ABSTRACT
Critical debates on the Henry VI–Richard III plays have largely centered on issues of design. This chapter shows the distinctiveness of Shakespeare's sort of seriality in the Henry VI–Richard III plays both in terms of his own time and of ours. Most of the foreshadowing in Henry VI–Richard III, however, is much more local and relatively short-term in what it prefigures. In expecting certain sorts of narrative continuity we are influenced by modern modes of seriality reflected in productions of the Henry VI–Richard III plays. Edward Hall's chronicle, Shakespeare's principal source for the Henry VI–Richard III plays, is a teleological narrative emphasized in its very title The Union of the Two Noble and Illustre Famelies of Lancastre and York. In the Henry VI–Richard III plays it provides linear threads for an audience in a series unlike anything Shakespeare subsequently wrote.
