'I am but shadow of myself': Persona mixta in Shakespeare's '1 Henry VI'

This dissertation is the first study of its kind to analyze Shakespeare's English history plays in terms of medieval and early modern theories of jurisprudence. The approach involves comparing the text of 1 Henry VI with Hall's and Holinshed's chronicles to determine how Shakespeare deviated from his historical source materials. Paying special attention to unhistorical scenes, the study examines details of characterization, dialogue, diction, and stage directions in the context of legal and political materials that would have been familiar to most educated Elizabethans: legal treatises, notably Bracton, Smyth, and Glanville; case law in Plowden's Reports, specifically, The Case of the Dutchy of Lancaster and Willion v. Berkley, and select political texts by Fortescue, Elyot, Plato, and Aquinas.; From the death of the last great medieval monarch, Henry V, until the ascendancy of Henry Tudor as Henry VII, England underwent a long and often bloody transition from feudal kingdom to early modern state. Shakespeare's minor tetralogy is the story of this metamorphosis and 1 Henry VI is its beginning chapter. The play depicts fifteenth century England as an ordered, legalistic society in which stability was dependent on king and aristocracy observing common law strictures and using their power to further the kingdom's general welfare. The language and action of 1 Henry VI reflect the legal foundations of feudal England at the point when those underpinnings are beginning to disintegrate. This dissolution is represented through four subplots that emphasize the characters as personae mixtae---as private individuals and legal entities---who are defined by status at birth, public office and political duties within feudal England's socio-political structure. In each of the four subplots, Shakespeare establishes a repeating pattern in which illegitimate forces represented by Joan la Pucelle; Henry Beaufort, Cardinal of Winchester; the Earl of Somerset, and the Earl of Suffolk attempt to undermine legitimate authority represented by Lord John Talbot, the Marshal of France; Humphrey of Gloucester, the Lord Protector; Richard Plantagenet; and Henry VI. Placing private interests above public duty, these subversive forces eventually destroy the legal foundations that ordered English feudal society. Civil war ensues.