SOURCE: “The Three Parts of Henry VI,” in Shakespeare: The Chronicles, Longmans, Green & Co., 1962, pp. 12-22.

[In the essay below, Leech surveys the structure of the three parts of Henry VI and discusses the critical debate over Shakespeare's part in the authorship of these works.]

It is impossible to discuss the Henry VI plays without referring first to the problems of authorship and chronology. They were published together in the Folio of 1623, but, although this is the first occasion of the printing of Part I, the other two Parts had appeared long before in corrupt versions. In 1594 there was published a quarto volume with the title The First part of the Contention betwixt the two famous Houses of Yorke and Lancaster, and in 1595 an octavo with the title The true Tragedie of Richard Duke of Yorke. These two texts were published together as The Whole Contention betweene the two Famous Houses, Lancaster and Yorke in 1619. There is thus a strong bibliographical link between Parts II and III. There is a link, too, in subject-matter. These two Parts present a continuous narrative from the King's marriage with the French princess Margaret to the murder of Henry VI and the establishment on the throne of the Yorkist Edward IV. Part I, on the other hand, is principally concerned with the wars in France at the beginning of Henry VI's reign, although it also includes the beginning of the York-Lancaster opposition, the planning of Henry's marriage to Margaret, and a number of incidents that historically were later than some that occur in Part II.

There is a good case for assuming that Part I was a play acted by Strange's Men, for Henslowe's Diary records their performance of ‘Harey the vj’ as a new play in March 1592, and in the same year Thomas Nashe in Pierce Pennilesse refers to the current acting of a play in which Talbot's military triumphs were displayed: as I Henry VI has Talbot's campaigns as one of its chief concerns, we can reasonably identify the play in the 1623 Folio with the play referred to by Henslowe and Nashe. Yet Part III must have been written by September 1592, for Robert Greene parodies a line from it in his death-bed tract Greenes Groats-worth of Witte. And Part III (doubtless with Part II, for the two can hardly be separated) was, according to the title-page of the 1595 edition, acted by Pembroke's Men.

There has been much discussion of the extent of Shakespeare's contribution to the three Parts. Edmund Malone believed that the publications of 1594 and 1595 were source-plays re-written by Shakespeare as 2 and 3 Henry VI, and that this had occasioned the attack on Shakespeare in Greenes Groats-worth of Witte, where he is described as ‘an vpstart Crow, beautified with our feathers’. Now, however, Professor Alexander has won almost universal support for his view that The First part of the Contention and The true Tragedie are ‘bad quartos’, i.e. texts derivative from the plays now known as 2 and 3 Henry VI but contaminated through memorial transmission. There is still disagreement concerning the extent to which we can find Shakespeare's hand in the three Parts and concerning the order in which they were written. There will probably always be speculation on these matters, but the present weight of opinion is on the side of recognising a much larger Shakespearian element in the ‘trilogy’ than was formerly the case. Although no certainty is possible, it seems likely that Shakespeare wrote a two-part play on the Wars of the Roses for Pembroke's Men, and that the play recorded by Henslowe as Harey the vj was adapted by him when, in 1594, he joined the newly-formed Lord Chamberlain's Men along with some of the actors who had belonged to Strange's. In this way a trilogy was put together out of an original two-part Shakespearian play and a play (originally non-Shakespearian) that concentrated on the earliest events of Henry VI's reign. It may well be that Part I was written later than Parts II and III, but was made into a forepiece for the other two plays when Shakespeare revised it.

If this line of speculation is followed, we must regard Part I as only partially Shakespeare's and Parts II and III as mainly, if not wholly, his. And that will fit our response to the plays as dramatic achievements. Those who saw the Birmingham Repertory Theatre's performances of the three Parts in 1951-53 are likely to hold a more favourable view of their quality than was formerly common. Nevertheless, there can be no doubt that a higher level is reached in Parts II and III than in Part I.

In view of the theory of composition and authorship here suggested, we need not linger for more than a moment with Part I. It is a fairly shapeless piece of writing, beginning with some pomp and indeed impressiveness with the funeral of Henry V, where the Lancastrian nobles are quickly at odds, but soon falling into an anecdotal kind of drama in which incidents are presented in turn for the sake of immediate dramatic effect rather than for their contribution to a total pattern. An extreme example of this is the introduction of a French Countess who plans to murder Talbot by inviting him to her castle. Talbot shows his shrewdness by accepting the invitation but ensuring that his troops are in reach when the Countess shows her hand. The incident has no effect on later action: it is a mere anecdote of the war. Nevertheless, there is vigorous drama in the opposition between the Lord Protector, Humphrey of Gloucester, and the Bishop of Winchester, in the display of Talbot's prowess and his bravery in death, in the crude but lively portrayal of Joan of Arc, and in the first indications of Richard Plantagenet's rise to a position of importance in the kingdom. Concerning this last strand in the play, there is common consent that Shakespeare wrote the Temple Garden scene, where Plantagenet and the Earl of Somerset, having quarrelled in the Temple hall about a point of law (we are never told what it is), pluck respectively a white and a red rose and invite those who support them to do likewise. This scene, for which the sixteenth-century chronicles provide no source, most dramatically presages the state of open conflict between York and Lancaster.

The French wars of Henry VI's reign were hardly to be seen as a reason for national pride, but the author of I Henry VI did what he could to make them palatable. He put considerable stress on the achievements of Talbot, he presented Joan as a witch and a wanton, and he ended the play, quite unhistorically, with peace terms that declare the French King to be a viceroy under Henry VI, paying tribute to England: Professor Dover Wilson has pointed out that these terms are derived from those offered to, and rejected by, the French in 1435.

Parts II and III tell a continuous and wide-ranging story. For spectators it cannot be easy to grasp the exact relationships between the main characters and the genealogical details that made it possible for Richard Plantagenet, now Duke of York, to lay claim to the throne. For that reason, in Act II scene ii of Part II, the author inserted a scene in which York, addressing the Earl of Salisbury and his son the Earl of Warwick, gives a full account of the ancestry of both himself and Henry VI. The scene is not great drama, but it was necessary if the audience were to see the grounds for the dynastic quarrel. For modern readers a further aid is desirable, and Professor Dover Wilson has presented a most useful genealogical tree in his New Cambridge edition of 2 Henry VI. The action of the two plays is widely spread through England, with a short excursion into France in Part III, and the dramatist has clearly wanted to bring home to his audience the sense of a civil war ranging destructively over the country. For non-English readers, in particular, the many references to place-names may be confusing and will certainly not have the impact that was intended in the writing. Mr. Andrew S. Cairncross, in the New Arden edition of 2 Henry VI, has provided a map indicating the places scattered through the country that are prominently mentioned in the text, used as a frontispiece to this essay.

Part II differs from Part III in material and consequently in structure. Open war between York and Lancaster does not begin until Part II is almost over, and the greater part of the play is concerned with the gradual development of York's plans, with his waiting until Humphrey Duke of Gloucester is dead (helping modestly in his downfall), and with the enmities stirred up by Henry's Queen Margaret. Departing from his sources, for in fact Margaret did not come to England until after the Duchess of Gloucester's disgrace, the author has made dramatic capital out of a rivalry between the Queen and the wife of the Lord Protector. In addition, he gives the audience a thrill of horror in showing the Duchess of Gloucester using witchcraft in order to pry into the future, where she sees herself as England's Queen, and another thrill when Cardinal Beaufort dies in terror for his guilt in the killing of Gloucester. We have, too, a host of small incidents which, like the story of the Countess in Part I, can be regarded as dramatic anecdotes. There is the pretence of Simpcox that he has been miraculously cured of blindness—a ‘miracle’ quickly exposed by Humphrey of Gloucester. There is the grim comedy of Horner, an armourer, and his man Peter. The man accuses his master of speaking in favour of York's title to the crown. The issue is put to trial by combat between these two men who are quite unfitted to the test. Peter is terrified, but the armourer comes drunk to the contest and is killed. There is the execution of the Earl of Suffolk, who is captured by pirates when he has been banished from England: they refuse to accept ransom for him because of his opposition to Gloucester and to York and his consorting with Margaret. Yet, unlike the Countess story in Part I, these incidents all play their parts in the economy of the play. The exposure of the Simpcox ‘miracle’ exhibits the shrewdness and commonsense of Gloucester, so badly needed in the England of Henry VI. The affair of Horner and Peter displays the common people taking part in the nobles' quarrel about the royal title, as does the killing of Suffolk by men who are pirates but claim to be concerned for England's welfare. Moreover, the formal combat between the armourer and his man is a parody of chivalric encounter: in a way remarkably sophisticated for this early drama, it implies a critical attitude towards the warring nobles whose quarrels are grotesquely mirrored in this fight between two simple men, one terrified, one drunk.

This use of a mirror-image appears more fully in the scenes towards the end of Part II showing Jack Cade's rebellion. In Act III York is made regent of Ireland. This, he tells us in soliloquy, will give him his opportunity, for he will have an army at his disposal in Ireland. He is encouraging the ‘headstrong Kentishman’ Jack Cade to rebel, under the pretence that he is descended from the Mortimers from whom York himself derives his claim to the throne. From Cade's degree of success York will be able to see how the country is affected to the Yorkist claim. Whatever happens, York can come from Ireland with his army and reap the harvest that Cade's rebellion has prepared for him. The greater part of Act IV is taken up with Cade's rebellion. It is a revolt of common men against nobility, of ignorance against learning, of nonsense against sense: it presents a vision of anarchy in which a man can be put to death for being able to read, in which savagery is unchecked by any accepted code of manners, in which the rebels foolishly dream that by a mere proclamation they can refashion the country according to their hearts' desire. It is not a pleasant picture of a mob at work that Shakespeare gives us here, but we should note that some of Cade's followers can, in their asides, make fun of him, and that York's speech in Act III makes it clear that the Kentishman has been deluded by an ambitious noble. Moreover, the anarchy into which London is plunged when Cade is briefly lord of the city is an anticipation of the state of the whole country when the nobles' quarrel comes fully into the open and a whole series of battles is fought between York and Lancaster. The armourer Horner spoke treason on York's behalf and was killed for it. Cade sets himself up as a Mortimer, and having killed London citizens and a noble or two, is deserted by his followers and is himself killed as a fugitive. He provides the occasion for York to bring his army from Ireland, under the pretence that he has come to put down Cade (now defeated). The small revolt of ignorant men is a prelude and a mirror for the larger and much crueller contest between their superiors in the realm. With this in mind, we shall not see Shakespeare here as primarily concerned with the mob's folly and barbarity: rather, he recognises the nature of an armed mob, but sees in it an image of what civilised men can be when their weapons too are out.

This Second Part gains in strength as it proceeds. When battle has been joined in Act V, the Lancastrian Old Clifford is killed by York and the dead body is found by his son, Young Clifford. The character of this son is to be important in Part III, representing an extreme of Lancastrian ruthlessness. Here he addresses his father in words that usher in the grim slaughter of the Third Part:

                                                            O, let the vile world end
And the premised flames of the last day
Knit earth and heaven together!
Now let the general trumpet blow his blast,
Particularities and petty sounds
To cease! Wast thou ordain’d, dear father,
To lose thy youth in peace and to achieve
The silver livery of advised age,
And in thy reverence and thy chair-days thus
To die in ruffian battle? Even at this sight
My heart is turn’d to stone; and while ’tis mine
It shall be stony. York not our old men spares;
No more will I their babes. Tears virginal
Shall be to me even as the dew to fire;
And beauty, that the tyrant oft reclaims,
Shall to my flaming wrath be oil and flax.
Henceforth I will not have to do with pity.

(V.ii.40-56)

The balancing of the grand generalities of the Last Judgement in the first six lines with the intimate picture of Old Clifford, murdered in ‘ruffian battle’ at a time poignantly described as his ‘chair-days’, and then the severity of the resolution that follows, reaching its climax in the terrible bareness of the last line—these things belong to a mature Shakespeare, and it has been thought that the passage was inserted some considerable time after the first acting of the play. That guess may be correct, yet the authority of the speech is something we shall meet again in Part III.

This last Part has a concentrated power that can make it highly impressive in the theatre. It is a play of battles, yet with manifest skill the dramatist avoids a sense of repetition. The first, at Wakefield, is a Lancastrian victory: first we see Young Clifford's murder of the boy Rutland, the young son of York, and then the formal mockery and elaborate killing of York himself. Queen Margaret and Clifford will not at once dispatch their great enemy. They make him stand on a molehill, in mockery of the height he aspired to; they put a paper crown upon his head; and Margaret shows him a napkin stained with Rutland's blood. York is allowed a long speech of reply, in which he rebukes Margaret for her cruelty and weeps for Rutland. Then Clifford and Margaret stab him in turn. This is followed by a Lancastrian defeat at Towton. Here we see the battle through the King's eyes. First, having been chidden from the field by the Queen, he takes his stand on a molehill (as York was forced to do after Wakefield) and shows his envy of the simple countryman's life, patterned according to the seasons, yielding peacefully to the years as they go, solaced with plain comforts beyond a king's reach:

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;
So many weeks ere the poor fools will ean;
So many years ere I shall shear the fleece:
So minutes, hours, days, months, and years,
Pass’d over to the end they were created,
Would bring white hairs unto a quiet grave.

(II.v.21-40)

But in a moment there enters a son that has killed his father because they have been fighting on opposite sides in the battle, and then a father that has killed his son. The three characters do not speak to each other: they engage in a shared ritual utterance which voices lamentation for the war's destruction. This passage has the formal nature of drama around 1590—profoundly animated, however, by a sympathy with human loss. It shows, moreover, that Henry's envy for the simple countryman has no basis in fact: the war has brought chaos into every man's family. Then our attention is turned to the fighting itself, with the Yorkists triumphant. Clifford is mortally wounded. The three sons of York find him at the point of death: he dies as they begin to mock him, and their frustrated desire for verbal revenge, and for the blow that severs life, stands in antithesis to the achieved mockery and killing of York at Wakefield. And we see the war growing more savage. The sons of York hurling their taunts at a dead body reveal a special barbarity as well as grim comedy.

In the third and fourth acts of the play there is no open battle, but in turn the two sides win tactical advantages through each other's mistakes. The King is captured by the Yorkists; Edward, his father's successor as Duke of York, falls into political error in marrying Lady Grey, an obscure but attractive widow, instead of the French King's sister to whom he had sent the powerful Earl of Warwick as an ambassador of love; Margaret through this wins help from France and from the indignant Warwick; Edward is captured by the Lancastrians, but quickly escapes; he rallies the Yorkist armies, captures Henry again. Then in the last act the formal battles are resumed, and again there is skilful variation in the ways they are presented. At Barnet, Warwick is killed in a Yorkist victory, and his body is quietly borne off by his supporters. At Tewkesbury, Margaret and her son Prince Edward are captured: Edward of York with his brothers Clarence and Gloucester stab the boy to death when he displays courage. The incident, recalling the boy Rutland's death at Wakefield, is no mere repetition of that. Rutland's death was certain as the revengeful Clifford faced him: the boy begged for mercy. Prince Edward's death is unexpected, brutally casual: he has for his killers words of confident rebuke. The play ends with Gloucester's murder of Henry VI in the Tower and then with Edward of York, now Edward IV, rejoicing in his possession of the crown:

Sound drums and trumpets. Farewell, sour annoy!
For here, I hope, begins our lasting joy.

(V.vii.45-6)

But the audience knew that the reign of Richard of Gloucester, as Richard III, was not far away; and before long Shakespeare was to use that reign for one of the most assured plays of his earlier career. We have seen that 2 and 3 Henry VI are at their most interesting when irony is most evident. Here at the end the irony is prominent, dependent not merely on the audience's knowledge of the ensuing history but on the feebleness of ‘I hope’ in Edward's proclamation of felicity.

Shakespeare was to penetrate, in his later years, far deeper into human suffering, affection, aspiration, and far deeper also into the mystery of things. But the writer of 2 and 3 Henry VI was already a dramatist of major stature in England. Only Christopher Marlowe could compare with him.