SOURCE: “Some Aspects of Style in the Henry VI Plays,” in Shakespeare's Styles: Essays in Honour of Kenneth Muir, Cambridge University Press, 1980, pp. 9-24.

[In the essay below, Clemen analyzes the language and dramatic effect of several key speeches in Henry VI,contrasting their “extraordinary clarity of utterance” with the “somewhat two-dimensional world” of the play.]

Duchess. Ah, Gloucester, teach
me to forget myself!
For whilst I think I am thy married wife
And thou a prince, Protector of this land,
Methinks I should not thus be led along,
Mailed up in shame, with papers on my back,
And followed with a rabble that rejoice
To see my tears and hear my deep-fet groans.
The ruthless flint doth cut my tender feet,
And when I start, the envious people laugh
And bid me be advisèd how I tread.
Ah, Humphrey, can I bear this shameful yoke?
Trowest thou that e’er I’ll look upon the world
Or count them happy that enjoy the sun?
No; dark shall be my light and night my day;
To think upon my pomp shall be my hell.
Sometime I’ll say I am Duke Humphrey's wife,
And he a prince, and ruler of the land;
Yet so he ruled, and such a prince he was,
As he stood by whils I, his forlorn duchess,
Was made a wonder and a pointing-stock
To every idle rascal follower.
But be thou mild, and blush not at my shame,
Nor stir at nothing till the axe of death
Hang over thee, as sure it shortly will.
For Suffolk—he that can do all in all
With her that hateth thee and hates us all—
And York, and impious Beaufort, that false priest,
Have all limed bushes to betray thy wings,
And, fly thou how thou canst, they’ll tangle thee.
But fear not thou until thy foot be snared,
Nor never seek prevention of thy foes.

(2 Henry VI, II,iv,27-57)

Led along in shame as a prisoner, barefoot ‘in a white sheet, and a taper burning in her hand’ (as the stage-direction indicates), the Duchess of Gloucester breaks out into this speech while Gloucester and his men, having waited for her arrival in the street, stand by. The scene terminates the personal tragedy of the Duchess, who has been convicted of treason, thereby accelerating Duke Humphrey's fall. The speech has been described as one of the many set speeches in the Henry VI plays which carry on the tradition of Senecan declamation, and it has been classified as a ‘lamentation’.¹ But is it a typical lamentation, is it a set speech proper? Perusing these plays we notice that there is no dividing line between ‘set speeches’ and those lengthy speeches which arise out of various occasions but do not conform to type. Our text is an example of the way in which Shakespeare the dramatist, while carrying on the Senecan tradition of long speeches, links them up with the action, with stage-business and setting. Instead of giving us the conventional appurtenances of the lament which had been established as a well-defined genre in pre-Shakespearian tragedy,² Shakespeare ‘concretises’ and localises the lament. Rather than expressing her grief by means of abstract formulae, apostrophes, hyperboles and rhetorical questions, the Duchess conveys to us her woeful state by describing the scene: her own physical appearance, the painful walking with bare feet over ‘the ruthless flint’, the humiliation of being stared at and ridiculed by ‘a rabble that rejoice to see my tears and hear my deep-fet groans’. This evocation of the outward scene imparts to reader or audience a more poignant impression of suffering than the mere rhetorical lament could have done, although the Duchess, to be sure, does not reveal what is going on within her, but looks upon this scene, in which she figures as chief protagonist, from outside. Shakespeare uses the speech to dramatise the whole scene, for the mocking remarks made by the rabble suggest something like a dialogue. The balanced metrical structure adds to the impression of objectivity (rather than subjective expression of an inner state of mind) conveyed by the first part of the speech.

We should also note that Shakespeare makes this speech grow out of the dramatic action preceding it. The scene described by the Duchess is twice prepared for, significant details being suggested by the same words (‘the flinty streets’, l. 8; ‘flint’, l. 34; ‘the abject people gazing on thy face’, ll. 11, 20). The first line of the speech still carries on the dialogue with Gloucester, taking up in scorn his phrase ‘forget this grief’.

It is only after this ‘spectacle’ has been established in our minds—an early example of Shakespeare's ‘word-scenery’³—that Shakespeare has the Duchess express her grief in a more abstract manner. And it is in this second part of the speech that the only rhetorical formulate (double paradox enforced by alliteration and rhyme) are to be found: ‘No, dark shall be my light, and night my day.’ The comparison between what has been and what is now, between the respect due to the Duchess on account of her position and the humiliating role which she now must play may also be traced back to one of the conventions of lament. It occurs at the beginning of the speech and is taken up with amplification and variation in line 42; it is again closely related to the outward scene which brings home to us, better than words can do, this contrast between past and present.⁴ However, this contrast is seen by the Duchess primarily as a reversal of her social role, as a denial of her legitimate claim to quite a different treatment. It is this reversed social position rather than her suffering as a human individual which to her appears to be the greater cause for complaint.

The way in which the Duchess here points at herself, holding up her ‘case’ as an example of undeserved misery, is typical of the illustrative method of presentation which Shakespeare employs in these plays (the phrase ‘pointing-stock’ is revealing in this context). The transition to this renewed self-comparison is made by two questions (ll. 37f.). Questions also count among the obligatory accessories of set speeches. In Senecan drama they were mostly ‘rhetorical questions’⁵ addressed to a partner not present. Shakespeare, however, here as elsewhere, uses questions as a means to relate the speech more closely to the listener, the same effect being achieved by the repeated address to Gloucester (ll. 27, 37) and the frequent occurrence of ‘thou’, ‘thee’ and ‘thy’. The isolation of the set speech, a characteristic feature of Senecan tragedy, by which the speech becomes a self-contained declamation, is rarely to be found in Shakespeare. Here the person to whom the speech is addressed is ever present.

The third part of the speech (ll. 48-57) has little to do with lamentation: in an ironical way the Duchess enjoins her husband (l. 48), expressing one of those many forebodings (ll. 49-50) which are scattered throughout these plays and which are characteristic of their mode of presentation.⁶ Her warning is at once given its foundation in fact: the three chief figures of whose enmity Gloucester is as yet unaware—Suffolk, York, Beaufort—are mentioned and briefly characterised. Shakespeare thus achieves a ‘survey of the situation’ found in many of the long speeches, which also serves to pass information on to the audience. The metaphors (‘limed bushes’, ‘tangle thee’, ‘snared’) belong to the powerful animal imagery, running through all three parts of Henry VI, suggesting brutal force, trapping of unsuspecting victims, etc.; it occurs not only in obvious similes and comparisons, but also in ‘figures and images, often merely implicit and hardly recognised’.⁷

Is this speech typical of the play's style and language? The answer is: ‘only partly’. For those features which are to be found in many other passages as well can rapidly be enumerated: syntactical and metrical units are usually coextensive. Run-on lines are rare. Reiteration of the same idea occurs frequently and along with this a certain copiousness of expression. All statements are rounded off, definite and clear; the whole speech can be subdivided into smaller sections, one theme being dealt with after another. But other stylistic features, even more characteristic of the Henry VI plays, are lacking. Shakespeare did not use a uniform language for all his long speeches in the Histories, but varied his style a good deal,⁸ adapting it to the occasion and to the subject to a greater degree than can be said of the long speeches in Senecan drama and pre-Shakespearian tragedy.

As an example of another long speech in an entirely different style let us look at a speech of persuasion, a suasoria, in the second scene of Act II in 3 Henry VI, of which I quote the first 24 lines:

Clifford. My gracious liege,
this too much lenity
And harmful pity must be laid aside.
To whom do lions cast their gentle looks?
Not to the beast that would usurp their den.
Whose hand is that the forest bear doth lick?
Not his that spoils her young before her face.
Who scapes the lurking serpent's mortal sting?
Not he that sets his foot upon her back.
The smallest worm will turn, being trodden on,
And doves will peck in safeguard of their brood.
Ambitious York did level at thy crown,
Thou smiling while he knit his angry brows.
He, but a Duke, would have his son a king.
And raise his issue like a loving sire:
Thou, being a king, blest with a goodly son,
Didst yield consent to disinherit him,
Which argued thee a most unloving father.
Unreasonable creatures feed their young;
And though man's face be fearful to their eyes,
Yet, in protection of their tender ones,
Who hath not seen them—even with those wings
Which sometime they have used, with fearful flight—
Make war with him that climbed unto their nest,
Offering their own lives in their young's defence?

(3 Henry VI, II,ii,9-32)

Clifford tries to change King Henry's mind, urging him not to forfeit the young Prince's right to succession. To emphasise his point he makes no fewer than four comparisons with the animal world, the first three symmetrically arranged in equal pairs of two lines (a question each time followed by an answer) followed by a sententia and a proverb illustrating and, as it were, objectifying the same idea.⁹ The fourth comparison from the animal world, inserted after the reiterated statement of the main argument (expressed by antithesis and demonstration), covers no fewer than seven lines, being a stylistic amplification of what has gone before. Rhetoric here appears in its original function, as ‘the art of deliberative and persuasive public speaking’,¹⁰ and the extravagant display of rhetorical devices is therefore appropriate in this context. But Shakespeare makes us aware of this by an explicit justification of this ‘oratory style’. King Henry's reaction to this speech:

Full well hath Clifford played the orator,

(3 Henry VI, II,ii,43)

places it in its proper perspective. Scattered throughout the early Histories we find quite a few such critical comments on rhetorically heightened speeches, beginning with the Pucelle's scoffing at Sir William Lucy's enumeration of great names in 1 Henry VI, ‘Here's a silly-stately style indeed!’ (1 Henry VI, IV,vii,72), continuing with angry comments such as the Cardinal's lines addressed to Gloucester:

Nephew, what means this passionate discourse,
This peroration with such circumstance?

(2 Henry VI, I,i,99-100)

and with other references, indirect or direct, to the art of oratory.¹¹ Such passages betray Shakespeare's ‘consciousness of language’ and show us ‘Shakespeare not only playing in language the same games as other men of his age but also watching the game’, as Gladys Willcock put it more than forty years ago.¹² An examination of the Jack Cade scenes and the scene with Horner the Armourer supports the assumption that Shakespeare, while using heightened rhetorical language for his nobles, also at times held it up for critical comment and even parodied it.¹³ The insertion of the prose-scenes with Cade and his ‘rabblement’ in 2 Henry VI makes us conscious of the fact that the ‘stately speeches and well sounding phrases clyming to the height of Seneca his style’ (Sidney) by no means represent the only language spoken in the world.

Long speeches hold up the action and tend to develop into self-contained declamations, moving away from the scene and its characters. Such speeches pose a problem for the producer, who wonders what to do with all those characters standing and waiting (sometimes for a considerable length of time) while the speaker is delivering his oration. Shakespeare the dramatist must have felt this from the very beginning, for we can observe, throughout the historical plays, the development of several means of integrating these speeches into the dramatic action. One way was to turn them into theatrical performances in their own right, to make them create accompanying action. The speech of the Duchess, as we saw, evokes not only the lively scene in the street, but also the reactions of ‘the rabble’, although primarily addressed to Gloucester. Clifford, at the end of his speech (‘Were it not pity that this goodly boy …’, l. 34; ‘look on the boy’, l. 39) points to the young Prince standing by and puts words into his mouth which this youth might utter at some future time. Thus the eyes of the audience are directed not only to the character addressed but also to a third person. In many speeches of some length, a character is not only addressed, questioned, implored, attacked or taunted, but also asked to ‘observe’, ‘look’, ‘see’, ‘gaze’,¹⁴ so that with him (or her) the audience are made to look around or to imagine in their ‘mind's eye’ the physical appearance of characters who are absent. Frequent allusions to the physiognomy, the appearance, the bearing of the characters suggest that Shakespeare is progressing towards a concept of his figures which does not allow them to remain static even when they deliver long speeches. Many speeches moreover reflect the reaction of the listener, his shock, his startled gesture, his hesitation, his assent,¹⁵ and by means of indirect stage-directions a great many accompanying gestures are indicated, such as kneeling, shaking hands, taking leave, embracing or raising an arm, drawing a sword and the like. The use of direct reported speech, inserted into some of the long speeches (as into Clifford's suasoria) is another means of enlivening formality,¹⁶ as is the transition from highly pitched rhetoric to a more straightforward language.¹⁷ Some speeches, too, are interrupted by characters standing by,¹⁸ while in others it is the speakers who interrupt themselves, thus for a short moment giving the impression of spontaneous utterance in the midst of an otherwise ‘prefabricated’ speech.¹⁹ In some speeches the first line takes up the cue from the last speaker by repeating a phrase in a contrasting mood.²⁰ Moreover, most of the speeches, usually at the end or the beginning, link up with the political circumstances, the actual situation, thus carrying on the ‘business of the play’ and adding to the information passed on to the audience.

The most notable example of a long speech combined with dramatic action is the scene in which Margaret, after having dragged York onto a molehill, puts a paper crown on his head, taunting and mocking him in violent terms (3 Henry VI, I,iv).²¹ York's reaction, his defenceless and mute standing in front of Margaret is—paradoxically enough—conveyed through the language of this vituperative speech. The rhetorical figures become a tool of ruthless attack, declamatory language being transformed into harsh provocation. Sensing the utter brutality of the spectacle we are apt to forget the rhetorical artistry. In this speech, too, we have an example of heightened declamation, which, however, at its climax overturns itself to become an idiom of colloquial coarseness:

And where’s that valiant crook-back prodigy,
Dicky your boy, that with his grumbling voice
Was wont to cheer his dad in mutinies?

(3 Henry VI, I,iv,75-7)

Perusing the early Histories we find every now and then phrases and sometimes whole lines which by their very simplicity and terseness anticipate this element of Shakespeare's dramatic language in his later plays and counterbalance the artifice of rhetoric. F. P. Wilson's contention that ‘even in Shakespeare's earliest manner the natural is ever present with the artificial’²² holds true of the Henry VI plays, too. In putting blunt phrases of this kind into the mouth of Richard Gloucester, Shakespeare for the first time catches the individual accent of a character,²³ whereas in the rest of the trilogy we seek in vain for the complete individualisation of character through language which will be such a notable feature in the later plays.²⁴ Apart from this instance the style in the early Histories is determined by the occasion and the theme rather than by the character of the speaker.

The foregoing remarks suggest that at many points style and language merge into other elements of dramatic art. Style in the plays does not exist ‘in itself’, but as part of character and of the dramatic whole. Moreover, style being a highly complex phenomenon, many aspects would have to be taken into consideration if a balanced assessment of language and style in these plays were to be attempted. For this would have to include not only the figures of rhetoric but also grammar and syntax, vocabulary and sound, forms of address, tempo and versification. We would also have to consider to what extent versification and syntax are adapted to ‘the speaking voice’, a development to be noticed as early as in the Henry VI plays.²⁵

However, bearing in mind the warning pronounced by Brian Vickers that ‘it would take many years to study Shakespeare's stylistic development with the attention it deserves’,²⁶ a short essay like this must be restricted to some fragmentary observations and cannot hope to do justice to the complex phenomenon of style in the early Histories. The commonplace that Shakespeare had many styles²⁷ also holds true of the Henry VI plays, in which we find straightforward language side by side with richly adorned speech, or brisk dialogue followed by formal and slowly moving declamation, and in the Second Part some notable prose-scenes, again not uniform in style, counterpoising the artificial rhetoric of many verse passages. Moreover, we are faced, in these plays, with considerable differences of quality in style, which some scholars attributed to multiple authorship or to later insertions of some passages by Shakespeare himself—a much disputed problem. The well-known speech of Young Clifford when discovering his dead father (2 Henry VI, V,ii,31)²⁸ shows a mastery of language and vision much surpassing the uninspired, flat passages in the adjoining scenes.

How could we—in view of this great diversity—describe the style of these plays in a way that would set it apart from that of later Histories? One first step would be to single out those features of style which do not occur again, or occur much less frequently, in later plays.

One might begin with the passages with an excessive and obtrusive use of rhetorical devices, the ‘patterned speeches’, the many parallelisms, repetitions and the piling up of similes and sententiae, the accumulation of questions and exclamations, the frequent instances of self-address and the many classical allusions of incidental rather than functional character, and the symmetrically structured exchanges of vituperative attack and counterattack. As has often been observed, this ‘exploitation of all the devices for heightening, amplifying, and varying expression’²⁹ is a characteristic of Shakespeare's early style, and, one would have to add, this exploitation is particularly obvious and sometimes even obtrusive in the Henry VI plays. However, this must not mislead us into believing that Shakespeare used fewer rhetorical figures in his later work, for in fact, according to Sister Miriam Joseph's findings, he used more. Kenneth Muir, taking the matter up from this point, has well described the essential ‘difference of emphasis’: ‘He came to use more metaphors and fewer similes, and he abandoned some of the more obtrusive figures. There is less obvious alliteration. He no longer begins successive lines with the same word. He compromises more with colloquial speech. But to say he abandoned rhetoric is a misuse of terms.’³⁰ In a previous article Muir had summarised the stages of development in Shakespeare's use of rhetoric, and because of its relevance to the subject treated in this volume this passage ought to be quoted here, too: ‘Shakespeare began by using the arts of rhetoric formally and deliberately and … as he matured he came to use them with greater freedom and individuality, until at last he seemed to use them instinctively.’³¹

However, when the language in the Henry VI plays is being discussed, rhetoric, though only one aspect of Shakespeare's style, usually receives most attention. But there are quite a few other features which we ought to look at, trying to coordinate them with observations already made. Therefore I should like to offer, as a conclusion to this essay, a few tentative suggestions as to how to relate certain striking features of style to attitudes and principles underlying the dramatic intention of these plays.³²

A desire for clarification appears to be at the root of many stylistic phenomena. It accounts for the twofold and threefold expression of an idea, and this cannot be attributed merely to Shakespeare's indulgence in rhetorical devices or to his ‘immaturity’, for it suits the underlying intention of these plays and finds an equivalent in the formalised action which tends to double incidents and roles. The reiterated expression of an idea is related to the unambiguous formulation of all subject matter. For we seldom come across passages which leave us wondering. ‘What is meant here?’ Shakespeare's later manner of making his characters express themselves by innuendo, by subtle hints, so that we have to look below the surface in interpreting their utterances, is not yet evident in these early plays.

Much of the clarification which we can trace on several levels of expression may be related to the didactic purpose of these Histories, which are designed to teach a political lesson and point a moral in a manner intelligible to everybody. The need for clarification also accounts for those numerous passages which—always with a wealth of names (and often too many names!)—recapitulate the preceding events, review the situation, inform us about the claims, the intentions, the plans of all the quarrelling parties and their representatives. Clarification is particularly important in view of the ‘intractable mass of events’³³ which the chronicles presented to Shakespeare, for ‘chronicle history is the most recalcitrant to free artistic fashioning … The reign of Henry VI, in any case, was too long, its events too rambling and fortuitous to be easily digested into drama.’³⁴ Hence the need for repeated information and hence, too, the preference for the reiterative mode of presentation.³⁵

The wish to illustrate, to demonstrate, to exemplify (rather than to create characters or events) is also a major incentive in the shaping of scenes as well as language. The characters view their own doings and the events of the drama from a distance, from outside, stepping aside, as it were, and thus becoming their own spectators, acting as their own chorus. They use similes, comparisons and maxims in order to point out the meaning and the moral of what is happening to them and around them. We are continually aware of their ‘pointing forefinger’, the dramatist's forefinger in fact, that is to bring home to us the truths which are at stake. The frequent insertion of sententiae and proverbs serves as a means of objectifying and, as it were, depersonalising such utterances.

When, for instance, King Henry mourns over Gloucester's arrest which has just taken place, he first draws a comparison from the slaughterhouse (‘And as a butcher takes away the calf …’) and utilises it for what he wants to demonstrate:

Even so, remorseless, have they borne him hence;

but then adds another simile (‘And as the dam …’) to illustrate his own predicament:³⁶

Even so myself bewails good Gloucester's case
With sad unhelpful tears, and with dimmed eyes.

(2 Henry VI, III,i,217-18)

Even in moments of extreme agony, facing his own murderer, a character may step aside to describe this situation from the outside, ritualising, as it were, his imminent murder. Thus Young Rutland face-to-face with Clifford, who is going to kill him in a few minutes, finds images for this terrible confrontation:

So looks the pent-up lion o’er the wretch
That trembles under his devouring paws;
And so he walks, insulting o’er his prey.
And so he comes, to rend his limbs asunder.

(3 Henry VI, I,iii,12-15)

The most famous example of this ‘demonstrating mode’ is the scene with King Henry sitting on the molehill (3 Henry VI, II,v), commenting on his own role and on the ‘piteous spectacle’ (l. 73) of ‘the son that has killed his father’ and ‘the father that has killed his son’. But this ‘piece of stylised ritual writing’ (Tillyard) has been commented on so much that a mere mention must be sufficient in this context.

Illustration is very often linked with inculcation. The emphasis and the zeal with which this is done may partly account for the doubling and tripling of pertinent nouns and epithets, for the reinforcement of crucial pronouncements through rhyme, assonance, anaphora, and various other repetitive and tautological devices. When, for instance, ‘tyranny’ is referred to, three epithets are needed to characterise it:

And lofty proud encroaching tyranny …

(2 Henry VI, IV,i,96)

A few lines later, when Suffolk contemptuously speaks about the commons, he also strings together three epithets to characterise them:

these paltry, servile, abject drudges!

(l. 105)

When King Henry, dismissing Gloucester, puts himself under God's protection, this is expressed in four terms:

                    and God shall be my hope,
My stay, my guide, and lantern to my feet.

(2 Henry VI, II,ii,24-5)

When Queen Margaret describes King Henry's ruin to the new King Edward she does it in this manner:

                    his state usurped,
His realm a slaughter-house, his subjects slain,
His statutes cancelled, and his treasure spent.

(3 Henry VI, V,iv,77-9)

When Warwick in the last act of 3 Henry VI concludes his ‘dying-speech’, he epitomises his conventional final meditation in two chiming lines of rhetorical artifice:

Why, what is pomp, rule, reign, but earth and dust?
And live we how we can, yet die we must.

(3 Henry VI, V,ii,27-8)

And when Salisbury, towards the end of the Second Part, wants to demonstrate the invalidity of a ‘sinful oath’, he adduces no less than five examples, formulated as a question:

Who can be bound by any solemn vow
To do a murderous deed, to rob a man,
To force a spotless virgin's chastity,
To reave the orphan of his patrimony,
To wring the widow from her customed right?

(2 Henry VI, V,i,184-8)

These examples are different in kind, and repetition, parallelism, and accumulation may serve various ends in these plays. But one function surely is to hammer certain truths into our heads, to make things which are obvious even more obvious. Fullness and circumstantiality, especially in the elaboration of long-drawn-out similes as, for instance, in Queen Margaret's famous adhortatio on the field of Tewkesbury (3 Henry VI, I,iv), are part of this striving for explicit clarity. On the other hand, the definiteness of expression finds its metrical equivalent in the balanced end-stopped line.³⁷

Explicitness rather than implicitness is a pervading mark of style. Everything is said, nothing is held back, except in some cases of quite overt hypocrisy; there is no room for ambiguities, for subtle hints, for wordless moments in which the limits of expression through language might be reached. But again we must ask ourselves whether Shakespeare really wished his characters to give utterance to their inner conflicts, to ‘express’ themselves.

Self-description rather than self-expression is the basis of speech in these plays, and even this description, though sometimes related to strong emotions externalising them, as it were, rarely allows us to look into the minds of the characters, but mostly serves to sketch out future actions. Even in the moment of dying the characters describe in orderly speech and unconcerned manner their physical conditions, their situation as to friends and enemies, their past doings and their intentions.³⁸ At other times they may give descriptions of their own qualities³⁹ or an account of their present plight.⁴⁰

Language in those early Histories is a kind of prop on which these two-dimensional characters lean in order to assert their title, their claim, their power or their hatred, and all this is voiced forte or fortissimo, low-pitched or quiet scenes being rare. This constant pursuit of corroboration and affirmation on the part of the characters has been well described as ‘the seeking of maximal self-assertion at every moment’ which is ‘impatient of indirection’.⁴¹ Language thus may be transformed into outward gesture. The numerous asseverations and protestations, outnumbering by far those in the later Histories, are an appropriate manifestation of this constant self-assertion. But the language spoken by these figures does not allow us to catch a glimpse of their inner lives, does not betray their motivations; in short, with very few exceptions it tells us very little of their character. From the complex nature of man Shakespeare has selected only a small sector, so that these strutting figures are, after all, not real persons but embodiments of limited functions for which they are the mouthpiece. And we should hesitate to attribute this to a lack of ability only, and should consider the question of whether this limited range was not designed to fit the conception of these morality plays. That the dramatis personae so often speak ‘out of character’ would then be the natural outcome of the plays' intention and design. The many passages written in a ceremonious, formal, sometimes almost ‘heraldic’ manner, and contributing to the impression of an impersonal, not yet individualised style, should perhaps also be seen in this light. Pope's complaint that Shakespeare ‘generally used to stiffen his style with high words and metaphors for the speeches of his Kings and great men: he mistook it for a mark of greatness’⁴² may be partly justified if we limit it to the early Histories. But it loses some of its force when we see this feature together with the frequency of choric utterance as being in keeping with the didactic mode of these plays, which have aptly been called ‘a prolonged morality with England as its central character’.⁴³ Much of what is said thus resembles the caption to be found under a painting or the legend under an emblem.

The lack of human relationships in the encounters between the characters may well account for such features of style as are especially notable in the many scenes of confrontation, in which the dialogue is built on an exchange of reciprocal vituperation, of violent accusation and angry retort, the general pattern being ‘one of give and take’.⁴⁴ The characters do not speak with each other so much as at each other, they have no intention of sounding the thoughts of their partners, or of understanding them. Dialogue as a means of bringing people more closely together or of replying to a point which has been made by the other party is as yet unknown, the encounter of Suffolk and the Queen (2 Henry VI, III,ii) being a rare exception. Unrelated and in irreconcilable opposition to one another the nobles confront each other, power pitted against power. The sharply alternating challenges and retorts, which are embodied in symmetrically structured lines, employ the figures of speech, especially the echoes and correspondences, in a reverse sense: to express hostility and separation, but not interrelationship.⁴⁵ This technique of dialogue (‘a repetitive push and pull, back and forth, over and over again’)⁴⁶ reminds us of the battle of words, the combat of wit in the Comedies, but takes on a more sinister aspect, as the clash of words prepares for the clash of swords. In a full-length study the examination of the vituperative language in these plays could make up a whole chapter, for one could point out several techniques of using demeaning and insulting terms,⁴⁷ of which we find in these plays far more than, for instance, in Richard III or Henry IV.

If the clash of power is the mainspring of some elements of the language, the expression of will is another. On almost every page we find vows and oaths, promises and threats, and we find, too, many forms of ‘will’, ‘shall’, etc. Here the method applied by D. M. Burton in Shakespeare's Grammatical Style⁴⁸ would be helpful. For even a rapid perusal of the text reveals a great number of conditional clauses expressing affirmation and protestation. Not to the same degree as with Marlowe but still in a great measure, the lords of these plays express with their fierce and pompous language more of what they would like to do, of what they aim at, than of what they are actually achieving. Language constantly makes gestures towards the future with promises and keen intent, and this attitude may to some degree be a heritage from Marlowe.

But what is the effect of the language of the Henry VI plays on us, on the audience, on the reader? To put this question implies a change of approach, for it has less to do with stylistic analysis than with the assessment of the reaction of audience or reader. Although any answer given to this question is bound to be subjective, it may be worth while to attempt one. For when we read or watch these plays it appears that we begin to doubt whether we can accept, and believe in, this deliberately moulded convincingness and distinctness. What in the speeches of the characters began as a skilful use of time-honoured classical devices of rhetoric, apparently promoting clarity, in fact turns into something different when we question our over-all impression. For as we look more closely, the extraordinary clarity of utterance and character in this somewhat two-dimensional world serves in the end only to accentuate the nightmare absurdity of it all. This intolerable sequence of a century of senseless war in which the successive characters comment in an apparently convincing manner makes us all the more aware of the ultimate futility of it all. The magnification, the sharp light in which these stalking, depersonalised figures appear before our eyes make even more acute the final blurring of moral values. In the end, the issue is not clarified but confused. We do not know which side is right, for they are all wrong. Shakespeare, having built up this monumental array of seemingly uncontroversial figures, endowing them with a maximum of eloquence, self-assurance and distinctness, seems to have ended his work with a question mark.

Notes

1. Hardin Craig, ‘Shakespeare and the History Play’, in John Quincy Adams Memorial Studies (Washington, 1948). For a detailed examination of the set speeches in the Histories I am indebted to Bernhard Schmid, ‘Form und Gehalt der grossen Rede in Shakespeares Historien’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Munich, 1955). For the set speeches in general see M. B. Kennedy, The Oration in Shakespeare (Chapel Hill, 1942). For their treatment of Shakespeare's early Histories I am indebted to the following books: M. M. Reese, The Cease of Majesty (London, 1961); David Riggs, Shakespeare's Heroical Histories (Cambridge, Mass., 1971); Robert Ornstein, A Kingdom for a Stage (Cambridge, Mass., 1972); but most of all to Robert Y. Turner, Shakespeare's Apprenticeship (Chicago, 1974).

2. See Part Three of my English Tragedy before Shakespeare (London, 1961).

3. Rudolf Stamm, Shakespeare's Word-Scenery (Zürich, 1954).

4. See J. P. Brockbank's remarks on this scene in ‘The Frame of Disorder’, Stratford-upon-Avon Studies 3: Early Shakespeare (London, 1961).

5. See H. V. Canter, Rhetorical Elements in the Tragedies of Seneca (Urbana, 1925), pp. 140ff.

6. See the Introduction to 3 Henry VI, New Arden edition (London, 1964), by A. S. Cairncross, p. lv.

7. The phrase is Cairncross's. These aspects of the imagery in Henry VI were underrated in my early book. See Cairncross's justified criticism in his Introduction to 2 Henry VI, New Arden edition (London, 1957), p. liii.

8. See, besides Craig and Schmid, Horst Oppel, ‘Die erste Meisterszene: Der Tod Beauforts’, in Shakespeare. Studien zum Werk und zur Welt des Dichters (Heidelberg, 1963).

9. See F. P. Wilson, The Proverbial Wisdom of Shakespeare (Modern Humanities Research Association, 1961); Horst Weinstock, Die Funktion elisabethanischer Sprichwörter und Pseudosprichwörter bei Shakespeare (Heidelberg, 1966).

10. Gladys D. Willcock, Language and Poetry in Shakespeare's Early Plays (Annual Shakespeare Lecture of the British Academy, 1954).

11. ‘The King / Prettily, methought, did play the orator’ (1 Henry VI, IV,i,175); ‘For Warwick is a subtle orator’ (3 Henry VI, III,i,33); ‘But you, my lord, were glad to be employed, / To show how quaint an orator you are’ (2 Henry VI, III,ii,273); Richard Gloucester: ‘I’ll play the orator as well as Nestor’ (3 Henry VI, III,ii,188). See, too, 2 Henry VI, I,i,155; III,i,79; 1 Henry VI, III,iii,40,78.

12. G. D. Willcock, Shakespeare as a Critic of Language (Shakespeare Association, London, 1934).

13. See C. Leech, Shakespeare, The Chronicles (British Council Series, London, 1962), p. 17. See the illuminating remarks on the language of Jack Cade by Jürgen Schäfer, Shakespeares Stil. Germanisches und romanisches Vokabular (Frankfurt, 1973), p. 78. See also Turner, Shakespeare's Apprenticeship, p. 140.

14. See, for instance, the speech of the Duchess at the beginning of 2 Henry VI, I,ii; the Queen's speech in 2 Henry VI, III,i,4ff.; III,ii,50,74,159; III,iii,24.

15. As, e.g., in 2 Henry VI, III,ii,50,73.

16. As in 2 Henry VI, III,i,222; III,ii,85; 3 Henry VI, II,ii,37; V,vi,75.

17. As in 2 Henry VI, III,ii,119.

18. As in 1 Henry VI, III,i,41; 2 Henry VI, IV,vii,74.

19. As in 2 Henry VI, III,i,52,352.

20. As in 2 Henry VI, III,ii,72; 3 Henry VI, I,i,230.

21. See the comment on this scene by Turner, Shakespeare's Apprenticeship, pp. 53f.

22. Shakespeare and the Diction of Common Life (Annual Shakespeare Lecture of the British Academy, London, 1941).

23. See especially 3 Henry VI, III,ii, and Act V.

24. See Charlotte Ehrl, Sprachstil und Charakter bei Shakespeare (Schriftenreihe der Deutschen Shakespeare-Gesellschaft, Heidelberg, 1957).

25. Introduction by John Dover Wilson to 3 Henry VI in the New Cambridge Shakespeare (Cambridge, 1952).

26. ‘Shakespeare's Use of Rhetoric’, in A New Companion to Shakespeare Studies, ed. Kenneth Muir and S. Schoenbaum (Cambridge, 1971).

27. ‘Shakespeare has not one style, but many’; Oliver Elton, Style in Shakespeare (Annual Shakespeare Lecture of the British Academy, London, 1936).

28. Some critics believe it to be a later insertion; see Kenneth Muir, ‘Image and Symbol in Shakespeare's Histories’, Shakespeare the Professional (London, 1973), p. 74.

29. Willcock, Language and Poetry in Shakespeare's Early Plays.

30. Muir, ‘Shakespeare the Dramatist’, Filološki Pregled (Beograd, 1964).

31. ‘Shakespeare and Rhetoric’, Shakespeare-Jahrbuch, 90 (1952).

32. For valuable suggestions on how to relate stylistic features to recurring attitudes I am much indebted to Turner, Shakespeare's Apprenticeship, and to Sigurd Burckhardt, ‘I am but Shadow of Myself. Ceremony and Design in I Henry VI, Modern Language Quarterly, XXVIII (1967).

33. B. Ifor Evans, The Language of Shakespeare's Plays (London, 1952), p. 31.

34. Cairncross, Introduction to 2 Henry VI, New Arden edition, p. l.

35. Cairncross: Shakespeare ‘knew the value and effect of the schoolmaster's damnable iteration as a means of inculcating a fact or projecting a character’ (Introduction to 3 Henry VI, New Arden edition).

36. See Turner, Shakespeare's Apprenticeship, p. 112.

37. Burckhardt: ‘The lines of verse behave like the characters, each striving to stand in self-sufficient and self-assertive orotundity’, in ‘I am but Shadow of Myself’, p. 142.

38. See the dying speeches by Mortimer (1 Henry VI, II,v,3-16), Clifford (3 Henry VI, II,vi,1-30), and Warwick (3 Henry VI, V,ii,5-28).

39. See King Henry in 3 Henry VI, IV,viii,38-46.

40. See Warwick in 3 Henry VI, II,iii,1; King Henry in 3 Henry VI, III,i,12ff.

41. Burckhardt, ‘I am but Shadow of Myself’.

42. Quoted by Joseph Spence, in Anecdotes, Observations and Characters, ed. S. W. Singer (1820). See James Sutherland, ‘How the Characters Talk’, in Shakespeare's World, ed. J. Sutherland (London, 1964).

43. Reese, The Cease of Majesty.

44. Turner, Shakespeare's Apprenticeship.

45. See R. Y. Turner, ‘Characterisation in Shakespeare's Early History Plays’, English Literary History, 3 (1964).

46. Madeleine Doran, Shakespeare's Dramatic Language (Madison, 1976).

47. See H. O. Thieme, ‘Studien zur Zornesszene in Shakespeares Historien’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Marburg, 1972).

48. Dolores M. Burton, Shakespeare's Grammatical Style (London, 1973).