University of New Hampshire University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository Doctoral Dissertations Student Scholarship Fall 1974 THE LOOK OF THE PLAY: DRAMATIC FOCUS IN SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY HISTORY PLAYS BARBARA COVINGTON HODGDON University of New Hampshire, Durham Follow this and additional works at: https://scholars.unh.edu/dissertation Recommended Citation HODGDON, BARBARA COVINGTON, "THE LOOK OF THE PLAY: DRAMATIC FOCUS IN SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY HISTORY PLAYS" (1974). Doctoral Dissertations. 2332. https://scholars.unh.edu/dissertation/2332 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Scholarship at University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. INFORMATION TO USERS This material was produced from a microfilm copy of the original document. 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Xerox University Microfilms 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106 74-27,977 H0DGDON, Barbara Covington, 1932- THE LOOK OF THE PLAY: DRAMATIC FOCUS IN SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY HISTORY PLAYS. University of New Hampshire, Ph.D., 1974 Language and Literature, general University Microfilms, A XEROX Company, Ann Arbor, Michigan THE LOOK OF THE PLAY: DRAMATIC FOCUS IN SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY HISTORY PLAYS by BARBARA HODGDON B.A., Wellesley College, 1953 M.A., University of New Hampshire, 1970 A THESIS Submitted to the University of New Hampshire In Partial Fulfillment of The Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate School Department of English September, 197^ This thesis has "been examined and approved. Thesis director, Robert Hapgood, Prof. of English William B. Hunter, Jr., Prof. of English r l (FJL Terence P. Logan, Agrao. Prof. of English ohn C. Edwards, Asso. Prof. of Speech and Drama A 7 . William R. Jones, P: Prof. of History U u * c 3, /31 *t. Date To Hodge For every reason iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My greatest obligation is to Professor Robert Hapgood for showing me many ways to approach Shakespeare and for his patient insistence on quality in both my thought and exposition. I should also like to thank the members of my committee, Professor William B. Hunter, Jr., Professor Terence P. Logan, Professor John C. Edwards, and Professor William R. Jones, for their careful reading of my study. I should like to express my appreciation to the University of New Hampshire for the support offered by a Summer Fellowship and a Dissertation Fellowship; and to the staff of the Dimond Library of the University of New Hampshire, particularly to Mr. Robert C. Reed, Mr. Hugh Pritchard, and Ms. Margaret Prescott, for their services. In addition, I am grateful to Mrs. Marguerite Darvill and Miss Susan Hoare of the Nuffield Library, The Shakespeare Centre, at Stratford-upon-Avon, England for their extremely courteous assistance; and to the staff of the Shakespeare Memorial Library in the Birmingham Public Library, Birmingham, England. iv ABSTRACT THE LOOK OP THE PLAY: DRAMATIC FOCUS IN SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY HISTORY PLAYS by BARBARA HODGDON Shakespeare controls not only what we hear but what we see, either at a live performance of one of his plays or at the performances we stage in our imaginations. He is, in other words, his own director. This study examines Shakespeare’s use of dramatic focus in the early history plays (l. 2. and 3 Henry VI and Richard III), charts the various changes in focus Shakespeare chooses to direct an audience's sight and insight, traces his skill in using them (especially his increasing interest in an intense focus on a central character), and explores their thematic implications and other contributions to the works in which they appear. Beyond tracing how Shakespeare achieves explicit effects through manipulating changes in focus, the main purpose of this study is a close examination of the plays, v attempting to do justice tooth to the comprehensive and specific effects of the plays as performed without limiting the investigation to the imagined realization of these effects in the Elizabethan theater, through Elizabethan stagecraft. Shakespeare's early directorial techniques are unusually specific; he exercises rather strict controls over dramatic focus. Consequently, audience response is often directly channeled and/or limited in a particular moment, scene, or scenic sequence toy what Shakespeare chooses to show and toy how these dramatic facts and im­ pressions are presented. Shakespeare experiments with techniques which give each play an individualized vision— a particular look that reflects his dramatic and thematic concerns. In 1 Henry VI. these techniques emphasize exterior action and narrative progression and expectation. Shakespeare relies on heavily patterned stage images to convey the scope and movement, the dissension, and the alternations of action implied toy his chronicle sources, drawing, as he does for each of these plays, a controlling subtext from the chronicles. These narrative techniques are modified in 2 Henry VI to reveal the opposed attitudes of persons and the differences between public and private behavior. 2 Henry VI also experiments with the dramatic patterning of strong characters by exploiting contrasts and toy focusing firmly upon individual as well as group responses to an event. There is more flexibility to the vi look of the play; both actors and audience are freed, through increasingly expressive language and scenic se­ quences, to see in a greater variety of ways. Shakespeare controls hoth narrative and characterization in 3 Henry VI by an expressive design, heightened by a strong pre­ sentational imagery of blood, that focuses audience aware­ ness on the ironies arising from sudden reversals of characters’ expectations and from the close juxtaposition of contradictory events. Richard III is unique, not only among these early plays but among Shakespeare's later plays as well. Shakespeare exaggerates many of his earlier directorial techniques by building the play around a single, self-dramatizing character who directs the drama by copying or adapting Shakespeare's earlier directorial techniques when they suit his purposes and by inventing improvisational techniques of his own. Shakespeare's general trend moves away from the strict pattern (except where that is a useful formalism) and the exterior narrative emphasis and toward structures that commingle action with reaction, carrying the thrust of the drama through narrative movement which emphasizes interior thought and feeling. Finally, this study looks at a recent adaptation of the plays by John Barton and Peter Hall for the Royal Shakespeare Company. This production repesents a form of scholarly and critical commentary on these early histories. vii The Henry VI plays and Richard III are not simply unwieldy trial essays in playwrighting. These plays are not only extremely viable on the stage, they show considered, deliberate experimentation with the sophisticated use of dramatic focus and with the look of each play. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ............................................ v I. SHAKESPEARE'S DIRECTORIAL E Y E ....................... 1 II. SIGHT AND INSIGHT .................................. 22 III. THE NARRATIVE VISION: 1 HENRY VI ................... 89 IV. DIRECTING THE DESIGN: 2 HENRY VI .................. 121 V. THE IRONIC VISION: 5 HENRY VI...................... 182 VI. KINGS' GAMES: RICHARD III ......................... 226 APPENDIX: THE WARS OF THE ROSES: SCHOLARSHIP SPEAKS ON THE S T A G E ......... 278 BIBLIOGRAPHY...................................... 300 BIOGRAPHICAL D A T A ............... 316 ix CHAPTER I SHAKESPEARE'S