William Shakespeare

A collection of sonnets and poetry by Shakespeare

Contains an introduction to the play, the text of the play, and notes.

The play picks up where Henry IV, Part One left off. Its focus is on Prince Hal's journey toward kingship, and his ultimate rejection of Falstaff. However, unlike Part One, Hal's and Falstaff's stories are almost entirely separate, as the two characters meet only twice and very briefly. The tone of much of the play is elegiac, focusing on Falstaff's age and his closeness to death, which parallels that of the increasingly sick king.

Loyalty and Heredity-- King Henry VIII covers the period of Henry's reign from shortly after he becomes king to the birth of Elizabeth, who would one day become queen and for whom the play was written. The firing of a cannon during the very first performance of this play caused a fire that burnt the Globe theater to the ground. Heat not a furnace for your foe so hot That it do singe yourself. We may outrun By violent swiftness that which we run at,...

Pride and Defeat-- Troilus and Cressida takes place in the seventh year of the Trojan War. The Trojan prince Troilus falls in love with Calchas' daughter Cressida. The two secretly marry, and predictably, tragedy quickly follows. Time is like a fashionable host That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand, And with his arms outstretched, as he would fly, Grasps in the comer: welcome ever smiles, And farewell goes out sighing.