Hollow Crown II: all you need to know about Shakespeare’s Henry VI

Benedict Cumberbatch and Judi Dench are soon to grace our screens in the second series. So here are some useful facts about the Wars of the Roses plays

News that the BBC has followed 2012’s The Hollow Crown by commissioning a second series, based on the Henry VI plays and to be screened as part of the current Shakespeare season, has sent Bardolaters into a frenzy. Dench! Gambon! Him out of Downton Abbey! Benedict Cumberbatch as history’s most swoonsome Richard III! But does anyone actually know the Henry VI plays? Most of us are on nodding terms with Falstaff and Hal, and even David Cameron is able to spout the French-bashing bits from Henry V. But theatres rarely stage the first tetralogy. They haven’t been seen on the Beeb since the woebegone Complete Works series of the late 1970s and early 80s. Navigating the Henry VI plays, with their multiplying Warwicks and Worcesters, Somersets and Shrewsburys, is like taking a tour through minor English cathedral cities by means of Blackadder and 1066 and All That. So here are five useful facts about the plays. Meet the Henrys. They’re more fun than you might think.

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