King Henry VI Part 3: Arden: The Arden Shakespeare

In their lively and engaging edition of this sometimes neglected early play, Cox and Rasmussen make a strong claim for it as a remarkable work, revealing a confidence and sureness that few earlier plays can rival. They show how the young Shakespeare, working closely from his chronicle sources, nevertheless shaped his complex material freely to make it both theatrically effective and poetically innovative. The resulting work creates, in Queen Margaret, one of Shakespeare's strongest female roles and is the source of the popular view of Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick as 'kingmaker'. Focusing on the history of the play both in terms of performance and criticism, the editors open it to a wide and challenging variety of interpretative and editorial paradigms.