HENRY VI

IN THREE PARTS

During the time of the civil wars of York and Lancaster, England was a perfect bear-garden, and Shakespeare has given us a very lively picture of the scene.  The three parts of Henry VI convey a picture of very little else; and are inferior to the other historical plays.  They have brilliant passages; but the general ground-work is comparatively poor and meagre, the style ‘flat and unraised’.  There are few lines like the following: 

     Glory is like a circle in the water;
     Which never ceaseth to enlarge itself,
     Till by broad spreading it disperse to naught.

The first part relates to the wars in France after the death of Henry V and the story of the Maid of Orleans.  She is here almost as scurvily treated as in Voltaire’s Pucelle.  Talbot is a very magnificent sketch:  there is something as formidable in this portrait of him, as there would be in a monumental figure of him or in the sight of the armour which he wore.  The scene in which he visits the Countess of Auvergne, who seeks to entrap him, is a very spirited one, and his description of his own treatment while a prisoner to the French not less remarkable.

   Salisbury.  Yet tell’st thou not how thou wert entertain’d.

   Talbot.  With scoffs and scorns, and contumelious taunts,
     In open market-place produced they me,
     To be a public spectacle to all. 
     Here, said they, is the terror of the French,
     The scarecrow that affrights our children so. 
     Then broke I from the officers that led me,
     And with my nails digg’d stones out of the ground,
     To hurl at the beholders of my shame. 
     My grisly countenance made others fly,
     None durst come near for fear of sudden death. 
     In iron walls they deem’d me not secure: 
     So great a fear my name amongst them spread,
     That they suppos’d I could rend bars of steel,
     And spurn in pieces posts of adamant. 
     Wherefore a guard of chosen shot I had: 
     They walk’d about me every minute-while;
     And if I did but stir out of my bed,
     Ready they were to shoot me to the heart.

The second part relates chiefly to the contests between the nobles during the minority of Henry and the death of Gloucester, the good Duke Humphrey.  The character of Cardinal Beaufort is the most prominent in the group:  the account of his death is one of our author’s masterpieces.  So is the speech of Gloucester to the nobles on the loss of the provinces of France by the king’s marriage with Margaret of Anjou.  The pretensions and growing ambition of the Duke of York, the father of Richard III, are also very ably developed.  Among the episodes, the tragi-comedy of Jack Cade, and the detection of the impostor Simcox are truly edifying.