Shakespeare's Kings

by John Julius Norwich

  According to tradition, Henry was murdered in the Octagon Chamber on the first floor of the Wakefield Tower. His death seems to have been a violent one: when his coffin was opened in 1910, the skull was found to be 'much broken'.

  Though widely hailed as a saint and martyr - and despite repeated overtures by Henry VII to Pope Julius II in Rome - Henry VI never received formal canonization. Nor, one suspects, did he deserve it. True, he was genuinely pious, unswervingly faithful to his wife, tender and solicitous to his family; but so are many men. Saints should be made of sterner stuff. In temporal rulers, too, there is no place for the innocence, unworldliness and humility that constituted so great a part of Henry's character. But for the accident of his birth, he would have led a quiet, uneventful life of scholarship and devotion; as King, he was a disaster - swayed by every breeze, puppet of every faction, totally unable to control or direct his kingdom as it drifted further and further into chaos. Having succeeded to the throne at the age of only nine months, he reigned for nearly fifty years - perhaps the saddest half-century in English history. His death, doubtless, was horrible; but it came not a moment too soon.

  4

  i.e. put in a coffin.

  King Henry VI Part III

  [1455-1475]

  KING.

  Gives not the hawthorn bush a sweeter shade

  To shepherds looking on their silly sheep,

  Than doth a rich embroider'd canopy

  To kings that fear their subjects' treachery?

  KING HENRY VI PART III

  Nowhere is Shakespeare's extraordinary ability to turn a chronicle into a drama more impressively demonstrated than in the third part of King Henry VI. Its two predecessors both contain scenes of battle - in Part I, indeed, the fighting in France is portrayed with vigour and considerable brio - but it is only in the last play of the trilogy that the author is called upon to encapsulate in little more than two hours what is virtually the entire course of the Wars of the Roses, from the aftermath of the first battle of St Albans in 1455 to the defeat of Queen Margaret at Tewkesbury sixteen years later. Now at last, with all the inevitability of Greek tragedy, the House of Lancaster suffers retribution for the atrocity committed at the end of the previous century: the deposition and murder of Richard II and the usurpation of his crown by Henry IV are finally avenged. And the consequences of the outrage are visited not just on Henry and his successors but on the country as a whole: England loses France, is burdened with a detested French queen, and rapidly descends into anarchy. After Tewkesbury, however, it seems that Henry's crimes have been finally expiated. It will be another fourteen years before the sun of York suffers its final eclipse, but already the last of the Lancastrians, John of Gaunt's great-great-grandson Henry of Richmond, has made his appearance on the stage. He is described in the dramatis personae quite simply as 'a youth'; but it was he, as Shakespeare's audiences well knew, who was to inaugurate the great dynasty of the Tudors and, with it, well over a century of prosperity and peace.

  Whatever those audiences might have felt, however, the opening of the play is not such as to fill the historian with confidence. 'I wonder how the King escap'd our hands!' says Warwick, after the first Battle of St Albans. The short answer is that he did not escape: as we have seen, he and the Queen remained in the town for the night, and Warwick himself, with Salisbury and Gloucester, most deferentially escorted them back to London the following day. Within the first ten lines, too, Shakespeare has changed his own story: he allows York to report that his old enemy Clifford was 'by the swords of common soldiers slain', whereas at the end of Part II Clifford is killed by York himself.1 Finally, he perpetuates the solecism of the earlier play in the matter of Prince Richard's age - to have 'best deserv'd of all [York's] sons' is a remarkable tribute to a two-year-old - but this is of course deliberate: now more than ever, historical time must be telescoped if it is to fit the two-hour traffic of the Shakespearean stage.

  So drastic is this telescoping that, the play having begun in May 1455, by line 35 of the first scene we find ourselves already in October 1460 when York, having recently returned from Ireland, makes his first open claim to the crown, laying his hand on the cushion of the throne in Westminster Hall. It need hardly be said that the appearance of King Henry at this point is an invention. (Even had it not been, the King is unlikely to have said that he was crowned at the age of nine months; although this was indeed his age at his accession he received his first coronation, in London, shortly before his eighth birthday.) His presence, however - together with that of Queen Margaret, who enters a few minutes later with the seven-year-old Prince of Wales — allows a brilliant dramatization of the Act of Accord2 and the Queen's furious protest at her son's disinheritance.3

  Two months pass. Scene ii is set at York's castle of Sandal in Yorkshire, where he, with his eldest and youngest sons Edward and

  1. See Chapter 14, p. 280. But Shakespeare soon returns to his earlier version: in Part III, I.i.166, young Clifford is made to refer to York as 'him that slew my father'.

  2. See Chapter 15, pp. 284-5.

  3. 'The feare yl thei had of the quene, whose countenance was so fearfull, and whose looke was so terrible, that to al men . . . her frounyng was theyr vndoyng, & her indignation was their death' (Hall, 241).

  Richard,1 are about to engage Northumberland and the Lancastrians of the north. With them is John Nevill, Marquis of Montagu, who had in fact remained in London and who is unaccountably addressed by York throughout the scene as his brother - although he was in fact only his nephew by marriage. The likeliest explanation here is that Shakespeare substituted Montagu at the last moment for his father the Earl of Salisbury, who was certainly at Sandal but whom - since he was to be executed immediately after the coming battle - he had decided to leave out of the play altogether. The scene begins with a chilling conversation in which Richard (who in 1460 was still only eight years old) reveals his precociously Machiavellian nature by encouraging his father to seize the throne, on the grounds that the oath he has recently sworn to allow King Henry to reign in peace is technically invalid. A messenger then arrives to announce that Queen Margaret has arrived, with the northern lords and an army of 20,000, and is about to besiege the castle.

  The last two scenes of Act I are given over to the battle of Wakefield. Like all Shakespeare's battles it is inevitably impressionistic, consisting as it does of two main episodes: first, the vengeful killing by young Clifford of York's second son, the seventeen-year-old Earl of Rudand ('Thy father slew my father; therefore die'); second, the capture and death of York himself, stabbed first by Clifford and then by the Queen in person. Shakespeare, of course, knew as well as we do that Margaret was not at Wakefield at all; at the time of the encounter she was still in Scotland, whence she was to join the triumphant Lancastrians at York only some three weeks later. Once again, however, her sudden appearance, her savage mockery of her captive (made to stand on a molehill with the paper crown on his head) and, worst of all, that terrible moment when she herself drives her dagger into York's heart - all this adds immeasurably to the drama, as well as casting a new and hideous light on her character.

  The first scene of Act II — the opening line of which is curiously similar to that of Act I - is a masterpiece of concision, covering as it does two

  1. Neither Prince was in fact with him. Edward was away in Wales, while the eight-year-old Richard was with his elder brother George, staying at Fastolf Place, the vast mansion built by the late Sir John Fastolf in Southwark, across the river from the Tower.

  major battles, both fought within two weeks of each other in February 1461. The victory of York's son Edward - formerly Earl of March, now himself Duke of York - at Mortimer's Cross is briefly represented by the miraculous appearance, to him and his brother Richard (who with his other surviving brother George was actually in the Low Countries at the time) of three suns simultaneously in the sky; while the second battle of St Albans, in which the Lancastrians had their revenge, is reported by
Warwick - who had joined the two princes after this last encounter - in a single speech (II.i.i2off). At this point, as we know, Edward and Warwick marched on London, where Edward claimed the throne before heading northwards to meet the Lancastrians, returning to the capital in May for his coronation the following month; but Shakespeare very sensibly streamlines the action by sending him off immediately after St Albans, telescoping the two London visits into one and bringing Edward to London only after the victory of Towton. This allows him to build up an impressive - if entirely unhistorical — confrontation scene at York between Edward, his two brothers (who were in fact still in Holland) and Warwick on the one hand and King Henry, Queen Margaret and the Lancastrians on the other. It is followed by the battle itself, which he somewhat uncharacteristically spreads over all four of the remaining scenes of the act.

  The one glaring historical inaccuracy in Shakespeare's version of the Battle of Towton is the continued presence of Edward's brothers George and Richard, who were actually brought back from Holland only in time for his coronation the following June. The first scene of the fight - in fact scene iii - opens with Warwick exhausted, Edward and George in despair. Then Richard arrives to report the death of Warwick's 'brother' - in fact his illegitimate half-brother, designated by Hall 'the bastard of Salisbury'. The news rouses Warwick to fury, filling him with a desire for revenge which enables him to breathe new spirit into the rest. Next, in the extremely short (and obviously invented) scene iv, we see Richard attacking Clifford as the man who has killed both his brother Rutland and his father Richard of York; Clifford, initially fearless, flees with the arrival of Warwick.

  Scene v - which is equally imaginary and which, it has been pointed out, might have been taken from a medieval morality play - now introduces a completely different mood. Here we are at the still centre of the hurricane with King Henry, seated on a molehill — ironically enough, identical to that on which York had been mocked at Wakefield — reflecting first on the ever-changing fortunes of war and then on the miserable lives of monarchs when compared to those of the meanest of their subjects. He is joined by two symbolic figures, both illustrative of the horrors of civil war: 'a Son that hath killed his Father' and 'a Father that hath kill'd his Son'. He gives them his sympathy but insists - with rare insensitivity in the circumstances - that he is ten times unhappier than either of them. He is finally roused out of his self-pity by the arrival of his wife and son with the Duke of Exeter, who urge him to flee with them - for 'Warwick rages like a chafed bull'.

  The last scene of the act introduces the dying Clifford, seen for the first time in the play as noble rather than vindictive, lamenting the overthrow of his beloved House of Lancaster more than his own imminent death. The three young princes come upon him as he expires, and agree that his head must now replace their father's on the battlements of York. (Hall records that the replacement heads were those of 'the erle of Devonshyre and iii. other'.) The scene ends with the victorious princes leaving for London and Edward's coronation, after which Warwick announces his intention of going to France to seek the hand of Bona of Savoy on behalf of the new King. Edward promises to give his brothers the dukedoms of Clarence and Gloucester, rejecting Richard's claim that 'Gloucester's dukedom is too ominous' - a reference, presumably, to the fate of his predecessor Duke Humphrey - and his request for that of Clarence instead.

  And so to Act III, which opens with another imaginary scene in which Henry VI, wandering the countryside in disguise after the battle of Hexham, is finally recognized and arrested. For Shakespeare, this occurs not at Waddington Hall but in 'a chase in the north of England'. It hardly matters: his purpose is simply to provide another of those scenes of quietness - one might almost say religious quietism - during which the deposed King can reflect upon his fate. After just a hundred lines we are transported to London. Edward, now crowned and a dramatically different character from his predecessor on the throne, is obsessed by Elizabeth Grey (nee Woodville) whom he is determined to take to his bed. She for her part holds out for marriage - Shakespeare has clearly read his Mancini1 — to which he eventually agrees. The stage

  i. See Chapter 15, p. 29m.

  is then left empty but for Richard of Gloucester, who in a long and magnificent soliloquy makes his first clear declaration of his ambitions:

  I'll play the orator as well as Nestor,

  Deceive more slily than Ulysses could,

  And, like a Sinon, take another Troy.

  I can add colours to the chameleon,

  Change shapes with Proteus for advantages,

  And set the murderous Machiavel to school.

  Can I do this, and cannot get a crown? Tut!

  Were it further off, I'll pluck it down.

  Scene iii brings us to the French court. Queen Margaret, still determined on revenge, has taken refuge with Louis XI, from whom she is seeking military assistance. Warwick, all unaware of recent developments, arrives to negotiate on behalf of his master for Princess Bona, whose hand Louis immediately grants — though not without another outburst of anger from Margaret, who bitterly accuses them both of disloyalty to her husband. At this point a messenger arrives from London with letters informing all three of them of Edward's marriage to Elizabeth Grey; and in a moment the entire situation is changed. Warwick instantly transfers his loyalties to Henry VI; the Queen is triumphant at this new proof of Edward's duplicity; and Louis hesitates no longer in promising her the aid she seeks. To seal the new alliance, Warwick and Margaret agree that his daughter shall forthwith be married to her son, Edward Prince of Wales.

  Once again, history has been drastically compressed: the events related in this single scene cover some nine years. Warwick did indeed go to France to sue on Edward's behalf for the hand of Bona; but that was in 1461, three years before the King's marriage. The visit from which he returned in rebellion was in 1470, five years after it. It was in the later year, too, that Warwick's younger daughter, Anne (not the 'eldest', as the play has it), was betrothed to the young Prince - his elder, Isabel, having already been given to Clarence in 1469. In spite of everything, however, the diplomatic consequences of Edward's ill-advised marriage are admirably illustrated. Once again one is left with the conviction that, whatever liberties Shakespeare might take with strict historical truth, in the essentials he was almost invariably right. For the non-scholar, seeking merely an overall view of Plantagenet history, there are many worse guides to follow.

  One of the inevitable consequences of Shakespeare's telescoping of time is that we are occasionally obliged to put back the clock; the opening of Act IV, in which King Edward asks his brothers their opinion of his 'new marriage', can be dated no later than 1464. Basically, its purpose is to emphasize the almost universal unpopularity of Edward's action. First the brothers themselves leave him in no doubt of their own feelings: they complain, in particular, about the heedless way in which he is marrying off all his new Woodville relations. Then, most conveniently, a messenger arrives from France to report the fury of King Louis, of the wronged and humiliated Bona and, as always, of Queen Margaret, who is 'ready to put armour on'. She has also, he continues, made up her differences with Warwick, whose daughter is to marry the young Prince of Wales. (Shakespeare's confusion between the Earl's two daughters is once again in evidence, expressed this time by Clarence.) At the end of the scene, as a result of the quarrel, Clarence and Somerset1 leave to join Warwick; Richard of Gloucester, Hastings and Montagu assure the King of their support.

  The next scene brings us forward again to 1469. Warwick has landed in Kent with his 'articles of petition' and has hurried north-westwards in the hopes of meeting up with the rebel Robin of Redesdale in the north. (The stage directions tell us that he is accompanied by French soldiers, but this is incorrect: King Louis's men did not in fact appear on the field until the Battle of Tewkesbury, still two years in the future.) In Warwickshire he is joined by Clarence and Somerset and suspiciously inquires whose side they are on; reassured, he reiterates his promise
that Clarence shall have his daughter to wife. Here again, however, Shakespeare errs: both enquiry and promise would have been unnecessary, since Clarence had already married Isabel Nevill a week or so before. Scene iii then follows straight on its predecessor, with what is

  1. Three Dukes of Somerset were killed during the Wars of the Roses. Edmund Beaufort, second Duke, was killed at the first Battle of St Albans; Henry, third Duke, at first a loyal Lancastrian, went over to Edward in 1462 but soon returned to his old allegiance and was executed by the Yorkists after the Battle of Hexham in 1464; his brother Edmund, fourth Duke, who remained firmly Lancastrian, was also executed, two days after Tewkesbury. The present Somerset is a compound of the second two.

  presumably the field of Edgecote in which, contrary to what we see on the stage, neither King Edward nor Warwick took part. Edward was indeed captured soon after the battle, but by the king-maker's brother, the Archbishop of York.

  At this point we realize that Shakespeare has been telescoping again, and that King Edward's two successive defeats - the first his captivity after Edgecote, the second his flight to Holland fifteen months later -have been deliberately run into one. In scene iv Queen Elizabeth first tells Lord Rivers that her husband has been captured and is in the hands of the Archbishop; immediately afterwards, she tells him of her pregnancy and her determination to seek sanctuary. We can thus date the first half of this extremely short scene to July 1469, the second half to October 1470. This contrivance certainly streamlines the action, but it also raises new problems for the author: if Edward is a prisoner in England, how can he land from abroad with an army? Shakespeare's solution is to invent a totally fictitious rescue of the King by Richard of Gloucester and others, after which he takes refuge in Flanders. This enables Warwick to release Henry VI from the Tower and reinstate him on the throne — which did indeed occur when Edward was away in the Low Countries — and Edward to disembark at Ravenscar for the last triumphant chapter of his long battle against the Lancastrians.