Henry VI, Part 3

1/ In my previous blog post, I quoted Henry IV, Part 2: 

“KING […] Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown...”

Contrast that with Duke of York’s son Richard (later Richard III): 

“RICHARD […] How sweet a thing it is to wear a crown, 

Within whose circuit is Elysium 

And all that poets feign of bliss and joy…” 

(Act 1 scene 2)

In the same speech: 

“RICHARD […] I cannot rest 

Until the white rose that I wear be dyed 

Even in the lukewarm blood of Henry’s heart.” 

That makes me think of the garden scene in Part 1:

“SOMERSET Prick not your finger as you pluck it off; 

Lest bleeding you do paint the white rose red

And fall on my side so against your will.” 

(Act 2 scene 4) 

And: 

“SOMERSET Here in my scabbard, meditating that 

Shall dye your white rose in a bloody red.” 

(ibid.) 

The roses are again revoked when King Henry is sitting on a molehill, and sees a man who in battle has accidentally killed his own son: 

“KING HENRY […] The red rose and the white are on this face,

The fatal colors of our striving houses: 

The one his purple blood right well resembles:

The other his pale cheeks, methinks, presenteth:

Within one rose, and let the other flourish! 

If you contend, a thousand lives must wither.” 

(Act 2 scene 5) 

Interestingly, I’d note that the red rose – white rose symbolism, central to Part 1, is not at all mentioned in Part 2. Not even once. 

2/ When Queen Margaret finds out that the King has disinherited his own son on condition that York and his people stop the civil war and make no attempt to kill him, she’s full of rage. I’ve noted this metaphor: 

“QUEEN […] And yet shalt thou be safe? Such safety finds 

The trembling lamb environèd with wolves…” 

(Act 1 scene 1)

This is like the animal imagery we have seen in Part 2. And when York is chased by Margaret’s army: 

“YORK […] And all my followers to the eager foe

Turn back and fly, like ships before the wind

Or lambs pursued by hunger-starved wolves…” 

(Act 1 scene 4) 

Lambs, wolves. York echoes Margaret’s metaphor. 

This, by the way, is the scene that has the line “O tiger’s heart wrapped in a woman’s hide!”, to which Robert Greene alludes in his mockery of Shakespeare as “an upstart crow”. 

3/ York is an ambitious, scheming politician who manipulates the King, works with others to get rid of the most honourable man at court, uses people (Jack Cade) and causes turmoil in his own country for personal gains, but in the scene before his death, he’s humanised:   

“YORK […] Bid’st thou me rage? Why, now thou hast thy wish. 

Wouldst have me weep? Why, now thou hast thy will. 

For raging wind blows up incessant showers,

And when the rage allays the rain begins.

These tears are my sweet Rutland’s obsequies,

And every drop cries vengeance for his death…” 

(Act 1 scene 4) 

His pain for the death of his young son is real. He weeps.

Contrast it with Richard’s reaction: 

“RICHARD I cannot weep; for all my body’s moisture

Scarce serves to quench my furnace-burning heart; 

Nor can my tongue unload my heart’s great burden, 

For selfsame wind that I should speak withal

Is kindling coals that fires all my breast,

And burns me up with flames that tears would quench. 

To weep is to make less the depth of grief. 

Tears, then, for babes; blows and revenge for me!

Richard, I bear thy name; I’ll venge thy death,

Or die renownèd by attempting it.” 

(Act 2 scene 1) 

  

4/ Like Part 2, this is a bloody play. 

“CLIFFORD Platagenet! I come, Platagenet! 

And this thy son’s blood cleaving to my blade

Shall rust upon my weapon, till thy blood, 

Congealed with this, do make me wipe off both.” 

(Act 1 scene 3) 

And the other side: 

“RICHARD Ah, Warwick, why hast thou withdrawn thyself?

Thy brother’s blood the thirsty earth hath drunk, 

Broached with the steely point of Clifford’s lance; 

And in the very pangs of death he cried, 

Like to a dismal clangor heart from far, 

“Warwick, revenge! Brother, revenge my death!”

So, underneath the belly of their steeds,

That stained their fetlocks in his smoking blood, 

The noble gentleman gave up the ghost.

WARWICK Then let the earth be drunken with our blood!...” 

(Act 2 scene 3) 

I don’t think the poetry is particularly good in these lines, compared to later Shakespeare, but there are some interesting images: “the thirsty earth hath drunk”, “smoking blood”, “let the earth be drunken with our blood”. 

Everyone in this play is thirsty for blood—except King Henry. He feels alienated, out-of-place. His soliloquy on the molehill is probably the most moving speech in the play. 

“KING HENRY […] Would I were dead, if God’s good will were so! 

For what is in this world but grief and woe?

O God! methinks it were a happy life,

To be no better than a homely swain; 

To sit upon a hill, as I do now,

To carve out dials quaintly, point by point,

Thereby to see the minutes how they run—

How many makes the hour full complete,

How many hours brings about the day, 

How many days will finish up the year, 

How many years a mortal man may live; 

When this is known, then to divide the times—

So many hours must I tend my flock, 

So many hours must I take my rest, 

So many hours must I contemplate,

So many hours must I sport myself, 

So many days my ewes have been with young, 

How many weeks ere the poor fools will ean, 

So many years ere I shall shear the fleece…” 

(Act 2 scene 5) 

After lots of scheming, fighting, and head-severing, Shakespeare gives us this quiet scene, where everything seems to stand still. 

“KING HENRY […] Ah, what a life were this! how sweet! how lovely! 

Gives not the hawthorn-bush a sweeter shade

To shepherds looking on their silly sheep,

Than doth a rich embroidered canopy

To kings that fear their subjects’ treachery?

O, yes, it doth! a thousand-fold it doth!...”

(ibid.) 

We know, and we know that Shakespeare knows, that this is a dream, an idealisation of a shepherd’s life. We see right after this speech two common men who get caught up in a conflict that has nothing to do with them, and who tragically have killed their own family members. But the King’s dream about being a shepherd is still lovely and poignant. 

Before this scene, King Henry hasn’t always been present in a scene, and when he is, he’s generally quiet—or silenced. But now Shakespeare gives him a long soliloquy, and the soliloquy for a moment makes the play—a play full of fighting and chaos—stand still. 

5/ When Lady Elizabeth Grey comes to Edward, now the new king, for help: 

“KING EDWARD An easy task; ’tis but to love a king.

LADY GREY That’s soon performed, because I am a subject. 

KING EDWARD Why, then, thy husband’s lands I freely give thee. 

LADY GREY I take my leave with many thousand thanks. 

[…] KING EDWARD But stay thee, ’tis the fruits of love I mean. 

LADY GREY The fruits of love I mean, my loving liege. 

KING EDWARD Ay, but, I fear me, in another sense. 

What love, think’st thou, I sue so much to get?” 

(Act 3 scene 2) 

This makes me think of Measure for Measure.

After some more back-and-forth: 

“LADY GREY My mind will never grant what I perceive 

Your Highness aims at, if I aim aright. 

KING EDWARD To tell thee plain, I aim to lie with thee.” 

(ibid.)

It’s a funny scene, a comic scene, but at the same time, it’s sinister. The new king abuses his power. And when he is questioned by his own brothers and others in Act 4 scene 1, he says over and over again that he is King and will have his will. He is a tyrant.

There’s something else I’ve noted: if King Edward doesn’t force Lady Grey to marry him, he would be expected to marry the sister of the Queen of France—for the alliance between England and France. There are also a few political marriages, such as Warwick, when he has abandoned King Edward’s side, marrying his eldest daughter to the son of Henry and Margaret. The daughter’s feelings are irrelevant. 

I think we can guess what Shakespeare thinks about these things, based on his depictions of arranged or forced marriages in other plays, especially the comedies.

But Shakespeare doesn’t depict the women as all damsels in distress. I absolutely love Margaret’s long speech in Act 5 when she leads the army to fight King Edward after Warwick’s death: 

“QUEEN MARGARET […] Say Warwick was our anchor. What of that? 

And Montague our topmast. What of him? 

Our slaughtered friends the tackles; what of these? 

Why, is not Oxford here another anchor? 

And Somerset another goodly mast? 

The friends of France our shrouds and tacklings? 

And though unskilful, why not Ned and I

For once allowed the skilful pilot’s charge? 

We will not from the helm to sit and weep,

But keep our course (though the rough wind say no)

From shelves and rocks that threaten us with wrack.

As good to chide the waves as speak them fair. 

And what is Edward but a ruthless sea? 

What Clarence but a quicksand of deceit? 

And Richard but a ragged fatal rock?...”

(Act 5 scene 4) 

Shakespeare is master of rhetoric. This is only a part of the speech—the extended metaphor of the ship runs through the entire speech. 

6/ There are plenty of great lines in Henry VI, Part 3, but a few particularly stand out. 

“WARWICK […] Why, what is pomp, rule, reign, but earth and dust? 

And, live we how we can, yet die we must.” 

(Act 5 scene 2) 

Or this line:

“KING HENRY […] Then why should they love Edward more than me?...” 

(Act 4 scene 8) 

He’s right to ask—why should they?—when he is a better man. He’s just wrong for thinking people consequently wouldn’t choose Edward over him. 

7/ Richard’s final soliloquy is one of the greatest speeches in the play: 

“RICHARD […] Then, since the heavens have shaped my body so, 

Let hell make crook’d my mind to answer it. 

I have no brother, I am like no brother; 

And this word “love”, which graybeards call divine,

Be resident in men like one another 

And not in me: I am myself alone…” 

(Act 5 scene 6) 

Tony Tanner says: 

“I am myself alone. This is the first time but far from the last, that these words are heard in Shakespeare. A certain kind of hard, Renaissance individualism is beginning to speak out, and it can take frightening forms.” (Introduction) 

Earlier, he writes: 

“[Richard] will outplay all the famous dissemblers and shape-changers of legend and epic. Indeed, he promises a performance the like of which has never been seen before. He will treat history as his theatre, which he will dominate because he is capable of playing any and every role.” (ibid.) 

I can’t wait to read Richard III.