Reading this, I couldn't help but imagine all the phenomenal stage or screen productions that could be (and have been) made of it. The play is often characterized as a series of stabbings and battles in rapid succession, but that severely downplays the emotional poignancy on display. In this final chapter of the Henry VI saga, once-peripheral characters like Queen Margaret and Richard of Gloucester reveal the full spectrum of their thoughts in passages of incredible rhetorical power--including the longest monologue in the Bard's entire canon for the latter. More than in any play he wrote before this, Shakespeare asserts himself more confidently as not only an entertainer and showman, but also as an artist interested in the extremities of human experience. (Contrast, for example, Margaret's superb rallying speech to her troops on 5.4 to her heartbreaking plea for her son's life only one scene later.) These are the passages that feel the most heartfelt and meticulously crafted, with the lacunae in the text left for bloody interludes serving primarily as a means of moving from one oratorical flourish to the next.

What keeps it from being a great play on the page is exactly that halfhearted dependence on spectacle; while the language frequently segues into the sublime, the abundance of action set pieces makes a reader feel as though they were only getting half the story. I'm sure a competent staging would yield an A+ show, but the script unfortunately makes for a B- read.