I love the voice you chose for King Henry. With all the placating, and the voice intonation, I can imagine Kermit the Frog's nephew playing a youthful Henry.

Thank you for this video. You’ve prevented me from embarrassing myself by mispronouncing all these names and places. You did a really good job explaining everything, as well.

The english flag is red and white. The two factions of the monarchy that formed with the picking of the red and white roses is symbolically tearing the flag, and essentially the country, in two. A house divided. It also provides a visual cue to the audience to keep track of everyone's motivations. Very nice.

Crazy how this doesn't have more views

@Laocoon283

Жыл бұрын

It's not crazy at all. Incredibly niche topic.

I love the question of “what is this play ABOUT?” With the history plays, I have a tendency to generalise and just think, “well, they’re the history plays, they’re a dramatised version of people killing each other”. But of course Shakespeare always has something to say, even when working with historical figures (and even if he didn’t write all of this play!) and it’s worth diving into what that might be. Thanks for the entertaining recap! Love it.

@Nancenotes

3 жыл бұрын

Thank you! I can’t help looking for theme and unifying meaning-I guess I was trained from a New Critical perspective. But they do always feel like history condensed to a structure and purpose to me. Thanks for watching! Your channel is my new favorite if it wasn’t obvious! Keep up the awesome work!

Thank you for the great summary! This was more engaging and clear than others I've seen with visual aids. Just you talking in front of the camera was entertaining and easy to follow.

@Nancenotes

2 жыл бұрын

Thanks! Glad it was helpful!

Great synopsis, thanx for posting

this was so entertaining and so so helpful! thank you so much :)

This was so helpful, thanks so much!

this was so helpful, thank you! :):)

Great dramatic presentation 🎉

you are amazing !!! thank you so much

I took a Shakespeare course in which I thought I had read all his plays; but I had missed this one! Maybe not his greatest play, but it does have Joan of Arc in it, so I'm glad to find it now. And after all, The Maid is not exactly an English hero, is she? Joan the Witch. Joan the lascivious witch. Maybe she is pregnant by The Devil! You never know.

@Nancenotes

7 ай бұрын

Have you read the other real outlier plays like Edward III or Sir Thomas More?

Wonderful Henry IV voice

Thank you!

I'd love it if you discussed Richard II.

@Nancenotes

4 жыл бұрын

It’s in the plan! Look at the schedule in the description!

@Diescenesterdie

4 жыл бұрын

@@Nancenotes Looking forward to it.

Thank you! This really is saving my ass.

Hello professor. Was wondering if you could please help me with this issue? I have been bit uneasy about the portrayal of English and French characters. I seem to find them one dimensional because Shakespeare is giving continuous praise to English lords and portraying french closest to evil. I am reluctant to enjoy or understand them when we are so use to modern characters which are morally in grey area and we are suppose to make our own judgement using modern ethics but Shakespeare doesn't give us that opportunity as he is giving his morally right/wrong characters on the plate. Why dont i feel related to the characters ? What am I missing here? I do respect his linguistic energy though.

@Nancenotes

4 жыл бұрын

Thank you for your excellent question! I may not be able to completely assuage your feelings about these characters, but I would like to point out a few things to consider while reflecting on this problem. First, the majority of this play isn't actually written by Shakespeare, but rather by his peers in the theater. The sections we most attribute to him are the portions that are most ambiguous and complex, particularly the roots of the War of Roses. Why was this a collaborative effort? We don't really know, except that it was mostly written as a way to play of the success of parts 2 and 3, which were very popular. In any case, the flatness of some of the characters and the outrageous, dastardly evil of La Pucelle is mostly someone else's fault rather than Shakespeare's. This may be a lame excuse, but it does make me feel a little better, especially when I look at Shakespeare's other work, which gives us many opportunities to feel our villians' sides and regret our heroes' flaws. Secondly, although we are praising the English and condemning the French here in a heavily nationalistic way, we can notice that the real issue is the growing corruption and ineffectiveness of the English government. They aren't all praiseworthy--rather the main thrust of English power is killing out the heroism of the past. That's the real story of interest here--the growing seeds of brutal self-interest that will ultimately rip England apart for the next several kings. France is more the backdrop for that story, and if it's flat, it's because it's filling a mechanical purpose here rather than a dramatic one. Could Shakespeare have made even these backdrops lifelike and real to us? Sure, but as I said before, he didn't write that part. I hope this helps! This play is interesting in its place, but if you want meatier work, keep going! Don't take this as Shakespeare's best example of history, though I still enjoy it as a prologue to the others.

@simranjitsingh9874

4 жыл бұрын

@@Nancenotes Thank you for the kind advice. I l keep in mind and will carry on.

@FidesAla

2 жыл бұрын

@@Nancenotes Why do you need to make Shakespeare out to be this angel who never wrote anything morally questionable to the majority 500 years after his death? (And why would conformity to this random point known as our present make him any more of an angel than conformity to his own time, or conformity to 500 years before him, or 500 years after us, or conformity to some other culture at any given point in time? None of those majorities are perfect). Shakespeare wrote a whole lot of things I disagree with and I still love his work. I can read plays where I think the entire concept is ethically repugnant and still enjoy them, because I'm not selfish. I disagree with Tolstoy even more, and I also love his books. Tolstoy hated Shakespeare, I don't care, I love them both. There are modern books that are filled with opinions that I personally strongly disagree with and find abhorrent, and I still love those books because of other things about them. It's simply... the first step in not being selfish. Henry V did horrible things in France. At Agincourt, they slaughtered a whole bunch of non-combatants and did a whole bunch more atrocities. You may look at France now and see them as a European power that did all sorts of horrible atrocities to the rest of the world later on, but that doesn't make things suffered there matter less (unless you also want to say it makes the things France suffered in WWII matter less, too?). However much Shakespeare knew about those things, he wouldn't have thought they were bad. The view of... pretty much everyone in every culture up until the end of WWII... is that, if your town gets destroyed and brutally beaten and all that, well, sucks for you, but your armies should have been stronger, and it's your job to take up your sword and get revenge! And if you can't, well, you're a failure because that's your number one duty in life. Did Shakespeare (and a lot of other people) realize that this wasn't a perfect way of thinking about life? Yes. That's a big part of what Hamlet is about. For a wider look, how many characters can you think of who win a duel of honor, but that creates more problems than it solves for them? But all of those writers still finish with some bombastic thing along the lines of "fight for the fatherland!" ... because people who come from a different fatherland *really don't count as people to them*. Shakespeare never actually left England in his life. He did not care about the French, he did not see them as anything other than a joke, even in Henry V, (honestly, Henry V is one of the plays that really makes me too morally sick to go into it, even though I love Henry IV parts 1 and 2, V basically throws away all the nuance in favor of nationalism.) So, no, he's not being a decent person, but you should love the things you love about his plays anyway. Because it really shouldn't matter to you. Because if you can actually find enough published books in any language that you fully ethically agree with, then you're just a follower in the crowd and you're not thinking for yourself enough.

@Nancenotes

2 жыл бұрын

I like your point here, especially in conclusion. The demand that all books of all time be held to the ethics of the moment is ridiculous and leaves us with nothing to read. I apologize if I sounded like I was deifying Shakespeare; I was trying to excuse him from some of the faults of this play-particularly the pathetically flat Pucelle, which I don’t think was his writing at all. From my study on the play, I’m fairly convinced he only wrote the rose scene. That doesn’t excuse him of his other faults and prejudices, but I have trouble blaming him for Joan. There are a few of his plays that I genuinely don’t like (the end of Two Gentlemen is hard to stomach, for example), even if I get their cultural perspective. I do appreciate how frequently Shakespeare poses an ethical problem and then, instead of forcing his current answer on us, leaves it open for us to examine. I think that particular pattern is a big part of his staying relevance in many of his plays. Thanks again for your comment.

@Laocoon283

Жыл бұрын

Its comic relief to characterize your enemies. Simple as that.

“Lesser studied” :(

There is no real justification to claim the relationship between M and Suffolk was actual adultery. It is never even suggested by any character, even M's enemies and it is also a side issue in the course of the plays. Not so keen on your mispronunciation of names such as Warwick and Suffolk which suggests you have not seen any quality British productions of these plays but only read them.

Though Shakespeare is a great author still, and he was an English man at that time, however, In the view of modern and feminism, as we know, his portrayal about Joan of Arc was very wrongly and misogynistic.(I know and understand his time already. maybe even he didn't like the play. because it was just propaganda.) I think about Joan of Arc, George Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan is better than this play. sorry I am not good at English! :)

@Nancenotes

3 жыл бұрын

It’s definitely not a highlight of Shakespeare’s writing, especially since he only contributed to some of the play, and it’s certainly an unfair and inaccurate depiction of St. Joan. But as a prequel to the other two Henry VI plays, it’s interesting.

@colinellesmere

Жыл бұрын

Have to agree. Joan of Arc was re pooy portrayed. As one of Shakespeares earliest plays the presentation up to ths point of women in his writing is not great. Taming of the Shrew. The treatmnt of women in the Two Gentlemann of Verona. And of cause Titus Andronicus.

Thank you !