Henry VI, Part 1
3.5/5
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About this ebook
In his three Henry VI plays, Shakespeare tackles the infamous Wars of the Roses and the fall of the House of Lancaster. In this translation of Henry VI, Part 1, Douglas Langworthy explores the initial unrest as a young Henry VI becomes king. Langworthy’s translation takes a deep dive into the language of Shakespeare. With a fine-tooth comb, he updates passages that are archaic and difficult to the modern ear and matches them with the syntax and lyricism of the rest of the play, essentially translating archaic Shakespeare to match contemporary Shakespeare.
This translation of Henry VI, Part 1 was written as part of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s Play On! project, which commissioned new translations of thirty-nine Shakespeare plays. These translations present the work of "The Bard" in language accessible to modern audiences while never losing the beauty of Shakespeare’s verse. Enlisting the talents of a diverse group of contemporary playwrights, screenwriters, and dramaturges from diverse backgrounds, this project reenvisions Shakespeare for the twenty-first century. These volumes make these works available for the first time in print—a new First Folio for a new era.
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare is widely regarded as the greatest playwright the world has seen. He produced an astonishing amount of work; 37 plays, 154 sonnets, and 5 poems. He died on 23rd April 1616, aged 52, and was buried in the Holy Trinity Church, Stratford.
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Reviews for Henry VI, Part 1
172 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Simply awful. Very much had the feel of being thrown together which, appropriately enough, seems to have been the case. An afterthought prequel to Parts II and III. The caricature of Joan of Arc was outrageous. Even if one believed she was a lunatic, it was a bit over the top.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5William Shakespeare's "Henry VI, part one" certainly doesn't live up to the bard's later historical plays. The Henry VI series was apparently one of his first plays and it shows -- the language lacks sparkle and the writing seems a little flat. That said, I enjoyed it more than I expected to, mostly due to Joan of Arc, who is given an interesting yet fiercely anti-French portrayal as you'd expect from an Elizabethan playwright. The story starts with the unexpected death of Henry V, who leaves an infant as his heir. Powerful lords fight in the War of the Roses for control all while England and France remain at war.I'm interested to find out what happens in parts two and three.
Book preview
Henry VI, Part 1 - William Shakespeare
Play On Shakespeare
Henry VI
Part 1
Play On Shakespeare
Henry VI
Part 1
by
William Shakespeare
Modern verse translation by
Douglas Langworthy
Dramaturgy by
Mead K. Hunter and
Martine Kei Green-Rogers
Arizona State University
Tempe, Arizona
2022
Copyright ©2022 The Estate of Douglas P. Langworthy.
All rights reserved. No part of this script may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage or retrieval systems without the written permission of the author. All performance rights reside with the author. For performance permission, contact: Play On Shakespeare, PO Box 955, Ashland, OR 97520,
info@playonshakespeare.org
Publication of Play On Shakespeare is assisted by
generous support from the Hitz Foundation.
For more information, please visit www.playonshakespeare.org
Published by ACMRS Press
Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies,
Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona
www.acmrspress.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Langworthy, Douglas, 1958-2021, author. | Hunter, Mead K., contributor. | Green-Rogers, Martine Kei, contributor. | Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616. Henry VI, part I.
Title: Henry VI, part I / by William Shakespeare ; modern verse translation, Douglas Langworthy ; dramaturgy by Mead K. Hunter and Martine Kei Green-Rogers.
Description: Tempe, Arizona : ACMRS Press, 2021. | Series: Play on Shakespeare | Summary: This translation takes a deep dive into the language of Shakespeare and updates passages that are archaic and difficult to the modern ear and matches them with the syntax and lyricism of the rest of the play, essentially translating archaic Shakespeare into a contemporary voice
-- Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021017595 (print) | LCCN 2021017596 (ebook) | ISBN 9780866986700 (paperback) | ISBN 9780866986717 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Henry VI, King of England, 1421-1471--Drama. | Great Britain--History--Henry VI, 1422-1461--Drama.
Classification: LCC PS3612.A58535 H46 2021 (print) | LCC PS3612.A58535 (ebook) | DDC 812/.6--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021017595
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021017596
Printed in the United States of America
We wish to acknowledge our gratitude
for the extraordinary generosity of the
Hitz Foundation
•
Special thanks to the Play on Shakespeare staff
Lue Douthit, CEO and Creative Director
Kamilah Long, Executive Director
Taylor Bailey, Associate Creative Director and Senior Producer
Summer Martin, Director of Operations
Amrita Ramanan as Senior Cultural Strategist and Dramaturg
Katie Kennedy, Publications Project Manager
•
Originally commissioned by the
Oregon Shakespeare Festival
Bill Rauch, Artistic Director
Cynthia Rider, Executive Director
SERIES PREFACE
PLAY ON SHAKESPEARE
In 2015, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival announced a new commissioning program. It was called Play on!: 36 playwrights translate Shakespeare.
It elicited a flurry of reactions. For some people this went too far: You can’t touch the language!
For others, it didn’t go far enough: Why not new adaptations?
I figured we would be on the right path if we hit the sweet spot in the middle.
Some of the reaction was due not only to the scale of the project, but its suddenness: 36 playwrights, along with 38 dramaturgs, had been commissioned and assigned to translate 39 plays, and they were already hard at work on the assignment. It also came fully funded by the Hitz Foundation with the shocking sticker price of $3.7 million.
I think most of the negative reaction, however, had to do with the use of the word translate.
It’s been difficult to define precisely. It turns out that there is no word for the kind of subtle and rigorous examination of language that we are asking for. We don’t mean word for word,
which is what most people think of when they hear the word translate. We don’t mean paraphrase,
either.
The project didn’t begin with 39 commissions. Linguist John McWhorter’s musings about translating Shakespeare is what sparked this project. First published in his 1998 book Word on the Street and reprinted in 2010 in American Theatre magazine, he notes that the irony today is that the Russians, the French, and other people in foreign countries possess Shakespeare to a much greater extent than we do, for the simple reason that they get to enjoy Shakespeare in the language they speak.
This intrigued Dave Hitz, a long-time patron of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and he offered to support a project that looked at Shakespeare’s plays through the lens of the English we speak today. How much has the English language changed since Shakespeare? Is it possible that there are conventions in the early modern English of Shakespeare that don’t translate to us today, especially in the moment of hearing it spoken out loud as one does in the theater?
How might we carry forward
the successful communication between actor and audience that took place 400 years ago? Carry forward,
by the way, is what we mean by translate.
It is the fourth definition of translate in the Oxford English Dictionary.
As director of literary development and dramaturgy at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, I was given the daunting task of figuring out how to administer the project. I began with Kenneth Cavander, who translates ancient Greek tragedies into English. I figured that someone who does that kind of work would lend an air of seriousness to the project. I asked him how might he go about translating from the source language of early modern