charges against Cardinal Beaufort came from Halle and the "Mirror." A few touches may indicate an acquaintance with Monstrelet (the Paris edition of 1572).

Act I. The opening scene, which begins with the funeral of King Henry V, is admirably conceived, and its first forty-seven lines at all events show an animation which falls away in the course of Bedford's patriotic speech. It was not suggested by any authority; and, as already noted, a host of striking events are inevitably antedated, in order to compress the various elements of the needful exposition into the first scene of the play. The list of the possessions lost in France is, like that of the Dauphin's supporters, merely a recital of well-known names. All the events mentioned, including the Messenger's circumstantial account of the battle of Patay and Fastolf's flight" without stroke stricken" are, with the exception of the "base Walloon's" thrust, to be found in both Halle and Holinshed; it may be worth mentioning that Monstrelet gives 6000 as the original number of Salisbury's troops, and says that Henry VI landed at Calais on "St. George's day.' the "oaths to Henry sworn" (1. 162) may refer to the chroniclers' report of Henry V's injunction never to treat with the Dauphin. Again, the resolve of Winchester (who steps forward in approved style at the end of the scene to announce himself as the villain of the play) to kidnap the

Even