First Battle of St Albans First Battle of St Albans The First Battle of St Albans, fought on 22 May 1455 at St Albans, 22 miles (35 km) north of London, traditionally marks the beginning of the Wars of the Roses in England. Richard, Duke of York, and his allies, the Neville earls of Salisbury and Warwick, defeated a royal army commanded by Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, who was killed. With King Henry VI captured, a subsequent parliament appointed Richard of York Lord Protector. The incapacitation of Henry VI by mental illness in 1454 had led to the recall to court of Richard of
The Wars of the Roses (adaptation) For example, Ton Hoenselaars argues that Brecht Another major influence on the production was Jan Kott. Hall had read a proof copy of Kott's soon-to-be-influential "Shakespeare Our Contemporary", prior to its publication in Britain, just before he began rehearsals for "The Wars of the Roses". He was strongly taken by Kott's theory regarding Shakespeare's conception of the "Grand Mechanism" of history; as history continually revolves, each claimant to the throne rises, only to be subsequently deposed and crushed in an ongoing cycle. In the program notes for "Henry VI", Barton and Hall included a quotation from Kott, which they felt