Henry IV Part 1 (Annotated): Shakespeare for study

Henry IV Part 1 is one of Shakespeare’s best known histories. The play lays bare the irony of English history while the hilarious Falstaff entertains us. This edition makes Henry IV Part 1 easy to read and enjoy. The plain English footnotes provide new insights into Shakespeare’s intentions and understanding of history. Each page has lines for your own handwritten notes. This Austi Classics edition is printed on quality paper that will last.

William Shakespeare was from Stratford-on-Avon England, and baptized on 26 April 1564. His family had lived in Stratford-on-Avon for generations. Shakespeare’s father John Shakespeare was the Catholic mayor, and a leading figure of Augustinian Catholicism in England. In this capacity John Shakespeare was responsible for the trust funds in which British Augustinians concealed investments that would otherwise have been subject to confiscation if left in the hands of private individuals. For years William Shakespeare himself was involved in legal proceedings to determine the proceeds of such funds. Shakespeare’s father was driven out of public office and into a kind of political underground by persecution organised by militant proponents of predestination in the Calvinist church and their Jesuit allies. For the first nearly two centuries after his death in 1616, William Shakespeare’s plays were not performed in England. Were it not for the role of Friedrich Schiller, the great German dramatist of the late 1700s, William Shakespeare might now be unknown. Through his plays, William Shakespeare opened the mind of his audiences to the tragedy of history and realities of human behaviour, introduced in the English language the concept of irony, and metaphor. Shakespeare’s work had, in Shakespeare’s lifetime, an uplifting influence on the capabilities of human reason benefiting the entire population of England.