SOURCE: "The Henry VI Plays," in "The Noise of Threatening Drum ": Dramatic Strategy and Political Ideology in Shakespeare and the English Chronicle Plays, University of Delaware Press, 1990, pp. 71-87.

In this excerpt, Champion explores the widespread implications of the collapse of authority in the Henry VI trilogy and contends that Henry's ineptitude as a ruler—recognized by commoners as well as by the nobility—contributes fatally to a climate in which factionalism and class struggle lead first to political anarchy and ultimately to civil war.

While historical perspective reveals that some eras are more profoundly transitional than others, it is not likely that any age—even our own—can match the impact of the revolution that caught up the minds and spirits of sixteenth-century England. The foundations of modern astronomy are built on the heliocentric concept of the universe, which called into question the centrality of the earth...