Henry VI, Part II

The opening of "The Second Part of Henry VI" aims to contrast the regime of Henry VI and his father, Henry V. Suffolk comes to court with a treaty from the French and Princess Margaret for King Henry VI. Gloucester reads the treaty and discovers that the French are keeping the territories of Anjou and Maine in exchange for Margaret. These lands were acquired by Henry V and his men with great skill on the battlefield and to lose them greatly weakens England's hold on France. Before the play ends, France is out of the grasp of the English.

The honorable Gloucester has much to be upset about—the legacy of Henry V is hard to find at the new court and England is shakily holding on to its world power status. He confides in his wife Eleanor, the Duchess, that he had a terrible dream. His office-badge was broken in half and impaled on the end on each half were the heads of Somerset and Suffolk. The ambitious Duchess says she too has had dreams: she saw herself in Westminster Abbey, about to be crowned queen. Gloucester tells her she is already the second most powerful woman at court and should not perform any treacherous acts that may disgrace them both. He leaves to tend to business. Hume appears and the Duchess asks him whether he has conferred with a witch and a conjurer to advise her about the future. As it turns out, Hume has been given gold by Beaufort and Suffolk to urge the Duchess to dabble in the occult. A witch and a conjurer arrive at Gloucester's house. York and Buckingham arrive soon after, catching the Duchess in the action. York arrests the witch and the conjurer, Buckingham arrests the Duchess. Her arrest spells public humiliation for Gloucester, since occult practice was illegal in Elizabethan times, and as her husband, Gloucester would be held responsible for her actions.

Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York, reveals his claim to the throne to the Earls of Salisbury and Warwick: as heir to the third son of Edward III while Henry VI is heir to the fourth son of Edward III, legally speaking, Plantagenet should be king. Salisbury and Warwick pledge to support him.

Act III scene one is disturbing because it depicts a powerless king. Gloucester is accused of treason. Although the accusation is a conspiracy and the king believes Gloucester is an honorable man, he is unable to take command of this mob rule playing out before him and by the next scene, Gloucester is smothered to death under Suffolk's orders. In contrast to Henry, Plantagenet is on a promising path to usurp the throne. He employs a politically savvy commoner by the name of Jack Cade to pose as Mortimer to stir up people in the countryside in the name of York while he is in Ireland putting a stop to a rebel uprising. Henry's first major command is to banish Suffolk. He cites the demand of the commoners to support his decision. Margaret and Suffolk declare their mutual affection to each other.

Suffolk is subsequently at sea as the witch predicted when he is murdered by a couple of lowlifes. Ironically, the Captain seems more aware of the manipulations of the nobles than the members at court. Suffolk's head is sent back to the king. Cade's rebellion is finally suppressed but Plantagenet returns to fight Somerset and to claim the crown, with the support of his sons, Edward (who will become Edward IV), Richard (who will become Richard III) and George, and by Salisbury and Warwick. Henry is supported by Margaret, Somerset, Buckingham, and the Cliffords. For the first time, Lancastrians face Yorkists at the battle of St. Albans. The play ends with the king and queen in flight. The Yorkists contemplate the crown.

The trilogy of Henry VI pitches two worlds against each other and tracks the chaos that ensues. Whether it is tradition versus experimentation, implicitly Catholic versus Protestant, what becomes clear is the difficulty of opposites coexisting in harmony. In Part Two, the honest Duke of Gloucester and the pious king are up against the scheming Plantagenets. Their political scheming resembles a relay race with the crown as the baton. The linguistic and metaphoric predilections of the present Duke of York will be echoed in his son, the future Richard III. Allegiances shift so quickly in this play, so do the sympathies of the audience. And thus, the audience absorbs the emotional journey in a chaotic segment of English history as well as its physically grotesque imagery.