Henry VI, Part 3
Henry VI, Part 3 (often written as 3 Henry VI) is a history play by William Shakespeare believed to have been written in 1591 and set during the lifetime of King Henry VI of England. Whereas 1 Henry VI deals with the loss of England's French territories and the political machinations leading up to the Wars of the Roses and 2 Henry VI focuses on the King's inability to quell the bickering of his nobles, and the inevitability of armed conflict, 3 Henry VI deals primarily with the horrors of that conflict, with the once stable nation thrown into chaos and barbarism as families break down and moral codes are subverted in the pursuit of revenge and power.
Although the Henry VI trilogy may not have been written in chronological order, the three plays are often grouped together with Richard III to form a tetralogy covering the entire Wars of the Roses saga, from the death of Henry V in 1422 to the rise to power of Henry VII in 1485. It was the success of this sequence of plays that firmly established Shakespeare's reputation as a playwright.
Henry VI, Part 3 features one of the longest soliloquies in all of Shakespeare (3.2.124–195) and has more battle scenes (four on stage, one reported) than any other of Shakespeare's plays.
Analysis and criticism[edit]
Critical history[edit]
Some critics argue that the Henry VI trilogy were the first ever plays to be based on recent English history, and as such, they deserve an elevated position in the canon, and a more central role in Shakespearean criticism. According to F.P. Wilson for example, "There is no certain evidence that any dramatist before the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 dared to put upon the public stage a play based upon English history [...] so far as we know, Shakespeare was the first."[15] However, not all critics agree with Wilson here. For example, Michael Taylor argues that there were at least thirty-nine history plays prior to 1592, including the two-part Christopher Marlowe play Tamburlaine (1587), Thomas Lodge's The Wounds of Civil War (1588), the anonymous The Troublesome Reign of King John (1588), Edmund Ironside (1590 – also anonymous), Robert Greene's Selimus (1591) and another anonymous play, The True Tragedy of Richard III (1591). Paola Pugliatti, however, argues that the case may be somewhere between Wilson and Taylor's argument; "Shakespeare may not have been the first to bring English history before the audience of a public playhouse, but he was certainly the first to treat it in the manner of a mature historian rather than in the manner of a worshipper of historical, political and religious myth."[16]
Another issue often discussed amongst critics is the quality of the play. Along with 1 Henry VI, 3 Henry VI has traditionally been seen as one of Shakespeare's weakest plays, with critics often citing the amount of violence as indicative of Shakespeare's artistic immaturity and inability to handle his chronicle sources, especially when compared to the more nuanced and far less violent second historical tetralogy (Richard II, 1 Henry IV, 2 Henry IV and Henry V). For example, critics such as E.M.W. Tillyard,[17] Irving Ribner[18] and A.P. Rossiter[19] have all claimed that the play violates neoclassical precepts of drama, which dictate that violence and battle should never be shown mimetically on stage, but should always be reported diegetically in dialogue. This view was based on traditional notions of the distinction between high and low art, a distinction which was itself based partly upon Philip Sidney's An Apology for Poetry (1579). Based on the work of Horace, Sidney criticised Gorboduc for showing too many battles and being too violent when it would have been more artistic to verbally represent such scenes. The belief was that any play which actually showed violence was crude, appealing only to the ignorant masses, and was therefore low art. On the other hand, any play which elevated itself above such direct representation of violence and instead relied on the writer's ability to verbalise and his skill for diegesis, was considered artistically superior and therefore, high art. Writing in 1605, Ben Jonson commented in The Masque of Blackness that showing battles on stage was only "for the vulgar, who are better delighted with that which pleaseth the eye, than contenteth the ear."[20] Based upon these theories, 3 Henry VI, with its four on-stage battles and multiple scenes of violence and murder, was considered a coarse play with little to recommend it to the intelligentsia.
On the other hand, however, writers like Thomas Heywood and Thomas Nashe praised battle scenes in general as oftentimes being intrinsic to the play and not simply vulgar distractions for the illiterate. In Piers Penniless his Supplication to the Devil (1592), Nashe praised the didactic element of drama which depicted battle and martial action, arguing that such plays were a good way of teaching both history and military tactics to the masses; in such plays "our forefather's valiant acts (that have lain long buried in rusty brass and worm-eaten books) are revived." Nashe also argued that plays which depict glorious national causes from the past rekindle a patriotic fervour which has been lost in "the puerility of an insipid present," and that such plays "provide a rare exercise of virtue in reproof to these degenerate effeminate days of ours."[21] Similarly, in An Apology for Actors (1612), Heywood writes, "So bewitching a thing is lively and well-spirited action, that it hath power to new mould the hearts of the spectators, and fashion them to the shape of any noble and notable attempt."[22] More recently, speaking of 1 Henry VI, Michael Goldman has argued that battle scenes are vital to the overall movement and purpose of the play; "the sweep of athletic bodies across the stage is used not only to provide an exciting spectacle but to focus and clarify, to render dramatic, the entire unwieldy chronicle."[23]
In line with this thinking, recent scholarship has tended to look at the play as being a more complete dramatic text, rather than a series of battle scenes loosely strung together with a flimsy narrative. Certain modern productions in particular have done much to bring about this re-evaluation (such as Peter Hall's and John Barton's in 1963 and 1964, Terry Hands' in 1977, Michael Bogdanov's in 1986, Adrian Nobles' in 1988, Katie Mitchell's in 1994, Edward Hall's in 2000 and Michael Boyd's in 2000 and 2006). Based upon this revised way of thinking, and looking at the play as more complex than has traditionally been allowed for, some critics now argue that the play "juxtaposes the stirring aesthetic appeal of martial action with discursive reflection on the political causes and social consequences."[24]
The question of artistic integrity, however, is not the only critical disagreement which 3 Henry VI has provoked. There are numerous other issues about which critics are divided, not the least aspect of which concerns its relationship to True Tragedy.
Adaptations[edit]
Theatrical[edit]
Evidence for the first adaptation of 3 Henry VI is found during the Restoration, when, in 1681, John Crowne created a two-part play entitled Henry the Sixth, The First Part and The Misery of Civil War.[68] Henry comprised Acts 1–3 of 2 Henry VI focusing on the death of Gloucester, Misery adapted the last two acts of 2 Henry VI and much of 3 Henry VI. Writing at the time of Popish Plot, Crowne, who was a devout royalist, used his adaptation to warn about the danger of allowing England to descend into another civil war, which would be the case should the Whig party rise to power. Changes to the text include a new, albeit silent scene just prior to the Battle of Wakefield where York embraces Rutland before heading out to fight; an extension of the courtship between Edward and Lady Grey, and the edition of two subplots; one concerning a mistress of Edward's whom he accidentally kills in battle (an allusion to Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher's Philaster), the other involving an attempt by Warwick to seduce Lady Grey after her husband's death at the Second Battle of St. Albans (this is later used as a rationale for why Warwick turns against Edward).[69] Also worth noting is that the role of Margaret in 3 Henry VI was removed almost entirely, reducing her to two scenes; the death of York and the death of Prince Edward.[70]
3 Henry VI was also partly incorporated into Colley Cibber's The Tragical History of King Richard the Third, containing the Distresses and Death of King Henry the Sixth (1699), one of the most successful Shakespearean adaptations of all time. The play was half Shakespeare, half new material. 3 Henry VI was used as the source for Act 1, which dramatised Henry's lamentation about the burdens of Kingship (2.5), the battle of Tewkesbury (Act 5 – although Margaret's speech in Act 5, Scene 1 was replaced with Henry V's "once more unto the breach" speech from Henry V and is spoken by Warwick) and Richard's murder of Henry in the tower (5.6). Richard's soliloquy in Act 2 of Tragical History was also based upon his soliloquy in Act 3, Scene 2 of 3 Henry VI.
Colley's son, Theophilus Cibber wrote his own adaptation, King Henry VI: A Tragedy in 1723, using Act 5 of 2 Henry VI and Act 1 and 2 of 3 Henry VI. Performed at Drury Lane, Colley appeared as Winchester. As had Crowne, Cibber created a new scene involving Rutland; after the death of York, he and Rutland are laid side by side on the battlefield.
In 1817, Edmund Kean appeared in J.H. Merivale's Richard Duke of York; or the Contention of York and Lancaster, which used material from all three Henry VI plays, but removed everything not directly related to York; the play ended with his death, which occurs in Act 1, Scene 4 of 3 Henry VI. Material from 3 Henry VI included the opening few scenes involving York taking the throne from Henry, preparing for battle, and then the battle itself.
Following Merivale's example, Robert Atkins adapted all three plays into a single piece for a performance at The Old Vic in 1923 as part of the celebrations for the tercentenary of the First Folio. Guy Martineau played Henry and Esther Whitehouse played Margaret. Atkins himself played Richard.
