Henry VI, Part 1, often referred to as 1 Henry VI, is a history play by William Shakespeare—possibly in collaboration with Thomas Nashe and others—believed to have been written in 1591. It is set during the lifetime of King Henry VI of England.
First page of The first Part of Henry the Sixt from the First Folio (1623).
Frederick and Alfred Heath engraving of Scene in the Temple Garden by John Pettie (1871)
H. C. Selous's illustration of Joan's fiends abandoning her in Act 5, Scene 3; from The Plays of William Shakespeare: The Historical Plays, edited by Charles Cowden Clarke and Mary Cowden Clarke (1830)
Title page from the 1550 edition of Edward Hall's The Union of the Two Noble and Illustre Families of Lancaster and York.
In the First Folio, the plays of William Shakespeare were grouped into three categories: comedies, histories, and tragedies. The histories—along with those of contemporary Renaissance playwrights—help define the genre of history plays. The Shakespearean histories are biographies of English kings of the previous four centuries and include the standalones King John, Edward III and Henry VIII as well as a continuous sequence of eight plays. These last are considered to have been composed in two cycles. The so-called first tetralogy, apparently written in the early 1590s, covers the Wars of the Roses saga and includes Henry VI, Parts I, II & III and Richard III. The second tetralogy, finished in 1599 and including Richard II, Henry IV, Parts I & II and Henry V, is frequently called the Henriad after its protagonist Prince Hal, the future Henry V.
Opening page of the First Folio King John
'Henry VII crowned at Bosworth', by Richard Caton Woodville Jr.—a key moment in the 'Tudor myth'
'Joan of Arc conjures demons in Shakespeare's Henry VI' (engraving by C. Warren, 1805, after J. Thurston). "Next to her, Talbot is a blundering oaf, who furiously attributes her success to sorcery, whereas the audience knows that she has simply outfoxed him by superior military strategy." – H. A. Kelly (1970)
'Falstaff', (Adolfo Hohenstein)—according to Danby, "in every sense, the bigger man" than Hal