SOURCE: “Suffolk and Margaret: A Study of Some Sections of Shakespeare's Henry VI,” in Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 25, No. 3, Summer, 1974, pp. 310-22.

In the essay below, Williams probes Shakespeare's presentation of an unhistorical love affair between Queen Margaret of Anjou and the Earl of Suffolk as the dramatist's first attempt at staging romantic relationships with tragic consequences.

The illicit love affair which Shakespeare gave to Queen Margaret and the Earl (afterward Duke) of Suffolk in 1 and 2 Henry VI is unhistorical. At a time when Shakespeare for his dramatic purposes was ruthlessly simplifying and trimming history, he chose to invent this tragic and, to most people, disagreeable love story, basing his invention only on some hints in Hall's Chronicle. There appears to have been no demanding reason, dramatically, for this invention, even though it does link together Parts 1 and 2 to a degree which makes them seem one play. Some other...