Henry VI, Part 2

“Fear frames disorder, and disorder wounds where it should guard.” 

     Holinshed and Hall provided Shakespeare with an enormous amount of raw material to work with, but it’s how he put the stories together that make the plays worth studying. He is as much an editor of history as playwright at this early point in his career.

     Shakespeare knew a good story when he found it and he didn’t let timelines or certain facts get in the way.  When Shakespeare wrote Henry VI, Part 2, the War of the Roses was barely a century gone by.  The events, the principals, the slaughter, and resulting social chaos remained firmly in the consciousness of the English people.  But enough time had passed to take chances with the story as long as he didn’t play too loosely with the facts. 

     So, for the sake of drama, he did.  Years of rivalry and scheming among the nobles are compressed to a single scene.  Gloucester was arrested, but not murdered.  The affair between Suffolk and Queen Margaret was speculative at best. Eleanor’s dabbling with the witches really did happen, but some seven years before Margaret’s arrival as Queen.  Jack Cade did lead a failed rebellion against Henry, but he didn’t advocate illiteracy and he didn’t get nearly the laughs as he does in the play.

     With Henry blindly smitten with his new Queen, Shakespeare quickly sets events in motion.  The devastating loss of valuable and hard won lands in France arrives on line 52, and conspiracies ignite 100 lines later.  The wordplay, and possibly Shakespeare’s first pun, makes its debut at Line 122  (“For Suffolk’s duke, may he be suffocate.”)

     The plot proceeds, but does not develop.  One episode follows another, with little cause in one scene leading to an effect in the next.  The scenes illustrate the characters involved, but neither develop the characters nor explain their actions. Yet, the story progresses forward because because an entire nation is at risk.  Onstage and on the page, social chaos makes for compelling drama.   

     Henry isn’t a bad man, just a bad King; a pious, but ineffective leader because he relies on God to do all the ruling, to take care of his and the states’ fortunes.  (Margaret’s comment that Henry would make a better Pope than King is a bit of a joke; Popes of the 14th and 15 Centuries did not lack for regal arrogance in politics, war or other shenanigans.)  But God’s will often requires human action to get things done.  Ambition requires the individual to play God. Henry’s lack of action leads to lesser nobles to act beyond their reach.

    The Queen, Suffolk, and Cardinal Beaufort all want the power, but all seem as ill-equipped as Henry.  Margaret is rash, petty and vain; Suffolk holds the common people in contempt; Beaufort is a blustering coward. 

     Only York has a claim to the throne and the patience of a successful usurper. And he feels compelled to bit his tongue and bide his time in order for his plan to work.

     If there is a hero in this play it is Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester.  He holds the King’s well-being (and, therefore the welfare of the State) as his first priority.  He is wise, loyal and genuinely cares about the people.  The feeling is mutual.  If anybody in this play should be King it’s him.  It is his reputation and popularity that stands in the way of the conspirators.

     Shakespeare develops tension in the story by juxtaposing characters and actions.  While Henry waits on God to determine the country’s future, Eleanor conjures up a demon to predict hers.  Peter Thump and Thomas Horner fight a duel that foreshadows the coming civil war.  Like the King, Alexander Iden enjoys the peace of contemplation. Unlike the king, when confronted, he doesn’t wait to defend himself.  And when he learns that it’s Cade the Traitor he’s fighting, he kills him straight away.  If only Henry had the common sense of this common man, the civil war might have been avoided. Prophecies and dreams come true, but they are not the result of God’s Will, or demon’s curses, or even the stars.  They are the result of bad decisions, not the fulfillment of fate.

     Marlowe’s influence on Shakespeare’s early writing is enormous. Members of the Royal Court speak as if they were Tamburlaine impersonators, as stiff and exaggerated as Gloucester’s corpse. They don’t talk to one another, they exchange speeches.  The rhetoric flows, the similes wander, and metaphors waft like tapestries amid all the hot air.  It’s only when speaking in asides that they feel or sound like humans.  Like a novice magician, Shakespeare knows how the tricks work, but lacks the subtlety to make the illusion seem real.

     Jack Cade is Marlovian as well, and the personification of social chaos. He complains about the loss of France, just as the nobles do.  His disdain for law and learning equals Suffolk’s and Beaufort’s disdain for Gloucester.  Cade’s serpentine genealogy echoes York’s concise claim as the legitimate heir.  He mocks Henry's Christian priorities by promising to provide the poor with food and drink (the good stuff, too.) But he is the Marlovian hero writ small, stripped of poetry, pulled off the staged and set in the real world among commoners who get what he says, but see him for what he is.  In Cade, Shakespeare takes Marlowe’s hero and humanizes him.  As a result, Cade is the most fully drawn character in the play. Cartoonish, but human.

Learning Points:

Organize the material into a narrative

     Whether it’s an epic novel or an analysis of how the Marketing Department screwed up the introduction of a company’s newest line of products, get the audience involved early by getting to the point early.  Keep them engaged by providing context that advances the theme.  And if strict chronological order doesn’t do the job, then play with it.

Double Clutch When Shifting Gears

     Without comic relief, the story in Henry VI Part 2 would be unbearably tragic.  But the comedy here is not gratuitous. Each scene either advances or comments of the plot.  Some critics think the Simpcox Miracle of St. Alban’s (Act II, Scene i) is unnecessary.  But it demonstrates more that Gloucester’s judgement and sense of the law.  It shows that Henry’s piousness and naivete are so well known that even the commoners feel they can take advantage of it.  And the next time he visits St. Alban’s, it’s Henry who gets spanked and forced to flee.

Jack Cade as Character Development

     Since many of the main characters are historical figures, their actions and reputations were well known through folklore or the chronicles.  HIstory had decided their characters.  Shakespeare admits as much when Gloucester bemoans:

“And shall these labours and these honours die?

Shall Henry's conquest, Bedford's vigilance,

Your deeds of war and all our counsel die?

O peers of England, shameful is this league!

Fatal this marriage, cancelling your fame,

Blotting your names from books of memory,

Razing the characters of your renown,

Defacing monuments of conquer'd France,

Undoing all, as all had never been!”

     Besides, they were nobles and had to be treated with the respect due them (and to the Master of Revels whose approval was required before a play could be produced.) 

     Jack Cade’s reputation was not an official matter.  To some, Cade was a patriot and reformer.  To others, he was a trouble-making rebel.  In either case he was certainly a commoner, which gave Shakespeare more flexibility in portraying him.  Taking into consideration both views of Cade gives the character more depth.  That his rebellion succeeds (historical fact) raises him above mere comic relief.  Throughout the play, Shakespeare draws parallels, compares and contrasts events in order to develop the plot.  By focussing the same technique on Cade, he begins to learn how to develop a character.

Next: Henry VI, Part 3