E. Pearlman, University of Colorado, Denver

The enactment of the deaths of Talbot and his young son John in The First Part of Henry the Sixth is by all odds Shakespeare's first great theatrical success and therefore an event of great importance in the dramatist's progress. The evidence for this proposition is to be found in Pierce Penilesse His Supplication to the Divell, written in late 1592, where Thomas Nashe allows himself this expressive fancy:

How would it have ioyed brave Talbot (the terror of the French) to think that after he had lyne two hundred yeares in his Tombe, hee should triumphe againe on the Stage, and haue his bones newe embalmed with the teares of ten thousand spectators at least (at several times), who, in the Tragedian that represents his person, imagine they behold him fresh bleeding.¹

The words "fresh bleeding" specify that audiences shed their copious...