Type of plot: Historical
Time of plot: 1444–55
Locale: England
First performed: ca. 1590–91; first published, 1594
PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS
King Henry VI
Duke of Gloucester (Humphrey), his uncle
Cardinal Beaufort, great-uncle of the king
Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York
Edward and
Richard, York’s sons
Duke of Somerset, leader of the Lancaster faction
Duke of Suffolk, the king’s favorite
Earl of Salisbury, a Yorkist
Earl of Warwick, a Yorkist
Margaret, Queen of England
Eleanor, Duchess of Gloucester
Jack Cade, a rebel
THE STORY
The Earl of Suffolk, having arranged for the marriage of King Henry VI and Margaret of Anjou, brought the new queen to England. There was great indignation when the terms of the marriage treaty were revealed. The contract called for an eighteen-month truce between the two countries, the outright gift of the duchies of Anjou and Maine to Reignier, Margaret’s father, and omission of her dowry. As had been predicted earlier, no good could come of this union, since Henry, at Suffolk’s urging, had broken his betrothal to the daughter of the Earl of Armagnac. However, Henry, pleased by his bride’s beauty, gladly accepted the treaty and elevated Suffolk, the go-between, to a dukedom.
The voices were hardly still from the welcome of the new queen before the lords, earls, and dukes were expressing their ambitions to gain more control in affairs of state. The old dissension between the Duke of Gloucester and Cardinal Beaufort continued. The churchman tried to turn others against Gloucester by saying that he, next in line for the crown, needed watching. The Duke of Somerset accused the cardinal of seeking Gloucester’s position for himself. These high ambitions were not exclusively the failing of the men. The Duchess of Gloucester showed great impatience with her husband when he said he wished only to serve as Protector of the Realm. When she saw that her husband was not going to help her ambitions to be queen, the duchess hired Hume, a priest, to traffic with witches and conjurers in her behalf. Hume accepted her money, but he had already been hired by Suffolk and the cardinal to work against the duchess.
Queen Margaret’s unhappy life in England, her contempt for the king, and the people’s dislike for her soon became apparent. The mutual hatred she and the duchess had for each other showed itself in tongue lashings and blows. The duchess, eager to take advantage of any turn of events, indulged in sorcery with Margery Jourdain and the notorious Bolingbroke. Her questions to them, all pertaining to the fate of the king and his advisers, and the answers which these sorcerers had received from the spirit world, were confiscated by Buckingham and York when they broke in upon a seance. For her part in the practice of sorcery the duchess was banished to the Isle of Man; Margery Jourdain and Bolingbroke were executed.
His wife’s deeds brought new slanders upon Gloucester. In answer to Queen Margaret’s charge that he was a party to his wife’s underhandedness, Gloucester, a broken man, resigned his position as Protector of the Realm. Even after his resignation Margaret continued in her attempts to turn the king against Gloucester. She was aided by the other lords, who accused Gloucester of deceit and crimes against the state; but the king, steadfast in his loyalty to Gloucester, described the former protector as virtuous and mild.
York, whose regency in France had been given to Somerset, enlisted the aid of Warwick and Salisbury in his fight for the crown, his claim being based on the fact that King Henry’s grandfather, Henry IV, had usurped the throne from York’s great-uncle. Suffolk and the cardinal, to rid themselves of a dangerous rival, sent York to quell an uprising in Ireland. Before departing for Ireland, York planned to incite rebellion among the English through one John Cade, a headstrong, warmongering Kentishman. Cade, under the name of John Mortimer, the name of York’s uncle, paraded his riotous followers through the streets of London. The rebels, irresponsible and unthinking, went madly about the town wrecking buildings, killing noblemen who opposed them, and shouting that they were headed for the palace, where John Cade, the rightful heir to the throne, would avenge the injustices done his lineage. An aspect of the poorly organized rebellion was shown in the desertion of Cade’s followers when they were appealed to by loyal old Lord Clifford. He admonished them to save England from needless destruction and to expend their military efforts against France. Cade, left alone, went wandering about the countryside as a fugitive and was killed by Alexander Iden, a squire who was knighted for his bravery.
Gloucester, arrested by Suffolk on a charge of high treason, was promised a fair trial by the king. This was unwelcome news to the lords, and when Gloucester was sent for to appear at the hearing, he was found in his bed, brutally murdered and mangled. Suffolk and the cardinal had hired the murderers. So was fulfilled the first prophecy of the sorcerers, that the king would depose and outlive a duke who would die a violent death.
Shortly after Gloucester’s death the king was called to the bedside of the cardinal, who had been stricken by a strange malady. There King Henry heard the cardinal confess his part in the murder of Gloucester, the churchman’s bitterest enemy. The cardinal died unrepentant. Queen Margaret became more outspoken concerning affairs of state, especially in those matters on behalf of Suffolk, and more openly contemptuous toward the king’s indifferent attitude.
At the request of Commons, led by Warwick and Salisbury, Suffolk was banished from the country for his part in Gloucester’s murder. Saying their farewells, he and Margaret declared their love for each other. Suffolk, disguised, took ship to leave the country. Captured by pirates, he was beheaded for his treacheries and one of his gentlemen was instructed to return his body to the king.
In London, Queen Margaret mourned her loss in Suffolk’s death as she caressed his severed head. The king, piqued by her demonstration, asked her how she would react to his own death. Evasive, she answered that she would not mourn his death; she would die for him. The witch had prophesied Suffolk’s death: She had said that he would die by water.
Returning from Ireland, York planned to gather forces on his way to London and seize the crown for himself. He also stated his determination to remove Somerset, his adversary in court matters. The king reacted by trying to appease the rebel by committing Somerset to the Tower. Hearing that his enemy was in prison, York ordered his army to disband.
His rage was all the greater, therefore, when he learned that Somerset had been restored to favor. The armies of York and Lancaster prepared to battle at Saint Albans, where Somerset, after an attempt to arrest York for capital treason, was slain by crookbacked Richard Plantagenet, York’s son. Somerset’s death fulfilled the prophecies of the witch, who had also foretold that Somerset should shun castles, that he would be safer on sandy plains. With his death the king and queen fled. Salisbury, weary from battle but undaunted, and Warwick, proud of York’s victory at Saint Albans, pledged their support to York in his drive for the crown, and York hastened to London to forestall the king’s intention to summon Parliament into session.
CRITICAL EVALUATION
Like the first play of the Henry VI trilogy, this play contains a large cast of characters and continues the coverage of the conflict between the houses of York and Plantagenet known in history as the Wars of the Roses. The time span covered in the second play is much shorter than that covered in the first, but the second play’s action sprawls, covering a wide range of events. The depiction of a number of nobles, many of them hypocritical and self-serving, who group and regroup, deceive and dissemble, creates a potentially bewildering situation for the reader, requiring close attention. There are many threads of the narrative that are carried over from Henry VI, Part I, and a prior reading of that play enhances understanding of this one. More consistently than the preceding play, however, Henry VI, Part II explores its major thematic material: the consequences throughout the realm of an ineffectual monarch.
The animosity between the Duke of Gloucester and Cardinal Beaufort is one of the basic conflicts in the first part of the play. This conflict divides the other nobles into factions. Gloucester, who has been the Protector of the Realm since the infant Henry became king, displays genuine concern for the welfare of the realm rather than self-interest. He refuses to join in his wife’s ambitious hopes for his advancement. All he wants is to guide the young, unworldly king and protect him from harmful influences that would adversely affect England. Gloucester’s downfall lies in his assumption that he commands the loyalty of many of the other nobles, whom he believes share his own right-minded support of the king. Gloucester, virtuous and loyal, is betrayed by everyone. Even those who have respect for him have their own agenda to pursue. His short-sightedness is a flaw, a failure in responsibility, because it has the tragic consequence of leaving the inadequate king and England itself vulnerable to the destructive effects of others’ self-interest.
The Duke of York is the contrast to Gloucester. His fortunes wax as Gloucester’s wane. His cynicism is the opposite of Gloucester’s naïve goodness. York supports factions and chooses friends solely on consideration of who will serve his purpose best. York sides with Gloucester against the cardinal at first because York believes it will help his cause, but later he allies himself with the cardinal and even his old enemies the dukes of Somerset and Suffolk in the plot to get rid of Gloucester. He enjoins the support of the earls of Salisbury and Warwick because they will be useful to him when he makes his claim to the throne. The plot he hatches of using Jack Cade to foment rebellion against the king is based on the deception of the rebels. York is a Machiavellian villain—so named for the author of a political treatise, The Prince (1513), by Niccolò Machiavelli; as a character type, the Machiavellian villain appears frequently in drama of the sixteenth century. For York, as for the author of The Prince, the end justifies the means. York is fully conscious of his own villainy, which he communicates to the audience, disclosing his plans and his motives.
King Henry is a virtuous man, pious and dutiful, but these virtues are not enough. He seems unable to understand that the terms of his marriage weaken his kingdom. He willingly surrenders hard-won territories in France. He remains blind to the true nature of his queen, who diminishes him personally with her scorn for his passive religiosity and with her relationship with Suffolk. Henry recognizes the cardinal’s malice against Gloucester and is not fooled by the queen, Suffolk, York, and the cardinal when they band together and declare Gloucester to be personally ambitious to the point of treason, but he is quite helpless to save Gloucester. He is unwilling or unable to exert his authority and impotently rails against what he rightly sees as a tragedy.
It is not only the nobility which is affected by the lack of a strong ruler. The populace is also in disorder. Saunder Simpcox, the imposter who falsely claims that his sight has been miraculously restored to him, shows that honesty and right values have become distorted. Although Gloucester shrewdly sees the truth of the matter and deals with it swiftly, the king, as usual, is helpless.
The Jack Cade rebellion occurs after Gloucester’s death and the king is without genuine support. The whole episode is full of cynicism. The commoners lack faith in all leadership and authority. They have no illusions about Cade, seeing through his false claims to noble birth. Cade’s ambitions are absurd, his logic clearly false, him promises beyond all that is possible. He is a caricature. Underlying this grotesque veneer is a more sinister truth. Cade and his rebels have might but no judgment, and they abuse whatever power they gain. Their rebellion violates the established political and moral orders. Ironically, it is a vision of an England that has vanished, the strong England of Henry V’s time, that brings the rabble to its senses. Alexander Iden, who ultimately kills Cade, represents the right values. He lives a serene life, content with his lot. The Cade rebellion is a precursor of the civil war to come, and illustrates William Shakespeare’s contention that society consists of interdependent strata arranged in a hierarchy. If the harmony of this structure is perverted at any level, all levels will suffer the consequences.
As a drama, Henry VI, Part II is superior to Henry VI, Part I. Its characterizations are subtler. There are a number of well-executed comparisons and parallels. The self-serving rebellions of Cade and York help to provide a dramatic unity and coherence that do not occur in the linear, historical narrative. The verse is generally better both in terms of metrical fluency and imagery. There is some fine prose dialogue in the Jack Cade scenes, in which the abuse of language parallels the abuse of political power. This early play does not achieve the stature of Shakespeare’s later history plays, but it is worthy of attention.
—Susan Henthorne
FILM ADAPTATIONS
1960 An Age of Kings Production
An Age of Kings, a fifteen-part BBC series first broadcast in 1960, contained two episodes based on Henry VI, Part II. These were titled “The Fall of a Protector” and “Rabble from Kent.” Actors included Edgar Wreford as Duke of Suffolk; Terry Scully as King Henry the Sixth; Mary Morris as Margaret; John Ringham as Duke of Gloucester; Robert Lang as Cardinal Beaufort; Gordon Gostelow as Earl of Salisbury; Alan Rowe as Duke of Somerset; Frank Windsor as Earl of Warwick; Esmond Knight as Jack Cade; and Paul Daneman as Richard.
In his 2013 book Small-Screen Shakespeare (62, 64, 66), Peter Cochran praised the actor playing Henry for his convincing vulnerability (62); said the production offered lots of laughs (64); and found it quite competent but also a bit old-fashioned in the ways the words are spoken (66).
1965 The Wars of the Roses Productions
In 1965 the BBC broadcast a series of Shakespeare’s history plays titled The Wars of the Roses, with two programs devoted to the Henry VI plays. Actors included Paul Hardwick as Gloucester; David Warner as King Henry VI; Charles Kay as the Dauphin; Hugh Sullivan as Burgundy; Janet Suzman as Joan la Pucelle; Peggy Ashcroft as Margaret; and Ian Holm as Gloucester.
Peter Cochran, in his 2013 book Small-Screen Shakespeare (63–64), considered David Warner, as Henry, too big and insufficiently vulnerable but thought the plot was handled more clearly and efficiently than in An Age of Kings. He saw Jack Cade here as a foreshadowing of Falstaff in later plays (63). Calling the acting here memorably intense (63), he said that this production offers dark violence rather than any humor (64).
1983 BBC Shakespeare Plays Production
This production, like the other two parts of the BBC Henry VI trilogy, was directed by Jane Howell. It starred Peter Benson as King Henry VI; David Burke as both the Duke of Gloucester and Dick the Butcher; Anne Carroll as the Duchess of Gloucester; Paul Chapman as the Earl of Suffolk; Ron Cook as Richard Plantagenet; David Daker as the Duke of Buckingham; Brian Deacon as both the Duke of Somerset and Smith the Weaver; and Julia Foster as Queen Margaret.
Henry Fenwick, in his overview of “The Production” (18–29) in the booklet that accompanied the first broadcast of this adaptation, reported that director Jane Howell saw the Henry VI trilogy as a process of literal and symbolic darkening especially in the costumes and lighting and even the set (18–20). He noted that the fighting becomes more serious, the nobility less chivalrous, the montages more grim, and the killings more vicious as the trilogy develops (20–22). Howell commented that this second part of the trilogy was harder to film than the first and explained various particular difficulties, such as the often greater number of actors in specific scenes (22–23). Fenwick discussed how Margaret and other characters develop in this play, as in Margaret’s loss of love, and explained in particular how Margaret becomes more important (and vengeful) in this second part (23–25). Observing that Howell had worked previously with many of the actors who perform here, he quoted some of their comments about their characters and discussed the particular importance of Henry in this play as well as the significance of Cade’s Rebellion, with Cade being treated as an unappealing “Lord of Misrule” (27). Fenwick noted the use of the same actors in different roles over the first two plays (28–29) and emphasized the second play’s emphasis on peril for all involved (29).
In their 2006 book on the Henry VI plays, Stuart Hampton-Reeves and Carol Chillington Rutter, discussing the second play in particular (124–29), mentioned various unsettled political events in Britain at the time this film was made (124). They described relevant British television programs from the period (125) and also emphasized television’s treatment of the wedding of Prince Charles and Princess Diana, a recent event they considered relevant to this film’s opening depiction of a wedding—a wedding not depicted by Shakespeare himself (125). They discussed the film’s presentation of the Cade rebellion (126–27) and asserted that Howell did not entirely sympathize with Cade’s rebels, whom she considered “too crude and unintelligent to deserve much sympathy” (127). Hampton-Reeves and Rutter reported that “Howell saw Cade as a sort of neo-fascist,” like the members of the contemporary British National Front who were very much in the news when Howell’s films were first broadcast (127–28). The discussion of this film closed with a stress on the political violence it depicts (129).
Peter Cochran, in his 2013 book Small-Screen Shakespeare, found this production’s transformed set a bit too obviously symbolic; thought the impressive costumes were out of step with the supposed decline of England; considered the pace too slow; and regarded the versions of the play broadcast as part of An Age of Kings and The Wars of the Roses more entertaining than this production, which he dismissed as tedious (64).
1991 English Shakespeare Company Productions
In 1991, two episodes devoted to Henry VI—titled Henry VI: House of Lancaster and Henry VI: House of York—were broadcast as parts of a series of Shakespeare’s history plays performed by the English Shakespeare Company. Actors in these two episodes included Paul Brennen as King Henry VI; Ian Burford as Duke of Exeter; Francesca Ryan as Joan la Pucelle; Jack Carr as Duke of Burgundy; Michael Cronin as Earl of Warwick; Barry Stanton as Duke of York; June Watson as Queen Margaret; John Dougall as George, Duke of Clarence; Andrew Jarvis as Richard, Duke of Gloucester; and Michael Pennington as Jack Cade.
Peter Cochran, in his 2013 book Small-Screen Shakespeare, thought this version offered an intriguing feminist approach by emphasizing various ambitious women and found this production much livelier than the BBC version (65).
Bibliography
Cochran, Peter. Small-Screen Shakespeare. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013.
Fenwick, Henry. “The Production.” Henry VI Part 2: The BBC TV Shakespeare, edited by Peter Alexander et. al., BBC Books, 1983, pp. 18–29.
Hampton-Reeves, Stuart, and Carol Chillington Rutter. The Henry VI Plays. Manchester UP, 2006.