If, when I'm done with them, the Henry plays don't all blur together into one giant Henry amoeba, I'll remember this one as the one full of vicious idiots. I've tried, I have, to like someone - anyone! - in this, but these power-hungry fools are as greedy as they are short-sighted. It's like a very slow train-wreck, but does that stop them? No, it does not. I wondered, halfway through, and irritated almost enough to throw the play down, if that was Shakespeare's intent: to fill the audience with disgust at all this backbiting. My opinion of the play promptly went up, but I was never sure if that was actually the case. Because I've certainly misread at least one of his intents, which was to negatively portray Falstaff as a miserable coward. Which he seemed to be, and good for him - I wouldn't want to die for or with any of these people either. Rather than contempt, however, he has my congratulations for his good common sense, which I don't think the Bard meant for me to feel so I could have read him wrong on the disgust as well.

That being said, the passages between Talbot and his son - poor brave idiots that they are - are extraordinarily good, and the play's worth reading for them alone. And I did enjoy the irony of getting rid of Joan of Arc (although her characterisation was monstrously prejudiced) only to replace her with Margaret, another problem-causing French woman. But I can't be too sorry, because the English all pretty much deserve it.