ABSTRACT
It comes as something of a surprise to learn there are four film versions of Henry VI, Parts 1 to 3, all of them made for television: two as original TV productions and two from stage versions. Furthermore, there is a curious pattern to their existence. Two were filmed within a few of years of each other—and the other two followed nearly twenty years later, but again only a few years apart. In 1960 Peter Dews put the first Henry VI on the “box” as part of his epic BBC-TV series An Age of Kings, Shakespeare’s eight English histories from Richard II to Richard III. Five years later, Peter Hall and John Barton’s Royal Shakespeare Company version of the First Tetralogy, The Wars of the Roses, was filmed, also for the BBC. Two decades passed before Henry VI was broadcast again. In 1982 Jane Howell directed the plays as part of the BBC Time-Life Shakespeare series. Finally, in 1989 Peter Bogdanov and Michael Pennington’s English Shakespeare Company filmed a performance of their own Wars of the Roses, this time Shakespeare’s double tetralogy. 1
