ABSTRACT
THE EARLY HISTORIES: Henry VI (Parts I, I1 and 111); Richard I I ; Richard I I I ; King John
A T some stage in Shakespeare's early work subject suddenly intervened. Instead of the 'taffeta phrases' and 'the silken terms precise' people and events so crowded in that they took possession of the medium. Action became the task-master of language. T o some extent this had occurred in the early comedies but it was the epic material of the history plays that faced Shakespeare with all the difficulties of dramatic language and stretched his resources. In the early comedies language had first been a dalliance, and then a medium whose employment presented new but not strenuous problems. It may be compared to the contrast of speaking prettily in a foreign language the phrases one knows, and of struggling with the vocabulary which the situation demands. In the history plays language became a discipline. The untractable mass of events had somehow to be turned into verse and managed in the succession of scenes.
