Henry VI Part 1

OG's going to do something unusual today - bow to his betters. First Jonathan Bate:

Modern scholarship leans to the view that the plays which the Folio calls the second and third parts of Henry the Sixth were originally a two-part 'Wars of the Roses' drama ... and that this play [Part 1] was a (collaborative) 'prequel', written later to cash in on their success. This argument supposes that the three plays only became a 'trilogy' when they were renamed and ordered by historical sequence in the 1623 Folio. Some scholars, however, adhere to the minority view that all three parts were written in sequence as a trilogy.

OG will, uncharacteristically, put himself in with the majority of those modern scholars.

A bit of the Bard - this is how Part 1 ends - the lines are spoken by Suffolk and they tease the audience with the themes of Part 2 and 3:

Thus Suffolk hath prevailed, and thus he goes / As did the youthful Paris once to Greece, / With hope to find the like event in love, / But prosper better than the Trojan did: / Margaret shall now be queen, and rule the king: / But I will rule both her, the king, and realm.

You might think this tends to support the minority 'in sequence' scholarly view but I think not. It puts us in mind of nothing so much as the final choric Epilogue at the end of that greater prequel, Henry V.

Next up in my Shakesperae trail will be that hoary old favourite of this blog, Titus Andronicus.