Henry VI, Part III – William Shakespeare, c. 1591-92 ★★½

It's Not Easy Being King

A crown rests heavy on an unsettled mind, but no easier on one more steely of purpose. While not considered one of Shakespeare’s problem plays, Henry VI, Part III is a play with a problem: ‘Tis better to be just, or strong? It then spends five acts offering no answers.

It may be Shakespeare’s boldest play in the way it challenges notions of divine rule and national honor. But it’s not an easy read, and compared to Henry VI, Part II, not as dramatically vital. Part III features wonderful writing, pleas of struggle and solidarity more eloquent as they are often made in a lost cause. But just try following this crazy plot.

Finding himself on the losing end of the War of the Roses, King Henry VI offers his throne to the rebel Duke of York, one Richard Plantagenet, after Henry’s natural death if York agrees on Henry as his present king. York does so, and is immediately pressed to break his word by his sons and supporters. When King Henry tells his wife he just disinherited his child, she tells him she is divorcing him, taking their child, and crushing York herself. She does just that, having both York and his youngest son Rutland put to the sword. And it’s still Act I:

YORK

O tiger’s heart wrapt in a woman’s hide!
How couldst thou drain the life-blood of the child,
To bid the father wipe his eyes withal,
And yet be seen to bear a woman’s face?
Women are soft, mild, pitiful and flexible;
Thou stern, obdurate, flinty, rough, remorseless. [Act I, scene iv, lines 137-142]

That first line in York’s above soliloquy helps scholars date the play – and provides the earliest-known evidence of Shakespeare’s fame in his own lifetime, it being cited by playwright Robert Greene in a splenic passage from his posthumously published tract “Greene’s Groats-worth Of Wit.” Greene called Shakespeare a “tiger’s heart wrapt in a player’s hide,” among other unfriendly things. The tract was published in 1592, establishing Henry VI, Part III’s place in the culture by then.

York’s soliloquy also sets the tone for what the play is about: Bloody vengeance. Part III features more on-stage slaughter than Hamlet, Titus Andronicus, or any other Shakespearean play. In some ways a reflection of legendary revenge plays of the era like The Spanish Tragedy, Henry VI, Part III balances savagery with a plaintively doleful tone.

The Battle of Towton is one of several fights featured in Henry VI, Part III, here depicted by Richard Caton Woodville in a 1922 illustration. Image from http://www.eveningallafternoon.com/2011/02/henry-iv-part-3.html.

Much of that tone comes from the title character himself, who emerges here as a hapless figure overtaken by events. Whether asking York at the outset whether he is supposed to just accept his dethroning (York: “It must and shall be so: content thyself” [I, i, 85-86] or being silenced by his own followers as he attempts to deliver a battlefield speech (Clifford: “I would your highness would depart the field:/The queen hath best success when you are absent” [II, ii, 73-74], Henry might as well be Sir Rodney of Dangerfield for all the respect he gets in his own plays.

Set against him is Edward, York’s eldest son, who takes up the cause of the crown as his own. Edward is everything that Henry is not; hot-blooded, lusty, active, unpredictable, smug. They do share one trait: Each is their own worst enemy.

A glass-half-full kind of guy, Edward is the sort of military commander who camps almost alone in a field, since that will impress his distant troops with his bravery. “’Tis the more honour, because more dangerous” [IV, iii, 15] explains a guard, shortly before a unit of rival Lancastrians arrive to chase him off and take Edward prisoner.

Edward woos and kills and performs assorted sinful acts with an abandon Henry would blanch at. Edward is not concerned with being the people’s king, nor with claiming any Christian mercy. But “nice guys finish last” is not the takeaway mantra from this play; Edward’s deadly willfulness contains seeds for his eventual destruction.

After agreeing with his supporter Warwick to marry the King of France’s sister in law Bona, thus securing his kingdom from foreign invasion, King Edward spies a lovely widow, Lady Grey. So he drops the Bona plan while Warwick is en route to France to plead for her hand on Edward’s behalf. An embarrassed Warwick joins the Lancastrians.

Later, Edward gives preference to his new wife over his own remaining brothers, Richard Duke of Gloucester and George Duke of Clarence. Clarence complains; Edward tells him to go pound sand:

KING EDWARD IV

Leave me, or tarry, Edward will be king,
And not be tied unto his brother’s will. [IV, i, 65-66]

Naturally enough, Clarence chooses to leave, at least for a while. Like the other sons of York, he has a talent for keeping his options open. Losing Clarence’s support puts Edward behind the eight-ball again, as Henry’s star waxes again. So score one for the nice guy.

The hardest character in the play, one whose lust for the crown exceeds all, is not Edward but the more laser-focused Gloucester, who makes clear to us in one of several soliloquies that nothing will keep him from being king, not even his brother:

GLOUCESTER

I can add colours to the chameleon,
Change shapes with Proteus for advantages,
And set the murderous Machiavel to school.
Can I do this, and cannot get a crown?
Tut, were it farther off, I'll pluck it down. [III, ii, 192-196]

Henry VI, Part III may be the last in a series, but it also serves as a prequel to Gloucester’s own play by Shakespeare to come, Richard III. It can feel tricky knowing exactly when one play ends and the other begins, given how consistent the character of Gloucester is to the title character of that more famous play. In his 1955 film adaptation of Richard III, Laurence Olivier even ported some of the dialogue over from Henry VI, Part III, including the soliloquy above.

Gloucester is so vital a character, so well established in his villainy, that his outsized presence points up a key deficiency of Henry VI, Part III: Everyone else comes off drab. Rather than fully-formed personalities, they seem to exist strictly as plot devices. And Part III is a plot-challenged affair.

In my review of Part I, I noted the choppiness of the narrative, how in the early acts it went from the French winning back most of their country from the English, to the English back in charge in the next scene with no explanation. Something similar occurs in Part III regarding the War of the Roses, only it is even more extreme.

In quick succession, we get an unguarded Edward being captured by the Lancastrians, then sprung as swiftly and easily by his Yorkist allies. Then Henry gets captured in as sudden and rushed a manner. There were historical events Shakespeare needed to attend to for the sake of the record, but the by-the-numbers quality of his storycraft grates.

What impression Part III manages to make is in its focus on the human cost of civil war. Here, Shakespeare employs some unique staging devices. One that draws some critical praise struck me as rather forced. Henry looks on as two soldiers leave the field, both with bodies of someone they killed. In one instance, it turns out to be the soldier’s father; in the other, it is his son. Henry underscores the lesson of the day for anyone in the audience not paying heed:

King Henry (Peter Benson) looks on as one of his soldiers discovers the man he killed was his own son, in a 1982 television production of Henry VI, Part III. Taking stock of bloodshed is a recurring motif of this play. Image from https://conradbrunstrom.wordpress.com/2017/05/20/it-just-gets-worse-or-better-the-1980s-bbc-henry-vi-part-iii/.

KING HENRY VI

Woe above woe! grief more than common grief!
O that my death would stay these ruthful deeds!
O pity, pity, gentle heaven, pity!
The red rose and the white are on his face,
The fatal colours of our striving houses:
The one his purple blood right well resembles;
The other his pale cheeks, methinks, presenteth:
Wither one rose, and let the other flourish;
If you contend, a thousand lives must wither. [II, v, 94-102]

Henry’s overall gormlessness is laid out so often that it gets tired. He’s a likeable character, who does manage one good scene and a few spirited lines when he is dispatched at play’s end. But the play might as well be titled Margaret or Edward III for all the impact Henry has.

As for Queen Margaret, she shows up quite different in character from the adulterous minx of Part II. Full of spitting fury, she seems no more a double agent for France but rather an active, worthy leader for the Lancastrian side. As a character, she pales beside Richard but gives the play something of a feisty, rooting interest which is badly needed. As with Henry, her last scene here is her most memorable.

Shakespeare’s incomparable way with words and his shafts of humor (the wooing scene between Edward and Lady Grey/Elizabeth is a comic highlight) make Henry VI, Part III a decent read, and a fitting capstone to his Henry VI series, challenging as it is both to stage and to read. Its message about the problem of providing leadership that is both just and strong to a nation that bends with the winds of fate remains timeless:

KING HENRY VI

Look, as I blow this feather from my face,
And as the air blows it to me again,
Obeying with my wind when I do blow,
And yielding to another when it blows,
Commanded always by the greater gust;
Such is the lightness of you common men. [III, i, 84-89]