Short answers, pulled from the story.
Henry VI, Part 1 is believed to have been written in 1591. The earliest recorded performance was on the 3rd of March 1592 at the Rose Theatre in Southwark, where Philip Henslowe's diary records it under the title Harey Vj, performed by Lord Strange's Men, earning £3.16s.8d across fifteen performances.
Scholarly opinion remains divided. Gary Taylor's 1995 analysis concluded that approximately 18.7 percent of the play (around 3,846 out of 20,515 words) was written by Shakespeare, with Thomas Nashe credited for Act 1. In 2016, Oxford University Press credited the play to Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Nashe, and Anonymous, adapted by William Shakespeare. No definitive consensus has been reached.
Shakespeare's primary source was Edward Hall's The Union of the Two Noble and Illustre Families of Lancaster and York, published in 1548. He also consulted Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (1577; second edition 1587). Scholars have established he used both independently because specific scenes can be traced to one source but not the other.
Lord Talbot is the play's central English military figure and functions as a symbol of a dying chivalric code. He is Constable of France and is presented as a knight devoted to honour, self-sacrifice, and the good of England. His death at Bordeaux, caused partly by the failure of Somerset and Richard to send reinforcements, marks the play's dramatization of the end of English chivalry.
Joan la Pucelle is presented as a contradictory figure. The French characters treat her as a saint and a saviour, while the English, including Talbot and York, call her a witch and a whore. The play uses her character to stage a debate about language, perception, and the impossibility of certainty, without finally resolving whether she is holy or demonic.
The order of composition remains contested. Some scholars, including E.M.W. Tillyard and Michael Hattaway, argue the plays were written in sequence with Part 1 first. Others, including R.B. McKerrow and Gary Taylor, argue Part 1 was written last as a prequel to the already existing Parts 2 and 3. The Oxford Shakespeare Complete Works places Parts 2 and 3 before Part 1. All critics agree all three plays existed by early 1592 at the latest.