The Oxford Shakespeare: Oxford World's Classics: Henry IV Part I: Part one - Softcover

"Certainly one of the best of the OXF4 series: informative, intelligent, and independent....This edition is a splendid piece of work, a valuable reference full of original insights and good sense. The commentary notes alone are worth the price of the book."--Shakespeare Quarterly "Certainly one of the best of the OXF4 series: informative, intelligent, and independent....This edition is a splendid piece of work, a valuable reference full of original insights and good sense. The commentary notes alone are worth the price of the book."--Shakespeare Quarterly "Certainly one of the best of the OXF4 series: informative, intelligent, and independent....This edition is a splendid piece of work, a valuable reference full of original insights and good sense. The commentary notes alone are worth the price of the book."--Shakespeare Quarterly "Certainly one of the best of the OXF4 series: informative, intelligent, and independent....This edition is a splendid piece of work, a valuable reference full of original insights and good sense. The commentary notes alone are worth the price of the book."--Shakespeare Quarterly

As Henry's throne is threatened by rebel forces, England is divided. The characters reflect these oppositions, with Hal and Hotspur vying for position, and Falstaff leading Hal away from his father and towards excess. During Shakespeare's lifetime Henry IV, Part I was his most reprinted play, and it remains enormously popular with theatregoers and readers. Falstaff still towers among Shakespeare's comic inventions as he did in the late 1590s. David Bevington's introduction discusses the play in both peformance and criticism from Shakespeare's time to our own, illustrating the variety of interpretations of which the text is capable. He analyses the play's richly textured language in a detailed commentary on individual words and phrases and clearly explains its historical background.