Shelter-In-Place Reading Roundup: The Henry VI Trilogy

A bizarre and historically inaccurate costume for Joan of Arc to match Shakespeare’s bizarre and inaccurate characterization of her? Engraving of Sophia Baddeley as Joan, 1776.

In October, my Shakespeare book club tackled the Henry VI trilogy. I had hoped this would turn me into one of those people who can confidently and fluently discuss the Wars of the Roses, but it’s just two months later and please don’t ask me to summarize the trilogy’s many battles and reversals…

Henry VI, Part 1 by William Shakespeare
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

It’s Joan of Arc as you’ve never seen her before! As written by an English Tudor propagandist, this version of Joan boasts that the Virgin Mary made her beautiful, defeats the Dauphin in single combat and then flirts with him, consorts with demons, and tells preposterous lies in a futile attempt to avoid being burned to death. Being a Francophile from a Catholic background, I ought to be offended, but I can’t really get worked up about it. It’s fascinating to see how this iconic historical figure was viewed (and demonized) by the nation she helped defeat.

Besides, Joan is the most interesting character in this rambling, episodic play. She’s not the protagonist, but then nobody really is. The play switches between four plot threads:
1) the power struggle between the Duke of Gloucester and the Bishop of Winchester for influence over the young King Henry
2) the power struggle between the Duke of York and the Duke of Somerset that will lead to the Wars of the Roses
3) the French effort to push the English out of their lands, under the direction of wily Joan
4) the English effort to hold their French lands, under the direction of noble Lord Talbot

Perhaps you can see the problem: the military plotlines have a clear protagonist/antagonist setup (Talbot vs. Joan), and get wrapped up by the end of the play. They also allow Shakespeare to indulge in a lot of exciting battle scenes. But the two power-struggle plotlines are harder to understand or care about. I think we’re supposed to root for Gloucester and York, but neither man says or does anything interesting. The moral “factionalism is bad and only begets more conflict” comes through strongly, but it means that these plotlines go unresolved. And if that weren’t enough, a fifth plotline gets introduced in the final act of the play, making it end on a cliffhanger: the question of who Henry will marry and how that may intensify the power struggles.

I have always found the Wars of the Roses confusing and I was surprised that Shakespeare’s depiction seems designed to enhance the confusion. We are introduced to York and Somerset when they are already quarreling and asking their supporters to don white or red roses to show their allegiance—but it takes about 100 lines of verse before we learn who these men are and what their quarrel is about. Since Shakespeare so often wrote plays that would flatter his aristocratic patrons, I didn’t expect his take on the Wars of the Roses to be “Yeah, you guys started a war for no good reason.”

Henry VI, Part 2 by William Shakespeare
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Intrigue, intrigue and more intrigue, capped off by the first real battle in the Wars of the Roses. Part 2 of Henry VI is nearly as episodic as Part 1, but for whatever reason, I enjoyed it more. Highlights include Shakespeare experimenting more with soliloquy and extended monologue; the detour into medieval forensic science to prove that Gloucester was smothered in his bed (can we call this the first English country house murder mystery?); and Jack Cade’s Rebellion in Act 4. This section of the play, which contains its single most famous line, “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers”, is disquieting to read in a time when populist, anti-elitist movements are gaining power around the world.

And I do think there’s more of an underlying structure to this play than there was to Part 1. The first scene lays out as clearly as possible the complicated alliances and factions that will shape the rest of the narrative. Scenes where the royal family interacts with commoners in Acts 1 and 2 set the stage for the peasants’ rebellion in Act 4. And I very much appreciate how at the exact midpoint of the play (and thus, the exact midpoint of the whole trilogy), the weak and ineffectual King Henry finally takes a decisive action for the first time, banishing Suffolk after Gloucester’s murder.

In my review of the first part of the trilogy, I expressed surprise that Shakespeare didn’t really seem to take sides in the York-Lancaster dispute and even implied that the whole conflict was baseless. This continues in Part 2, where both parties seem equally terrible and unworthy of the throne. On the Lancaster side, Suffolk commits adultery with the queen and conspires to murder Gloucester; on the other side, York foments a populist uprising as part of a multi-pronged, dastardly scheme to win the crown. Even Gloucester, an admirable character who tries to stay above the fray, has an ambitious, devious wife who practices witchcraft. But now I have a theory for why Shakespeare took this approach. He wrote this trilogy in the 1590s, when Queen Elizabeth was turning 60. Elizabeth was a much stronger and more capable monarch than Henry VI, but English people were worried that yet another succession crisis and power struggle would occur when their unmarried, childless queen passed away. By emphasizing that a succession crisis is a bad thing, by making it so that you can’t really root for any of the participants in the power struggle, maybe Shakespeare’s goal in these plays was to urge his countrymen never to let this happen again.

Henry VI, Part 3 by William Shakespeare
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

After the first two plays got all of the chess pieces in place, Part 3 of Henry VI covers the main events of the Wars of the Roses, from the aftermath of the Battle of St. Albans to the restoration of Edward IV to the throne. It works well enough for a while, though around Act 4, it feels like Shakespeare starts to sweat under the weight of how much plot he still has left to deal with. The pace speeds up to a degree that's almost comical. Armies invade! Important characters switch sides with barely any explanation! The crown of England gets passed around like a hot potato! Audiences or readers who hope this play will make the Wars of the Roses less confusing may be disappointed.

King Henry is as ineffectual and impractical as ever, but at least in this play he comes to a new self-awareness about how inept he is and how much his kingdom has suffered for it. Shakespeare will return to this theme, of a king losing power but gaining existential insight, in later, better plays like Richard II or Macbeth .

As with the first two parts, it’s hard to know who to root for, because nobody onstage seems like they’d actually be able to govern wisely and end the cycle of violence. So if there are no heroes, maybe the only solution is for an antihero to take charge, and be so awful that the warring factions put their enmity aside and unite to take him down. Yes, I’m already looking forward to Richard III , and it feels like Shakespeare is too. When young Richard of Gloucester steps to the front of the stage and unleashes the longest soliloquy in all of Shakespeare, venting his rage at his disabled body and his ambition to one day sit on the throne, it is thrilling to witness.

My favorite line in Henry VI, Part 3 comes toward the end, as the York brothers debate whether to kill Queen Margaret or show her mercy. Unsurprisingly, Richard is all for killing her. When his brother Edward prevents him, Richard says “Why should she live to fill the world with words?” I think this line suggests that Margaret is the only person who Richard genuinely fears. Like him, she is ambitious, ruthless, a skillful talker. She is mocked and underestimated for her gender the way Richard is mocked and underestimated for his disability. And in the sequel, she will indeed “fill the world with words” that curse him and bring him down…