‘That Shakespeare,’ a German friend of mine once said to me, ‘knew a thing or two.’

You can say that again. Sometimes, indeed, I think he knew everything, at least everything about human nature. When a religious fanatic tells me that this or that holy scripture is all I need as a guide to life, I reply with a single exclamatory word, ‘Shakespeare!’ He even knew about — or perhaps I should say, anticipated — insurance and social security fraud. At any rate, they would not have surprised him, or an attentive reader of him.

I suppose that the three parts of Henry VI are by general consent not among his greatest works (if, indeed, they are his, which some deny, and not only Baconians and Oxfordians). Yet Part 2 has illumination in it for those who have what Pasteur called, with regard to the favours conferred by chance, the prepared mind.

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