Plucking the Red and White Roses in the Old Temple Gardens

Henry VI, Part 1

William Shakespearec. 1592
Influence14th pct
Popularity22nd pct
Shakespeare

Read this if you…

  • want to read the earliest shakespeare plays even though they are among his worst
  • are interested in Joan of arc

Skip this if you…

  • aren't willing to go slow, read notes, look up analyses of famous passages (only way to "get" shakespeare)
  • foolishly think shakespeare is overrated
  • haven't read the classic histories yet
Connections

The lineage through Henry VI, Part 1

Built Onwhat came beforeHenry VI, Part 1Judges

  • Judges by Samuel. Henry VI, Part 1 built on it. - When *Henry VI, Part 1* wants to swell a fighter to legend, it borrows the language of *Judges* — naming Deborah and Samson, the warrior-deliverers of ancient Israel - The play's documented spine is the Tudor chroniclers; *Judges* supplies a few deliberate flashes of biblical scale laid over them
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Gallery

Depicted in Art

Yorkist and Lancastrian nobles pluck white and red roses in the Temple garden, picking sides for the Wars of the Roses.

Henry Arthur Payne, 1910

Suffolk takes the captured Margaret of Anjou by the hand at the field of battle, struck by her beauty and already plotting to marry her to King Henry.

Charles Heath, 1830

The dying Talbot cradles the body of his son John on the battlefield outside Bordeaux as the French close in.

Alexandre Bida

Editions

Recommended Editions

#1Top Pick$6.99$6.51

Folger Shakespeare Library

2008

Folger's the readable one. Text on one page, notes on the facing page, written in plain English instead of textbook-speak. Catches every word and reference you'd otherwise Google, without breaking the scene to do it.

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Notable Quotes

Let him that is a trueborn gentleman / And stands upon the honor of his birth, / If he suppose that I have pleaded truth, / From off this brier pluck a white rose with me.

Richard Plantagenet, Act II scene iv
All 11 quotes, with sources →
Adaptations

Screen & Stage

Posters via The Movie Database (TMDB)

AcclaimPraised by 3 notable voices
  • Samuel Johnson, critic & lexicographer, 1709–1784: "From mere inferiority nothing can be inferred; in the productions of wit there will be inequality."
  • Peggy Ashcroft, actress, 1907–1991: "We see in these plays a microcosm of so many of the violent and tragic conflicts of our own time."
  • Harold Bloom, Yale literary critic, 1930–2019: Joan la Pucelle is bawdy, courageous, direct, quirkily memorable — anticipating something of Falstaff's grand contempt for time and the state.

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