3 Henry VI – A. J. Drake's Shakespeare Site

Commentaries on
Shakespeare’s History Plays

Shakespeare, William [and possibly Christopher Marlowe]. The Third Part of Henry the Sixth. Folio. (The Norton Shakespeare: Histories, 3rd ed. 230-96.) *Norton lists Shakespeare as sole author of this play.

Comprehensive Shakespeare: Folger Shakespeare Library | RSC Shakespeare’s Plays | Shakespeare-Online (Mabillard) | Internet Shakespeare Editions (U-Vic)

Hundred Years’ War: Medievalists.net | 100 Years’ War (Britannica) | 100 Years’ War (WHE) | 100 Years’ War Timeline

The Tudors: Tudor Society | TudorHistory.org | The Tudors (Eng-Heritage UK) | Life in Elizabethan England (M. Secara) | Elizabethan Era.org

Date and New Oxford Shakespeare Attribution Note: The editors of the Oxford Shakespeare give a date range for 3 Henry VI of 1590-91, with probable revisions by Shakespeare in the mid-1590s. As for authorship, they identify in their Folio-based 1623 copy Scenes 4-6, 8-12, 14, 23, and 25-29 as belonging to Shakespeare himself. Scenes 1, 2, 7, 15-21, and 24 they grant to Marlowe, and the scenes not mentioned (3, 13, and 22) possibly to some other playwright. In the Norton edition used for the commentary below, these numbers correspond to the following Acts/Scenes:

Shakespeare: 1.4, 2.1-2, 2.4-6, 3.1-2, 4.1, 5.1, 5.3-7
Marlowe: 1.1-2, 2.3, 4.2-8, 5.2
Other? 1.3, 3.3, 4.9

By this estimation, Shakespeare wrote a scene in Acts 1 and 4, most of Act 2, around half of Act 3, and most of Act 5. Marlowe wrote the first two scenes in Act 1, a scene in Acts 2 and 5, and most of Act 4.

ACT 1

Act 1, Scene 1 (231-37, with Warwick’s help, Richard Plantagenet, 3^rd Duke of York seats himself on Henry VI’s throne; Henry arrives and is intimidated into declaring York his heir, and York accepts the deal; Queen Margaret, however, does not—it means disinheriting her son Edward, Prince of Wales, so off she goes to muster a Lancastrian army of her own.)

Historically, the First Battle of St. Albans took place in 1455, and that is the battle described both at the end of 2 Henry VI and for the first twenty lines of 3 Henry VI. [1] Richard Plantagenet, 3^rd Duke of York (hereafter called “York”) and several others list the Lancastrian opponents who have been killed or wounded in action: among them are Northumberland; Thomas Clifford; Humphrey Lord Stafford (son of the 1^st Duke of Buckingham); the Earl of Wiltshire; and the Duke of Somerset—whose severed head Richard of Gloucester carries. [2]

The time frame shifts abruptly from 1455’s Yorkist win at St. Albans to July 1460, just after the Battle of Northampton, another Yorkist victory, and thence to October 10, 1460, when York approaches King Henry VI’s empty throne in Parliament in hopes of finally claiming it. By reaching back five years to the first battle of the Wars of the Roses, First St. Albans, the playwright is practicing a strong, characteristically dramatic telescoping of events. [3] The upshot is that the Yorkists have for the present routed the Lancastrians, and York, the scion of that cadet branch of the Plantagenets, now feels strong enough to claim the throne.

York seems to distrust Warwick (aka “the Kingmaker”), [4] or at least that’s a plausible reading of his request to the man after the earl’s fulsome vow never to shut his eyes until York takes the throne from Henry VI. To this, York says, “Assist me, then, sweet Warwick, and I will, / For hither we have broken in by force” (231, 1.1.28-29). That seems like a way to say, “prove your complicity with me in this act of rebellion.”

One other thing to note is that while historically, Parliament was in session on October 10, 1460 when York entered the upper chamber, [5] the playwright treats the event like an eerie strategy meeting between York and his supporters rather than a highly visible political event. York is laying claim to the power that comes with the right to occupy the throne, as if it were situated in the space called “the Holy of Holies” in the ancient Temple of Jerusalem. [6]

Warwick the Kingmaker’s pride is evident throughout the scene. Speaking of himself in the third person, he declares boldly in the presence of York and key supporters, “Neither the King nor he that loves him best, / The proudest he that holds up Lancaster, / Dares stir a wing if Warwick shake his bells” (232, 1.1.45-47). These great royal birds of prey will not, he implies, disobey him.

Just then, in tread King Henry VI, Lord Clifford, Northumberland, Westmorland, Exeter, and other Lancastrians, and an argument over who really deserves the throne ensues. While Henry seems to shy away from violence, his pacifism is underlain by real political acumen. When Clifford tries to bully the king to “assail the family of York,” Henry says, “Ah, know you not the city favors them / And they have troops of soldiers at their beck?” (232, 1.1.65, 67-68) Henry understands where he is: London, the great city, apparently prefers the Yorkist forces over Henry’s Lancastrians.

Still, that basic perspicacity aside, we can tell right away that Henry’s attempt to overawe York and his company will go nowhere. The playwright has admirably grasped the medieval mindset that governs this whole struggle: two fiercely competitive factions assert—and most of them probably believe they have every right to assert—equally brazen claims to supreme power, so the argument stops at the level of “I’m the king—obey me!” and “No, I’m the king—obey me!”

Even so, we may be surprised to find that in this instance, there is an attempt to remain calm and be reasonable. As York’s sons clamor for battle around him, he tells them, “Sons, peace,” most likely meaning, “keep silent.” And when Henry VI asks for “leave to speak” (233, 1.1.119-20), for a moment he gets his wish, and utters a mixture of threats and boasts such as “My title’s good, and better far than his” (234, 1.1.130).

Even so, Warwick needs only to mention the old issue of Henry IV’s establishment of the Lancastrian line by usurpation of the crown from Richard II, and Henry VI knows he can’t in good conscience maintain this argument. As he says to himself, “I know not what to say: my title’s weak” (234, 1.1.134). Neither does Henry’s attempt to switch up his argument gain him any respect: while he feebly puts it forth that King Richard II “Resigned the crown to Henry the Fourth” (234, 1.1.139), even the loyal Exeter can’t hold his tongue, and points out the bankruptcy of this line of thinking. [7]

As the argument breaks down into threats and dares, we see the utility of casting this first scene, with its stark confrontation between two warring houses, in an otherwise hushed Parliament. There’s no need for the parties to engage in ceremony, flowery rhetoric or elaborate justifications. We find a degree of frankness in both sides that would be impossible if they had to scrape and put on a show for the members of Parliament.

York speaks to Henry without flattery or even basic decorum. He is the son of that same Richard, Earl of Cambridge who tried to kill Henry’s royal father, and Henry VI, for his part, does not pretend to honor York. Northumberland and Clifford both say that they don’t give a farthing whether Henry’s claim is valid or worthless—they’re not going to let him lose the throne, no matter what. In return, the currently York-favoring Warwick the Kingmaker insists that he will “fill the house with armèd men / And over the chair of state where now he sits / Write up his title with usurping blood” (234, 1.1.167-69).

The stage directions tell us that at this point, Warwick stamps his foot, and his soldiers make their presence known, right here in the Parliamentary seat of England. Upon seeing this sign of strength and hearing the accompanying threat of violence, [8] Henry makes York a deal he finds hard to refuse. He can articulate it as easily as Henry can: “Confirm the crown to me and to mine heirs, / And thou shalt reign in quiet while thou liv’st” (235, 1.1.172-73). This is the essence of the formal Act of Accord [9] that, historically, both sides agreed to on October 31, 1460, following the July 10, 1460 Battle of Northampton. [10]

Clifford, Westmorland, and Northumberland are dismayed at Henry VI’s decision to disinherit his own son, Edward of Westminster, Prince of Wales. [11] They try to slink away from the approaching Queen Margaret, but it’s mainly Henry that she means to talk sense into. She points out that whatever agreement he may have signed with York and his party, he is still going to be surrounded by foes. As she puts it, “Warwick is Chancellor and the lord of Calais; / Stern Falconbridge commands the narrow seas; / The Duke is made Protector of the realm; / And yet shalt thou be safe?” (236, 1.1.238-41)

Enraged, Margaret separates from Henry, and says she won’t return until Henry goes back on the agreement he has made. The Prince of Wales follows her, while remaining diplomatic towards his father. Left with only Exeter, Henry sounds almost delusional, saying, “Poor Queen, how love to me and to her son / Hath made her break out into terms of rage” (237, 1.1.264-65). It would be challenging to say anything more off-the-mark about Queen Margaret: it isn’t tender love for Henry that’s guiding her in this matter, it’s dynastic tenacity. Henry’s unacceptable mildness is threatening her son.

In a sense, too, Henry has already returned to his unfavorable reading of York’s efforts. He has taken the moral issue of who really deserves the crown seriously, not merely as a formal, external matter but as a matter of conscience, which we today would call a thing of interiority. We should give Henry VI credit for this seriousness. He also figures York as a man “Whose haughty spirit, wingèd with desire, / Will cost my crown and, like an empty eagle, / Tire on the flesh of me and of my son” (237, 1.1.267-69). Who can blame the king for thinking that way about York?

Act 1, Scene 2 (237-38, York’s sons Edward and Richard convince him to go back on his oath to respect Henry VI’s lifetime tenure and instead to take the crown from him; with Queen Margaret’s forces making towards his stronghold, York readies his men to meet them at Wakefield.)

At first, York seems determined to keep his word—in this, he is not so different from the conscientious Henry in seeking stability instead of chaos and brutality. But then his sons set after him and change his mind. Edward sees York’s faith as dangerous—he can’t believe that giving “the house of Lancaster leave to breathe” (237, 1.2.13) will do anything but act like a good rest for a runner, allowing him to outpace the opponent. Edward is not too shy to push open breach of contract, saying to his father, “for a kingdom any oath may be broken. / I would break a thousand oaths to reign one year” (237, 1.2.17).

Richard, however, is more subtle than his brazenly ambitious older brother Edward. He sounds lawyerly with regard to the business of oath-breaking: “God forbid your grace should be forsworn” (237, 1.2.18). Now, we need not worry that Richard—in defiance of modern psychiatry’s tenets—is growing a delicate conscience that might prevent him from the villainy we know lies ahead of him. His point is rather that he can absolve York of opprobrium by legalistic means. As he puts his case, “An oath is of no moment, being not took / Before a true and lawful magistrate / That hath authority over him that swears” (237, 1.2.22-24).

This way, the idea runs, the Yorkists can stomp all over good faith and contractual obligation while still preserving the public appearance of decency. Richard is every bit as ambitious as his brother Edward, telling York, “father, do but think / How sweet a thing it is to wear a crown, / Within whose circuit is Elysium / And all that poets feign of bliss and joy” (237, 1.2.28-31). Richard II and Henry IV, along with many other kings, could tell Richard otherwise, [12] but we may suspect that such advice would be of no value to the future Richard III, at least until it’s too late to save him.

York is soon brought round to a determination to fight for the throne of England, and he sends Montague to London to advise Warwick, Richard to inform Norfolk of the change of plans, and Edward to tell Cobham in Kent. Through it all, he insists, King Henry VI must be kept clueless about the real state of affairs. As Lady Macbeth says to her husband, “Look like th’innocent flower, / But be the serpent under it.” [13]

The messenger Gabriel informs York and his supporters that Queen Margaret is heading down with an army from the north to besiege him at Sandal Castle in West Yorkshire, northern England. The estimate is that she has around 20,000 troops, a sizeable force compared to York’s 5,000 or so. What should they do? Take shelter at Sandal and stand for a siege, or attack beyond the castle’s walls?

The York men’s sexism is on full display as they confront the news of Margaret’s advance, with Richard exclaiming, “A woman’s general; what should we fear?” (238, 2.3.68) Has he really never heard of Joan of Arc, regardless of how her campaign ultimately turned out? York is soon carried along by his sons’ eagerness to give battle, and expresses his optimism: “Many a battle have I won in France / Whenas the enemy hath been ten to one” (238, 1.2.73-74).

Act 1, Scene 3 (239-40, to revenge the killing of his own father at the hands of York, Lord Clifford slaughters York’s defenseless son Rutland at Wakefield.)

Scene 3 captures the most extreme ethos of the Wars of the Roses, with Lord Clifford [14] in his thirst for vengeance ruthlessly cutting down the defenseless Edmund, Earl of Rutland, York’s son. The playwright chooses to represent Rutland as a child, but in fact he was seventeen—an age at which aristocratic young men were expected to become involved with governance and even military campaigns. Still, knowing this can’t keep us from viewing Clifford as a monster in his unquenchable need to spill Yorkist blood.

Lord Clifford blames the Duke of York for killing his father (which occurs towards the end of 2 Henry VI), so he is deaf to the young Rutland’s pleas for mercy, and even describes himself in classical style as being pursued by a divine enforcer of revenge, saying, “The sight of any of the house of York / Is as a Fury to torment my soul, / And till I root out their accursèd line / And leave not one alive, I live in hell” (239, 1.3.30-33). Clifford’s motive here is purely personal—it has nothing to do with the good of England or even, frankly, with the rights of King Henry VI.

Act 1, Scene 4 (240-44, as the Battle of Wakefield turns against his forces, the Duke of York is captured by Queen Margaret and her nearest officers; they mock him with a paper crown and taunt him with news of Rutland’s killing, even offering him a handkerchief stained with Rutland’s blood to wipe away his tears; Clifford and Margaret then stab York, and the Queen commands that his head be installed above the city of York’s gates.)

York, comparing the movements of his troops to those of that royal bird, the swan, swimming against the tide (240, 1.4.19-21), finds himself trapped and constrained to vent his fury at Clifford, Northumberland, and Queen Margaret. He prophesies, “My ashes, as the phoenix, may bring forth / A bird that will revenge upon you all …” (241, 1.4.35-36). [15]

This prediction produces little effect. Margaret’s interest is to draw out York’s suffering and enjoy for a while. Northumberland holds Clifford back when that lord is disposed to kill or capture York without assistance, saying, “It is war’s prize to take all vantages, / And ten to one is no impeach of valor” (241, 1.4.59-60). That is hardly a chivalric-spirited suggestion. It is often said that the Wars of the Roses, once concluded, marked the end of the medieval era, but it might be better to suggest that there wasn’t a lot of chivalry left to believe in even by the beginning of that struggle. [16]

Margaret is full of glee at York’s discomfiture, and it’s hard to miss the hint of onlookers’ mockery of Jesus in the biblical account of his crucifixion, when he was supposedly given vinegar to drink, adorned with a crown of thorns, and taunted with a kingly title. [17] Margaret’s vituperation is hideous: “York cannot speak unless he wear a crown / —A crown for York!” (242, 1.4.93-94) she says, and on goes the paper coronet to humiliate him before his captors.

In turn, York rages at Margaret, calling her “She-wolf of France” and “Amazonian trull,” and making degrading comments about the financial troubles of the queen’s unfortunate father René, King of Naples (242-43, 1.4.111, 114, 118-23). [18] But the doomed scion of the House of York makes his most unforgettable rejoinder to Maragaret with the following outburst: “O tiger’s heart wrapped in a woman’s hide, / How couldst thou drain the lifeblood of the child / To bid the father wipe his eyes withal / And yet be seen to bear a woman’s face?” (243, 1.4.137-40) [19]

Even Northumberland pities the tears York Sheds for Rutland, but Margaret does not, and after York’s parting curse to Margaret, which runs, “in thy need such comfort come to thee / As now I reap at thy too cruel hand” (243, 1.4.165-66), first Clifford stabs York, and then Margaret stabs him, too. Once the great lord is dead, Margaret is ready with just the order we might have expected: “Off with his head and set it on York gates, / So York may overlook the town of York” (244, 1.4.179-80). This twisted, grotesque literalism in humor seems to be a feature of Shakespearean villains. [20]

ACT 2

Act 2, Scene 1 (244-48, Edward and Richard learn of their father York’s death; Warwick announces that the Yorkists have lost the Second Battle of St. Albans following Wakefield; the Yorkists ready themselves for further battles against the Lancastrians, and Warwick insists that the new Duke of York, Edward, will become king.)

As Edward and Richard await news of their father’s fate in the December 30, 1460 Battle of Wakefield, they both see what we now call a “sun dog” or parhelion, when a colorful spot appears to the sun’s left and right at 22°. [21] Richard says that these suns “join, embrace, and seem to kiss, / As if they vowed some league inviolable. / Now are they but one lamp, one light, one sun” (244, 2.1.29-31). Most likely, Edward and Richard would include George as the third son since in the play, Rutland (York’s second oldest son) is characterized as a child. [22]

A messenger soon arrives and puts an end to the speculation stoked by the parhelion since his news is that York has been done to death, “slaughtered by the ireful arm / Of unrelenting Clifford and the Queen” (245, 2.1.57-58), and that Rutland was also killed by the ruthless Clifford. The gruesome detail about the napkin “steepèd in the harmless blood / Of sweet young Rutland” (245, 2.1.62-63) is duly passed along. The brothers hear, too, that the heads of the slain father and son have been affixed to the gates of York.

Edward and Richard’s first thoughts are for their father—Rutland is not mentioned until later, during the contentious meeting with Margaret, Clifford and their forces. Edward laments, “Now thou art gone we have no staff, no stay” (245, 2.1.69), and Richard, characteristically violent in his reaction, says, “I cannot weep, for all my body’s moisture / Scarce serves to quench my furnace-burning heart …” (245, 2.1.79-80).

Richard, soon to be created Duke of Gloucester after Edward becomes king, seems driven to take revenge and relive his paternal namesake’s agonizing story. He addresses his dead father, “Richard, I bear thy name, I’ll venge thy death, / Or die renownèd by attempting it” (246, 2.1.87-88). To this, Edward responds that while their father left Richard his name, “His dukedom and his chair with me is left” (246, 2.1.90). But this does not quell the younger brother’s passion, and he retorts that Edward must demonstrate his worth by “gazing ‘gainst the sun”—he must, that is, be willing to replace “chair and dukedom” with “throne and kingdom” (246, 2.1.92-94).

If Edward can’t or won’t do this, Richard insists, he is no son of such a father. Would it be too forward to suggest, even before the fraternal treacheries laid out in the play Richard III, that Richard does not see his eldest brother Edward as being cut from the same regal cloth as Richard Plantagenet, 3^rd Duke of York, or the youngest son who bears his name? It may be that Shakespeare is letting us in on something vital about the future King Richard III’s psyche. After all, even towards the end of 3 Henry VI, Richard makes the astonishing claim, “I have no brother, I am like no brother.” [23]

Much of what Richard says at this point in 3 Henry VI may profitably be read as providing the kernel of the same character’s justification for the treachery he will practice in Richard III against (among others) his brothers Edward and Clarence as well as Edward’s sons, who, we know, will sometime “sleep in Abraham’s bosom.” [24]

Warwick himself is all but over the sorrows of Wakefield, the December 30, 1460 battle loss during which York and Rutland were killed, and now delivers the news of the Yorkist defeat at the second battle of St. Albans, which historically took place on February 7, 1461, five weeks after Wakefield. He describes how the Yorkist soldiers’ weapons, being “like the night-owl’s lazy flight / Or like a lazy thresher with a flail, / Fell gently down as if they struck their friends” (246-47, 2.1.129-31). It is, of course, one of the delights of Shakespeare’s style that we so often come across such deliciously implausible passages to describe military conflicts.

Warwick also informs Edward and Richard that the Duchess of Burgundy has sent their brother George back to England with much-needed reinforcements, [25] and rebukes Richard when that young man dares reproach him for his “retire” (retreat) from the fighting at Second St. Albans in February 1461. The kingmaker’s pride can’t brook such an insinuation, and he retorts, “this strong right hand of mine / Can pluck the diadem from faint Henry’s head / And wring the awful scepter from his fist …” (247, 2.1.151-53).

Margaret and Clifford’s army of some 30,000 will, says Warwick, try to make fast their breach of the agreement that had made York heir to the throne, and in return, the kingmaker is determined to advance York’s eldest son Edward, Earl of March (and with his father’s death, the new Duke of York) not simply to York’s former position as heir of Henry VI, but to take the crown now, in his own right. Still, Margaret is coming up with her “puissant host” to try to make sure that doesn’t happen (248, 2.1.206).

Act 2, Scene 2 (248-52, Margaret, Clifford, and Henry VI exchange views of the action to come, and Henry knights his son, Prince Edward; Warwick and the Yorkist forces now hold a brief parley with the Lancastrian leaders Henry VI, Margaret, Clifford, and Prince Edward; angry rhetoric flies back and forth to no avail, and the Battle of Towton is imminent.)

As Margaret, Clifford, and Henry VI await a parley with the Yorkists, they air their views on how things came to this. Clifford ventures that much trouble has been caused by “too much lenity / And harmful pity” and that all this “must be laid aside” (248, 2.2.209-10). After all, he says, “The smallest worm will turn, being trodden on, / And doves will peck in safeguard of their brood” (249, 2.2.17-18). Even the mildest creature, Clifford is suggesting, will fight back when there’s no other choice, yet somehow, Henry VI has failed to uphold the rights of his young son and heir, Edward.

Henry VI’s response to Warwick is to bring to the fore the weakness of his own claim to the throne: “Clifford,” he says, “tell me, didst thou never hear / that things ill got had ever bad success?” and concludes, “I leave my son my virtuous deeds behind, / And would my father had left me no more” (249, 2.2.45-46, 49-50).

To Henry, the crown just hasn’t been worth the struggle, the agony, the terror. There’s no “jot of pleasure” (249, 2.2.53) in it, says the king, and he ought to know since he has been one since he was born in 1422, nearly four decades ago. We may put this experience up against Richard’s ill-starred advice to York in Act 1, Scene 2, “father, do but think / How sweet a thing it is to wear a crown, / Within whose circuit is Elysium / And all that poets feign of bliss and joy.” [26]

All the same, Henry knights his only son, saying, “Edward Plantagenet, arise a knight, / And learn this lesson: draw thy sword in right” (249, 2.2.61-62). Is the boy really old enough—full as he is of his own and others’ talk of his own “right” to the crown?

During the parley between the Lancastrian leaders and the Yorkist vanguard, angry words fly, but nothing is solved. Edward, 4^th Duke of York hurls his claim at Henry, requiring pointedly, “wilt thou kneel for grace / And set thy diadem upon my head, / Or bide the mortal fortune of the field?” (250, 2.2.81-82). Edward also refers to his claim on the throne, saying, “I was adopted heir by his consent …” (250, 2.2.88), which conveniently ignores that this “adoption” was by no means consensual even though Henry VI himself first proposed it in Parliament, and it has apparently been ratified by now (as of October 25, 1460) as the Act of Accord. [27]

Warwick and Clifford rehearse their mutual hatred next, and Richard and Edward rail at Margaret and her sometime impoverished father René, King of Naples. She comes back at Richard [28] with a taunt about his appearance: he is, she says, “like a foul misshapen stigmatic, / Marked by the Destinies to be avoided, / As venom toads or lizards’ dreadful stings” (251, 2.2.136-38). [29]

In spite of King Henry’s declaration, “I am a king and privileged to speak,” no one seems interested in anything he might have to say (251, 2.2.120). Margaret’s possibly premonitory plea to the Yorkist leader, “Stay, Edward” is met with scorn, as Edward responds, “No, wrangling woman, we’ll no longer stay” (252, 2.2.175-76). The climactic Battle of Towton on March 29, 1461 looms, and for the moment, at least, words have had their allotted time.

Act 2, Scene 3 (252-53, with the battle not going well so far, Warwick retires from the field and encounters the Yorkist brothers Edward, Richard and George; they fear the worst, but say their goodbyes and return to the fight.)

The Battle of Towton rages, and so far the action is favoring the Lancastrian forces assembled by Clifford and Margaret. George sums it up: “Our hap is loss, our hope but sad despair, / Our ranks are broke, and ruin follows us” (252, 2.3.29-30). Richard asks Warwick why he has retired from the field, not reflecting that he himself has done the same thing. Warwick responds with highly motivated and leading questions: “Why stand we like soft-hearted women here, / Wailing our losses whiles the foe doth rage, / And look upon, as if the tragedy / Were played in jest by counterfeiting actors?” (253, 2.3.25-28)

Even though Richard has told him his brother the Marquess of Montague [30] has been killed, Warwick draws sustenance from his own utterance, and quickly resolves to return to the fight. The four men say their farewells in case it comes to that, and off they go, with George speaking for them all, “For yet is hope of life and victory” (253, 2.3.55).

Act 2, Scene 4 (253, Richard and Clifford engage in single combat, but when Warwick tries to join in, Clifford flees; Richard says he will go after Clifford.)

Richard challenges Clifford, with (as the Norton footnote #1 to this incident informs us) his sentence “I have singled thee alone” (253, 2.4.1), referring to a predator picking out a weak member of the herd, and Clifford, sounding like some character from another of Shakespeare’s early gorefests, Titus Andronicus, [31] “This is the hand that stabbed thy father York, / And this the hand that slew thy brother Rutland, / And here’s the heart that triumphs in their death …” (253, 2.4.6-8). So many body parts to mention, so little time!

Warwick soon shows up and tries to join the action, but that sets Clifford to running away, and Richard is not pleased with the cessation of his chivalric contest with the great Lancastrian enemy, saying, “Nay, Warwick, single out some other chase, / For I myself will hunt this wolf to death” (253, 2.4.12-13). It’s interesting that Clifford, first described as a prey animal, has been promoted by Richard to England’s ultimate nemesis animal, a wolf. [32]

Act 2, Scene 5 (254-56, while the battle at Towton rages, Henry VI philosophizes on the sidelines while he beholds the agonies of one man who has accidentally slain his own father in the action, and another who has slain his own son; Henry privately claims that as a king, his grief encompasses and exceeds theirs; Margaret and others urge Henry to go with them to avoid capture by the triumphant Yorkists.)

While war rages all around in Towton in the north of England (March 29, 1461), Henry VI plays no part in the fighting. [33] The commanders on his own Lancastrian side have told him he’s just a distraction, and he has humbly taken their advice. And so he says, “Here on this molehill will I sit me down. / To whom god will, there be the victory” (254, 2.5.14-15). Once seated, he begins to philosophize, admitting that he would as well be dead, if God allows it, and that nothing so appeals to him as the ancient shepherd’s life, much as the way it’s depicted in Theocritus and Vergil’s pastoral poems. [34]

Says Henry, “O God, methinks it were a happy life / To be no better than a homely swain, / To sit upon a hill, as I do now …” (254, 2.5.21-23). But that can never be for one born into royalty as King Henry VI, a relatively young but tired and dejected man who, as he reminds us in this play, was never really not a king. [35] Power brings misery, as he must know: it spurs competition, which soon blossoms into treason, and life becomes a chaos.

As he sits on his little hill, Henry beholds something very like a Sidneyan “speaking picture” [36] of the anguish of war: two men, neither named, express their misery and dejection about what has befallen them. What has happened to them is perhaps the worst thing in the world: one has unwittingly slain his father during the battle, and the other has unwittingly slain his son: parricide and filicide. The father’s plight is most heartrendingly expressed: “Oh, pity, God, this miserable age! / What stratagems, how fell, how butcherly, / Erroneous, mutinous, and unnatural, / This deadly quarrel daily doth beget!” (255, 2.5.88-91)

Henry is sure that he himself suffers the greatest grief of all, as his sorrow encompasses that of all his subjects—the violence that comes with the Wars of the Roses, he implies, is only happening because of him. [37] That makes sense, but so does the filicide father’s newfound pacifism: he addresses his dead son, saying, “I’ll bear thee hence, and let them fight that will, / For I have murdered where I should not kill” (256, 2.5.121-22).

Just then, Prince Edward and Margaret swoop in on Henry’s sad contemplations, urging him to come with them to Berwick on the Scottish border. The day has not gone well for Lancaster’s side: Towton has been a decisive Yorkist victory, and Edward, 4^th Duke of York will be King Edward IV by June 1461.

Act 2, Scene 6 (257-59, the mortally wounded Clifford enters, and the victorious Yorkists Warwick, Edward, Richard, and George exult over his corpse; they will sever his head and post it above the city of York’s gates; before they set out for London, Warwick says he means to gain the French King’s sister, Lady Bona, as Edward’s bride; Edward creates George “Duke of Clarence” and Richard “Duke of Gloucester,” despite Richard’s superstitious preference for the title George has been granted.)

Clifford, ever the creature of the House of Lancaster, enters mortally wounded and still lamenting what he had previously called Henry VI’s “lenity” in allowing the Yorkists to bully him from any position Clifford would consider suitably rigid against such traitors. By the time Edward, Warwick, Richard, George and others arrive, Clifford’s injuries have reduced him to what sounds like agonal status—he is groaning, not speaking. Warwick understands that Clifford “nor sees, nor hears us what we say” (258, 2.6.62). Still, Richard is dubious, so George urges him to poke the dying man verbally, just to see if he knows by what implacable enemies he is surrounded.

At last, several taunts later, Richard is satisfied that Clifford is in fact dead, but dissatisfied that he is unable to buy another two hours of life for the man, just so he can continue insulting him. This is one of those moments that reveals much about what Shakespeare must think men such as Richard—or indeed any of the major Yorkist and Lancastrian players—can reduce themselves to, thanks to the terrible dynastic fury driving the Wars of the Roses.

Warwick’s instructions sound almost mild in comparison to the behavior of Richard and George, at least in this scene. He says simply, “Off with the traitor’s head / And rear it in the place your father’s stands” (258, 2.6.84-85). They’ll soon be on their way to London, where Edward will be crowned England’s new king. From there, Warwick will sail to France and ask King Louis XI of France for the hand in marriage of his sister-in-law Bona of France, the daughter of Louis, Duke of Savoy. [38] In this, he will be successful—or so he thinks. On verra, as the French say: “we shall see.”

We should know by now that such fantasies as the one Warwick expresses for a stable peace between England and France are just that—fantasies. The same is true of Edward’s promise to Warwick, “never will I undertake the thing / Wherein they counsel and consent is wanting” (259, 2.6.100-01). One practical piece of business is to create Richard “Duke of Gloucester” and George “Duke of Clarence.” Richard’s superstitious (but understandable) request to be Duke of Clarence instead of Duke of Gloucester is immediately nixed by Edward. [39]

ACT 3

Act 3, Scene 1 (259-61, a pair of gamekeepers, who consider themselves subjects of the current King Edward IV, not Henry VI, capture the former king.)

As Sinklo and Humfrey, two ordinary hunters, are waiting for some deer to come within range, they become witnesses to a bit of royal history—at least as Shakespeare tells it—unfolding before their eyes and ears. The dispossessed King Henry VI wanders down from Scotland into the north of England, as he tells us, just to “greet mine own land with my wishful sight” (259, 3.1.14). [40] Sinklo soon recognizes the former sovereign, saying “here’s a deer whose skin’s a keeper’s fee” (259, 3.1.22). His idea is simply to lay hands on this ruined piece of royalty, and, no doubt, find himself richly rewarded for his action.

But while they listen, they hear a former king who is by no means devoid of political acumen, even though everyone seems to think him a fool or a simpleton. Henry’s analysis of what’s happening in France is spot on—he says that the “kingmaker” will emerge victorious since “Warwick is a subtle orator / And Louis a prince soon won with moving words” (260, 3.1.33-34). Beneath this surface analysis, Henry has some grasp of what today we call Realpolitik—hard-boiled political reality. The French king will go with the side he thinks is stronger, and that side, Henry surely believes, is Edward IV and his House of York.

With regard to his sometime subjects’ refusal to hold fast in their allegiance to him, though, Henry seems a bit puzzled, or perhaps just a little bemused. As he sees such allegiance, it’s as wispy as a feather, apt, in his figure, to be blown away with each new gust of breath. Still, he is gentle in his observations, and finally says, “Go where you will, the King shall be commanded …” (261, 3.1.91). In truth, the sometime Henry VI is in no position to give commands, so the hunters might as well play king themselves.

Act 3, Scene 2 (261-66, Lady Elizabeth Grey petitions Edward IV for her deceased husband’s estate, and he offers to grant the request if she will sleep with him; when that gambit fails, the king asks Elizabeth to marry him, which upsets Richard and Clarence; word arrives that Henry VI has been captured; in soliloquy, Richard reflects on his options and determines that his only pleasure lies in reaching for the crown, no matter the obstacles.)

At this point, the lovely widow Lady Elizabeth Grey, née Woodville, makes her entrance into English history. She has come to the Royal Palace in London to petition King Edward IV for the estate of her Lancastrian husband, Sir Richard Grey, who died during the Second Battle of St. Albans on February 17, 1461. [41] Strictly, since he was fighting against the Yorkists, his lands were subject to confiscation. While George and Richard observe from the sidelines, cracking jokes like sly schoolboys, their kingly brother tenders an indecent proposal: if the pretty lady will sleep with him, he will grant her suit. Quid pro quo.

Elizabeth is no fool, and her immediate answer is “no.” She understands perfectly that if she answers “yes,” the king will never marry her. He will only ruin her reputation as a respectable woman, and then cast her aside for some other mistress. This rings true since historically, King Edward IV was quite the bon vivant, a playboy king. [42] The lady’s wisdom is apparent from Edward’s own aside during their conversation. Impressed with her modesty, he muses, “All her perfections challenge sovereignty: / One way or other she is for a king, / And she shall be my love, or else my queen” (263, 3.2.86-88).

After this audience with Lady Grey, the future Queen Elizabeth (née Woodville), Edward seems sincerely surprised that his younger brothers are surprised by his conversation with her. Soon, a nobleman messenger arrives with the news that the erstwhile Henry VI has been secured and conveyed to the palace gate as Edward’s prisoner. The new king at once commands that the former king be conducted to the Tower of London for safekeeping.

The end of Scene 2 could easily be subtitled, “tell us what you really think, Richard.” Alone with his thoughts for a good 69 lines, the young Duke of Gloucester shows us who he is. Perhaps Shakespeare has a ways to go before he can render the interiority of a Hamlet, or a Macbeth, or a King Lear, but his character-rendering skills are by no means lacking even in the early 1590s, when 3 Henry VI is thought to have been written, so he gives us a glimpse into the tortured, twisted soul of Richard, Duke of Gloucester, that future hobgoblin of the Tudor chroniclers’ making, Richard III.

Richard’s first thought is apparently that it would be wonderful if his rascal of an older brother, Edward IV, were to indulge his tastes in the ladies until “he were wasted, marrow, bones, and all, / That from his loins no hopeful branch may spring / To cross me from the golden time I look for” (264, 3.2.125-27). Syphilis, as we know, has a way of blighting dynastic hopes, and kings are not exempted from its dread effects.

But even if that charitable wish comes to pass, Richard frets, there’s still “Clarence, Henry, and his son, young Edward …” (264, 3.2.130) and any children they may someday produce, potential heirs all. The truth is, Richard at this point in his life is nowhere near a fair and decent prospect of rising to supreme power. As such, then, he is like a person who “stands upon a promontory / And spies a far-off shore where he would tread, / Wishing his foot were equal with his eye …” (264, 3.2.135-37).

It would seem that any thoughts Richard may harbor for the crown are misplaced. What to do, then—what meaning remains to wring from such a life as his? He reflects, “What other pleasure can the world afford?” It may be rather difficult for us to square this hedonistic version of Richard with the grim power-seeker of Richard III fame, but here he is in 3 Henry VI, contemplating like a proto-Benthamite [43] how he may maximize his pleasure throughout life in the most sustainable way.

Might he, put-case, go his playboy brother Edward’s route? Should he dress to the nines and, as he says, “witch sweet ladies with my words and looks”? (264, 3.2.150) There will come a time when this thought actually occurs to him as a viable option in Richard III—who could blame him, since his wildly implausible “wooing” of the recently widowed Anne Neville goes so well in Richard III [44] — but at present, cold, hard, mirror-gazing reality tells him to put away such ridiculous hopes.

Richard’s self-description reads like a preview of the one he will later provide in Richard III. He says that the goddess of love forsook him even in the womb, bribing mother nature, as he puts it, “To shrink mine arm up like a withered shrub, / to make an envious mountain on my back, / Where sits deformity to mock my body …” (265, 3.2.156-58), and so forth. Despite all his privileges when growing up, Richard’s imagination and vocabulary would no doubt have been amply stocked with the unenlightened views of disability held by many fellow medievals.

Well, then, if a life of sexual adventure is not for the likes of Richard of Gloucester, what should he do? His answer is chilling and precise: “I’ll make my heaven to dream upon the crown / And, whiles I live, t’account this world but hell / Until my misshaped trunk that bears this head / Be round impalèd with a glorious crown” (265, 3.2.168-71). This is the only pleasure—if we can label as “pleasure” the end result of a process he associates with “Torment” (265, 3.2.179)—that’s open to him, and he will pursue it, come what may.

Richard’s summing-up of his actorly resources wherewith to accomplish this unlikely triumph is magnificent, and every bit as good as any of his rhetoric in Richard III: “Why, I can smile and murder whiles I smile, / And cry ‘Content!’ to that which grieves my heart, / And wet my cheeks with artificial tears, / And frame my face to all occasions” (265, 3.2.182-85). This, and more. Whatever this discursive portrait of the man’s interiority, his inner self, may lack in terms of the later poetic compressions, silences, gestures, and other means by which the mature Shakespeare makes the inside of a character available to us, it supplies with its sheer discursive brilliance.

Bravo! If in this portrait in 3 Henry VI Richard is truly thinking things through, so that we are treated to the motions of a wicked mind in motion, it makes sense to say that in Richard III, what we are enjoying is more like a studied performance in the theater of Richard’s cruelty. Either way, we are in no doubt about what Gloucester’s fellow characters are up against. Most of them will never see the axe or knife or full-up cask of malmsey wine coming.

Act 3, Scene 3 (266-71, Queen Margaret is making headway towards gaining France’s King Louis XI’s support, but Warwick shows up and proposes a match between Edward IV and Lady Bona of Savoy; news arrives that Edward IV has married Elizabeth Grey, so Louis XI decides to back Margaret and her son; Warwick angrily switches his allegiance to the Lancastrian side; the “kingmaker” will lead French troops against Edward IV, and Margaret will arrive in England later with another substantial French army.)

Enough of Richard’s musings, it’s time for Queen Margaret and the 16^th Earl of Warwick to make their pitches regarding, respectively, support and marriage. Louis fancies himself fair-minded, and professes himself ready to hear what’s on tap. Margaret goes first, and her desire is simple. Her poor simple husband Henry VI has “become a banished man / And forced to live in Scotland a forlorn …” while the “proud ambitious Edward, Duke of York, / Usurps the regal title and the seat / Of England’s true-anointed lawful king” (266, 3.3.25-28). Louis sounds almost ready to grant Margaret and her princely son the relief they seek.

Next up in this medieval version of “Shark Tank” is the Earl of Warwick, Ralph Neville. His proposal is also fairly simple: Louis XI should agree to give his sister, Lady Bona of Savoy, in marriage to England’s shining, handsome new king, Edward IV. This would, suggests Warwick, achieve the “league of amity” (267, 3.3.53) that would do so much good for France and England in the wake of the hell that was the Hundred Years’ War. [45]

While Queen Margaret argues that allying himself with a usurper-king such as Edward IV would be a terrible and destabilizing idea, this is hardly a compelling case since, after all, the Lancastrian “Bolingbroke” (Henry IV) undeniably usurped the crown from King Richard II in 1399. Just as Henry VI told us a few scenes ago, Realpolitik will take precedence over moral sententiae, even when uttered by a queen. To adapt a line from JFK, Louis XI is more interested in “what England can do for him,” not what he can do for England.

So Warwick, whom Margaret calls “Proud setter-up and puller-down of kings” (269, 3.3.157), is set to win the day, and it looks as if he has done so when the French king, having decorously allowed Bona of Savoy to weigh in with her opinion, declares, “our sister shall be Edward’s” (269, 3.3.134). That is, it all looks good until the letters—several of them—arrive.

One set of letters is for Warwick from Montague, while another set is from Edward IV to Louis XI, and yet a third is for Margaret. She is happy, but Warwick and Louis are anything but. The letters break the news that the English king has married Elizabeth Grey, née Woodville, making her his queen consort. So much for Warwick’s stratagem, and for Louis XI’s willingness to credit it. The earl, ever the quick-change artist, immediately makes nice with Margaret, and she, just as pliable, declares, “I forgive and quite forget old faults / And joy that thou becom’st King Henry’s friend” (270, 3.3.200-01). As for Louis, he’s a good Lancastrian now, too.

Warwick, once he’s alone, tells us that for him, the matter comes down to wounded pride. As he asks, “Had he none else to make a stale but me?” It would appear so, and therefore, says Warwick, he, who raised Edward to his exalted position will be “chief to bring him down again” (271, 3.3.260, 263). This reduction of historical process to the feelings of a single high-status individual or “power player” may come across as cartoonish, but it makes sense in dramatic terms, which cannot easily accommodate months and months of complicated negotiations such as those that attended the king of England’s marriage, along with other political and dynastic complications. [46]

Finally, Warwick can’t help but admit to himself and us in soliloquy that none of what he’s doing is about reasserting Henry VI’s alleged rights as king of England. As he says, “Not that I pity Henry’s misery, / But seek revenge on Edward’s mockery” (271, 3.3.264-65). It’s obvious that the earl doesn’t care a rat’s scrawny bottom for Henry or his whole Lancastrian line. If he’s for anything, it’s his own Neville faction.

ACT 4

Act 4, Scene 1 (271-74, Edward IV finds out that Warwick has changed sides and orders that troops be raised to defend against the expected incursions; Clarence signs on with Warwick in exchange for his marriage to the powerful earl’s daughter Isabel Neville.)

George and Richard criticize their brother the king’s marriage to the upstart Elizabeth Grey, née Woodville, and Edward is not pleased with their viewpoint, which is basically that the match is demeaning and politically disadvantageous. Edward’s attitude is easily stated, and he does so at the conversation’s outset: “I am Edward, / Your King and Warwick’s, and must have my will” (272, 4.1.15-16). A little later, he repeats the point with slight variation: “It was my will and grant, / And for this once my will shall stand for law” (272, 4.1.49-50).

With due respect to his majesty, the view as stated is not convincing. We all know the problem with that kind of formulation: a king’s absolutist gestures are never made “just this once,” and there is no such thing as a “dictator on day one”—at least not one who isn’t also a dictator on every other day he is in power. Like so many absolutists (and no doubt with some variation on the old argument about “the king’s two bodies”), [47] Edward makes the mistake of separating the crown’s symbolic power too neatly from his personal management or “wielding” of it. By itself, a golden crown does not have the force he imagines it does.

Clarence, upon hearing that Warwick’s daughter Anne Neville has married Margaret’s young son the Prince of Wales, decides that he, too, will defect to Warwick and marry another of his daughters. This would logically make it possible for Warwick to set him on the throne, rather than Henry VI, in spite of any words spoken with Margaret. Clarence and Warwick would have been in communication for some time regarding their options.

Richard, for his part, tells us in soliloquy that he will stay with Edward IV, but only for “the crown” (274, 4.1.124). In other words, he has no chance of ever becoming king if he shifts to Henry VI’s side, but if he stays with King Edward, there’s hope for him.

The Greek poet Pindar has a line that might please that rider of chaos, Richard: “In one perfectly apportioned instant, the winds may shift in many directions.” [48]

Act 4, Scene 2 (274-75, Warwick and Clarence get ready to pounce on King Edward IV, who is waiting for his opponents’ attack in an almost unguarded spot.)

In this stripped-to-the-bone scene, it almost looks as if Edward IV was captured merely because he was being lazy, but historically, what’s described here is the aftermath of the Earl of Warwick’s victory at the Battle of Edgcote Moor on July 24, 1469. Warwick’s actions around this time should probably be referred to as an attempted coup, which, if it had been fully successful, would have allowed the earl to rule through Edward IV. The latter may have been slow to recognize this, which failure then led to his own capture by Warwick’s brother George Neville, Archbishop of York.

The earl welcomes “sweet Clarence” (275, 4.2.12) to the rebellion, at least verbally casting aside the distrust he still can’t help mentioning might attend the defection of such a player. By the 1470 phase of his attempts, Warwick, having failed to seize full power in his own right, will plot to brush Edward aside and instead put Clarence himself on the throne.

With the aid of a Greek allusion about Ulysses, Diomedes, and the horses of Rhesus’s “Thracian steeds” (see 275, 4.2.19-21), Warwick paints a fine picture of how easy it will be to capture Edward: “So we, well covered with the night’s black mantle, / At unawares may beat down Edward’s guard / And seize himself” (275, 4.2.22-24).

Act 4, Scene 3 (275-77, watchmen guarding Edward IV express their worries for the king’s safety; Warwick and Clarence’s forces capture King Edward and strip him of his crown, sending him as a prisoner to Warwick’s brother the Archbishop of York; next, they prepare to march into London and liberate King Henry VI.)

The watchmen guarding King Edward IV talk among one another, and their consensus is that his majesty is not safe with such a small watch set over him. Right after this conversation, Warwick and his party attack Edward’s camp, and the watchmen flee, leaving a surprised Edward to be taken into custody. Warwick takes the crown from Edward, and the dispossessed king waxes philosophical, saying, “Though Fortune’s malice overthrow my state, / My mind exceeds the compass of her wheel” (276, 4.3.46-47). That’s quite a statement for any mortal, even a king or queen. But he also says a little later, “What fates impose, that men must needs abide; / It boots not to resist both wind and tide” (277, 4.3.58-59).

All the same, perhaps the historical Edward knows something we don’t: his captivity won’t last. By September 10, 1469, Warwick, unable to govern in his own right, will find it necessary to release the king, and that king will begin to govern on his own, at least until Warwick’s last invasion of England in September 1470, which would place Henry VI back on the throne for several months until the Yorkist victories at the Battle of Barnet in April 1471 and the Battle of Tewkesbury in May 1471. In any case, by October 1469, Edward IV was making his way to London “in full state, with his lords in attendance.” [49]

It seems that we should date the end of Scene 3 as condensing the periods wherein Edward IV was captured (July 1469) and then Warwick and Clarence went into exile in France from March 1470 to their return to England in September 1470. Warwick tells Oxford that the plan now is “To free King Henry from imprisonment / And see him seated in the regal throne” (277, 4.3.63-64). Henry was indeed reinstalled as king on October 3, 1470.

Act 4, Scene 4 (277, Edward’s Queen, Elizabeth Grey/Woodville, frightened upon learning that her husband has been captured, seeks sanctuary to protect herself and her unborn child from the cruelty of the king’s opponents.)

Queen Elizabeth Grey, née Woodville, pregnant with King Edward’s child, tells Lord Rivers that the king has been captured by Warwick’s brother the [Arch]bishop of York. (The king was sent initially to Warwick Castle, and then transferred to Middleham Castle.) The Queen’s plan, she says, is to remove herself to safety: “I’ll hence forthwith unto the sanctuary / To save at least the heir of Edward’s right” (277, 4.4.31-32). [50]

Elizabeth’s entry into Westminster Abbey for sanctuary took place on October 1, 1470. Readers of Richard III will recall the moving Folio scene in which Elizabeth again seeks sanctuary, though this time from Richard, Duke of Gloucester, in April 1483. On that occasion in Shakespeare’s play, she will say her two young boys, “Pitty, you ancient Stones, those tender Babes, / Whom Enuie hath immur’d within your Walls, / Rough Cradle for such little prettie ones …” (Folger 1623 Folio, Act 4, Scene 1). [51]

Act 4, Scene 5 (278, Richard, Duke of Gloucester rescues King Edward IV from the grounds of Middleham Castle while he is out hunting in his usual location; Edward and his party prepare to sail to Flanders.)

The playwright apparently borrows from Holinshed’s Chronicles the narrative of Edward’s supposed escape from the surroundings of Middleham Castle in Yorkshire. [52] Richard gives his compatriots, including a huntsman, the game plan: “you know our King, my brother, / Is prisoner to the Bishop here, at whose hands / He hath good usage and great liberty …” (278, 4.5.4-6). He has such freedom, Richard continues, that it will be no trouble making away with him so long as he has, as he’s been instructed, placed himself in the right place at the right time. It all comes off as planned, and Edward is again at large.

Both Holinshed’s account and the playwright’s are highly dramatized since Edward didn’t really “escape” so much as get set free. There was a Lancastrian rebellion going on in the north of England, and Warwick needed Edward’s help to suppress it. He didn’t have the heft needed to keep order without the king’s assistance.

Act 4, Scene 6 (278-80, Warwick frees King Henry from the Tower of London, where he has been imprisoned; Henry, wishing to lead a private life, asks Warwick and Clarence to take the reins of government; Henry VI, informed that Henry Tudor is present, utters a prophecy about the young man’s importance to the nation; Oxford and Somerset arrange to send Henry Tudor to Brittany to keep him safe from the exiled Edward IV.)

When Warwick and Clarence and their party come to rescue King Henry from the Tower, Henry tells them in all humility, “I make you both Protectors of this land, / While I myself will lead a private life / And in devotion spend my latter days …” (279, 4.6.41-43). Aside from the use of the official term “Protector,” the playwright’s authority for this portrait appears to be Holinshed’s account in the Chronicles. The historical date would be October 3, 1470.

Henry Tudor (the future Henry VII) is present at the beginning of King Henry’s “readeption” (the formal term for Henry’s reassumption of his title from October 3, 1470-April 11, 1471, at which latter date Edward IV marched into London unopposed and secured his possession of the city). Henry Beaufort, 3^rd Earl of Somerset, is shepherding a young lad, and the king wants to know who he is. The answer is, “My liege, it is young Henry, Earl of Richmond” (280, 4.6.67). His is a fateful presence since soon, as we know, no one but him will be left to represent the Lancastrian line during the malign reign of Richard III in just a dozen years or so.

Mystical Henry VI issues a prophecy pertaining to Henry Tudor, saying, “Make much of him, my lords, for this is he / Must help you more than you are hurt by me” (280, 4.6.75-76). When all but Somerset, Oxford, and Richmond have departed, Somerset sets forth the plan for Richmond: “Forthwith we’ll send him hence to Bretagne / Till storms be past of civil enmity” (280, 4.6.97-98). They agree that he must be kept out of Edward’s clutches.

Act 4, Scene 7 (281-82, Edward IV has returned from exile in Flanders with an army, and enters the city of York; he protests that all he wants is to regain his dukedom, but as soon as he enters York, he gives in to his supporters’ pleas to assert his right to be king.)

On March 14, 1471, Edward IV arrives at East Yorkshire’s Ravenspur in hopes of regaining the English throne. The Mayor of York is at first reluctant to unbar the gates and let Edward and his troops in, but Edward uses his famous charm and talks his way in, saying, “But, master Mayor, if Henry be your King / Yet Edward, at the least, is Duke of York” (281, 4.7.20-21). It’s hard to imagine anyone being fooled by such a pitch; but then, the same argument worked well enough seven decades ago to earn Henry Bolingbroke a lot of Percy lords and other supporters, who subsequently made him king.

Once the former sovereign is admitted into York, Sir John Montgomery and other supporters have unsurprisingly little trouble convincing “Duke” Edward that “King Edward IV” is much the better title for him. “Then be it as you will,” says Edward, “for ‘tis my right, / And Henry but usurps the diadem” (282, 4.7.65-66). As Michael Corleone says in The Godfather, Part 3, “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!” [53]

Act 4, Scene 8 (283, Warwick reports that Edward has returned from the Low Countries and is now on his way to London with an army; Warwick says he’ll raise troops in Warwickshire, Clarence will raise soldiers in Suffolk, Norfolk and Kent, and Montague and Oxford will do the same elsewhere; King Henry says goodbye to Warwick and the others, who then tells his lords they’ll all meet at Coventry.)

Warwick informs his lords that Edward has come back from the Low Countries, and is now marching towards London, picking up support as he goes. The kingmaker gives his commands as to how his side will proceed, with each of the commanders present being ordered to go and raise as many troops as they can. As for himself, Warwick says, “In Warwickshire I have true-hearted-friends, / Not mutinous in peace, yet bold in war” (283, 4.8.9-10). They will, he promises, find Edward in London.

King Henry says a gracious farewell to each man, even calling Warwick “my Hector, and my Troy’s true hope” (283, 4.8.25), and the powerful earl says they’ll all meet at Coventry. As the Norton editor points out, English lore sometimes casts England as a “second Troy.” [54] That association seems fraught just now, as it was Brutus, not Hector, who left the burning city of Troy to found Britain. But no doubt Henry just means to invoke Warwick as a valiant warrior, not tell him he’s about to die for the Lancastrian cause.

Act 4, Scene 9 (283-84, King Henry, staying at the Bishop of London’s Palace while Warwick and his Lancastrian officers rustle up more soldiers, is captured one last time by King Edward IV; Edward marches towards Coventry to do battle with Warwick’s forces.)

King Henry guilelessly asks Exeter how his subjects could support Edward instead of him when, as he says, “My pity hath been balm to heal their wounds …” (283, 4.9.9). As the saintly king puts the case, “when the lion fawns upon the lamb, / The lamb will never cease to follow him” (284, 4.9.17-18). The trouble is, Henry’s subjects—particularly the higher-status ones, but not only them—are not lambs, they’re human beings. “We the sheeple,” as the comic description goes today, are capable of all sorts of ingratitude and even viciousness.

Henry is not among those English sovereigns who are “Machiavellians before Machiavelli.” Consider the famous advice from Chapter 17 of The Prince: “it is much safer to be feared than loved, when, of the two, either must be dispensed with.” Machiavelli speaks to what really motivates people’s actions when he writes, “men have less scruple in offending one who is beloved than one who is feared, for love is preserved by the link of obligation which, owing to the baseness of men, is broken at every opportunity for their advantage; but fear preserves you by a dread of punishment which never fails.” [55] Henry, though surrounded by aristocratic brutes, does not wish to think of them as base.

Enter soon-to-be (again) Edward IV, who, after some pretty words about “founts” and “small brooks” and suchlike things, is about as subtle as Edmund in King Lear when it comes time to have a hapless old king and his beloved daughter dragged off to prison: Edward’s language is, “Hence with him to the tower. Let him not speak” (284, 4.9.25). The date should be April 11, 1471—just three days before the Battle of Barnet on April 14, and a little over three weeks before the decisive Yorkist victory at Tewkesbury on May 4.

ACT 5

Act 5, Scene 1 (284-87, Warwick and his forces wait near Coventry’s walls for Clarence to arrive with his troops as other pro-Lancastrian forces arrive; King Edward shows up with his forces, and a brief parley takes place; when Clarence finally arrives, he at once betrays Warwick and rejoins Edward and his Yorkist cause; Warwick and his men will march out from Coventry to fight against Edward’s armies at Barnet. )

Outside the walls of the West Midlands city of Coventry, Warwick waits with his forces for Clarence to add his numbers to the Lancastrian army, but so far he has not arrived. Instead, Edward’s forces arrive at Coventry, and a parley takes place. Edward and Richard taunt Warwick with the news that they have already taken King Henry prisoner, but the earl is in no mood to capitulate.

Finally, Clarence arrives, but “George,” plucking a red rose from his hat, shocks Warwick with his words. Tossing the rose at the earl, he declares brazenly, “I will not ruinate my father’s house, / Who gave his blood to lime the stones together, / And set up Lancaster” (286, 5.1.83-85). Shakespeare represents this decision as a sudden change of heart, but in historical terms, it was more of a drawn-out process whereby Clarence was led (for reasons of self-interest, it almost goes without saying) to betray the “kingmaker” who betrayed his brother Edward. [56]

The only thing for Warwick and his forces to do now is march towards Barnet and offer battle to Edward’s armies. The date of the Battle of Barnet will be April 14, 1471.

Act 5, Scene 2 (287-88, the Battle of Barnet takes place, and King Edward brings the gravely wounded Warwick to an unspecified spot of ground, leaving him to die; Lancastrian officers find Warwick, but after a few last exchanges, he dies, and the Lancastrians prepare to join forces with Margaret and her French troops.)

Edward brings in the mortally wounded Warwick, and addresses the also gravely wounded Montague, who may be nearby (that’s Warwick’s brother John Neville, Marquess of Montague, who was killed before his brother at Barnet), “I seek for thee / that Warwick’s bones may keep thine company” (3-4). [57]

Warwick, this violent man we have come to think of as almost a political automaton, relentlessly pursuing his special power to make and unmake men even greater than he, turns penetratingly philosophical at the point of death, saying, “These eyes, that now are dimmed with death’s black veil, / Have been as piercing as the midday sun / To search the secret treasons of the world” (287, 5.2.16-17). He laments all the material delights—the parks, the walks, the fine manors, and so forth—that he must now leave behind forever. Most of all, however, he will miss the power that he wielded: “For who lived king but I could dig his grave? (287, 5.2.21)

Somerset arrives at the scene and tells Warwick that his brother Montague is in fact dead, having uttered with his last breath, “Oh, farewell, Warwick” (288, 5.2.47). With that, Warwick dies, too. [58]

Act 5, Scene 3 (288-89, King Edward and his brothers Richard and Clarence exult after their victory at Barnet; now it’s time for them to march to Tewkesbury and confront Margaret’s numerous forces there.)

Edward is in high spirits as he enters triumphantly with his commanders: “Thus far our fortune keeps an upward course / And we are graced with wreaths of victory …” (288, 5.3.), he says, but still there’s a dark cloud on the horizon: Margaret is coming with an army of Frenchmen reputed to be 30,000 strong. Edward has learned that they are headed for Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire. That is where Edward and his men, victorious at Barnet, will go, hoping to give battle before Margaret’s forces are fully prepared to fight.

Act 5, Scene 4 (289-90, in spite of Lancastrian losses, Queen Margaret rallies her men with a fine speech drawn from a sailing metaphor; King Edward arrives, speaks briefly to his forces, and the Battle of Tewkesbury impends.)

Queen Margaret freely references her side’s losses thus far—the loss at Barnet is behind the Lancastrians, and she wields a sailing metaphor that Shakespeare’s navy-minded Elizabethan audiences must have found stirring: “What though the mast be now blown overboard, / The cable broke, the holding-anchor lost, / And half our sailors swallowed in the flood?” (289, 5.4.3-5) The ship’s pilot, she says, is still alive—Henry lives, though he is not present. She asks her men, “And, though unskillful, why not Ned and I / For once allowed the skillful pilot’s charge?” (289, 5.4.19-20)

Why not, that is, try a royal warrior-woman as pilot, along with her young son, the Prince of Wales? This, and more, all of it well received by her commanders and the troops. The last words Margaret has for her troops before battle is the admission that King Henry has been captured, and almost everything he has done as king negated. But as she says, with Edward IV entering the scene, “yonder is the wolf that makes this spoil” (291, 5.4.80), so they all know what to do.

Edward speaks briefly to his men, telling them that Margaret’s forces are a “thorny wood” that “Must by the roots be hewn up yet ere night” (290, 5.4.67, 69).

Act 5, Scene 5 (290-92, Queen Margaret is led in as a prisoner; Oxford and Somerset are led away to execution; Prince Edward is brought in, and spurns the king’s offer to hear his apology; Edward, Richard, and Clarence each stab the prince to death; Margaret begs for death, but the king prevents Richard from obliging her; Richard heads for the Tower of London, where Henry is kept, and Margaret is led away.)

The captured Earl of Oxford and Duke of Somerset are led away to their deaths, and Queen Margaret spars with King Edward and Richard as she is forced to watch the Prince baited and stabbed to death by these vicious adults. Probably sensing that his life is done, Prince Edward baits the king, ordering him, “Speak like a subject, proud ambitious York” (291, 5.5.17). This elicits approval from Margaret, who says, “Ah, that thy father had been so resolved!” (291, 5.5.22)

Richard, ever hateful towards the sometime Queen (not to mention frankly misogynistic), mocks her with “that you might still have worn the petticoat / And ne’er have stol’n the breech from Lancaster” (291, 5.5.23-24). Prince Edward’s comparison of Richard’s taunt to an Aesop’s fable proves fatal to the young man since, hearing this mockery and a bit more afterwards, King Edward, Richard, and Clarence stab him in turn. Margaret begs for death, and Richard is set to oblige her, but Edward restrains him, the better to torment her with the death of her beloved son and last dynastic hope.

Richard recovers quickly since he’s in a hurry to make his way to the Tower of London, exclaiming “Tower. The Tower!” (292, 5.5.50) It isn’t difficult to guess what he has in mind to do when he gets there. Almost comically, it’s brother George, or Clarence, who figures out what the errand is. King Edward seems to have no clue—he’s more focused on the fact that his queen, Elizabeth Woodville, is due to have his child, and he’s hoping for a son.

Act 5, Scene 6 (293-95, Richard converses with Henry, who speaks prophecies and insults the duke; an angry Richard cuts Henry’s diatribe off with his knife, and, with King Henry VI and his son Prince Edward dead, tells us how he plans to gain the crown: brother Clarence will soon join these now-eliminated rivals in death.)

Richard dismisses the lieutenant of the Tower, and makes some tense conversation (if we can call it that) with the imprisoned King Henry, who compares Richard to a hungry wolf and then, framing what’s to come in theatrical terms, asks, “What scene of death hath Roscius now to act?” (293, 5.6.10) The former king has heard about Prince Edward’s death already, and speaks of him as a little bird who “was limed, was caught and killed” (293, 5.6.17). Richard compares the dead prince to Icarus in the Greek legend, and Henry draws out the figure.

Henry soon loses patience bandying learned words with the man he knows murdered his son and has now come to kill him, too. He utters a prophecy of doom for thousands who will regret that the ill prodigy, Richard, survived his own childhood. Henry says that when the duke was born, “The night-crow cried, aboding luckless time; / Dogs howled and hideous tempest shook down trees; / The raven rooked her on the chimney’s top …” and so forth (294, 5.6.45-47).

Richard can take no more of it. He seems especially rattled by Henry’s mention of the popular legend that he was born with teeth, [59] and stabs Henry VI to death, saying, “For this amongst the rest was I ordained” (294, 5.6.68). There’s a priestly sound to that pronouncement, as if Richard feels he has been “ordained” from birth to slay this Lancastrian king, this “Henry VI,” in whose service so much blood of York has been shed.

With Henry dead, Richard stabs him a second time to make sure of him, and utters a chilling speech about his own sense of who he really is. The legend about being born with teeth, he admits, is true. Reflecting on his strange and misshapen physicality, he says, “since the heavens have shaped my body so, / Let hell make crooked my mind to answer it” (294, 5.6.78-79).

Most startling, however, is Richard’s sense of isolation and emotional sterility even in the midst of a triumphant royal family. He says, “I have no brother, I am like no brother; / And this word ‘love,’ which greybeards call divine, / Be resident in men like one another / and not in me. I am myself alone” (294, 5.6.80-83). Shakespeare’s Richard does not consider Edward or Clarence his brothers in anything but a formal sense that sparks no human warmth in him—he certainly does not love them or indeed anyone but himself; if, that is, he does not loathe himself, too.

Richard is already thinking through the villainies he will commit in Shakespeare’s Richard III. In the first act of that play, he will do exactly what he sketches now: falsely implicate Clarence in yet another plot against King Edward, get him condemned for it, “and then the rest” (294, 5.6.90). At present, let others enjoy their mindless celebrations—Richard, who has all the marks of a true psychopath, will enjoy his “triumph” (295, 5.6.93) over Henry’s violent death.

Act 5, Scene 7 (295-96, King Edward celebrates, making Richard and Clarence kiss his newborn son, the future Edward V; Richard makes a show of such good spirits, but tells us in soliloquy that his intentions are anything but avuncular towards the boy.)

It’s springtime for Edward IV—spring of 1471, to be precise, for April of that year marks the beginning of the king’s second reign, which will last until his death on April 9, 1483. The king ticks off the list of famous Lancastrians and Nevilles over whom he has triumphed—“Three Dukes of Somerset …,” a pair of Cliffords and Northumberlands, and Warwick and his brother Montague—all come in for honorable mentions (295, 5.7.5-10). If there is anything unseemly in listing such men’s deaths in this way, Edward remains unaware of the fault.

He remains unaware, too, of the serpent-like Richard’s true intentions among his royal “happy family.” Like Clarence, he obeys his elder brother’s polite command to kiss his beautiful wife Elizabeth and their darling infant son, Edward, who represents the Yorkists’ hoped-for glorious future. [60] Edward, evincing his usual obliviousness to the psychopathy lodged at the heart of his own family, says to Clarence and Richard, “love my lovely queen, / And kiss your princely nephew, brothers both” (295, 5.7.26-27). Richard’s wicked asides leave no doubt about his plans going forwards. If Edward wants to play Joseph beaming over the little Christ child, brother Richard will, without hesitation, adopt the role of Judas.

Edward is not troubled by the defeated ex-Queen Margaret’s being ransomed from imprisonment in England to her homeland, France. [61] He proposes to “spend the time / With stately triumphs, mirthful comic shows, / Such as befits the pleasure of the court” (296, 5.7.42-44). Enjoy your pleasures while you may, illustrious Edward—the fate of the House of York will be nothing to celebrate when Shakespeare’s twisted Richard III deceives and murders his way to his own vision of personal glory.

3 Henry VI is a difficult play to take in since it spans mainly from the Battles of Northampton and Wakefield in 1460 to King Edward’s final reassumption of the throne in the spring of 1471—an intense period during the Wars of the Roses that shaped much of English history. To get a sufficient amount of it in, Shakespeare, along with his probable co-author Marlowe, plays his usual skillful tricks on objective history—not that he or we could ever arrive at that, to be sure—telescoping, conflation, or rearrangement of times and events, and changing the age of characters, if doing so will suit a theme or action.

But for all the biases, distortions, inventions, and other features that might be regarded as flaws by history purists—Percy Shelley’s good friend Thomas Love Peacock wrote that the Elizabethans bothered with time and place mainly because dramatic propriety wouldn’t allow them to dismiss such stuff altogether [62] —Shakespeare, as always in his history plays, gets something fundamentally right about English history’s pageant of colorful, often ethically challenged royal and otherwise aristocratic or noteworthy characters. In these plays, he represents humanity under the extreme pressure of dynastic maneuvering, clan-based savagery, and symbolically supercharged expectations and responsibilities.

Perhaps above all, Shakespeare and his likely collaborators make history so fascinating a bedfellow of intense personality that we can’t help but search for the true dynamics and facts of history itself—or at least, to use an updated, less essentialist historical lexicon, we can’t help but search for the most plausible and productive narratival and other discursive frameworks for understanding the past and, with it, the present it has made.

Was Richard Plantagenet, 3^rd Duke of York as complicated and ambitious, Warwick as prideful and domineering, Margaret as fierce and resentful, Henry VI as saintly and prophetic, or Richard, Duke of Gloucester as cunning and evil as Shakespeare makes them appear? We don’t know, and can’t know—but we feel bound to search deeper to find out who they were, what they did, and what their contemporaries thought about them. The task is impossible if we treat it in an unsophisticatedly objectivist manner, but the search itself is always constructive, very often fascinating, and, in the end, altogether necessary.

Edition. Greenblatt, Stephen et al., editors. The Norton Shakespeare: Histories + Digital Edition. 3rd ed. W. W. Norton, 2016. ISBN-13: 978-0-393-93859-3.

Document Timestamp: 2/18/2026 5:36 PM

ENDNOTES

*To return to exact part of the text referenced by the endnotes below, left-click on the endnote’s numbered link. By contrast, the blue scroll-up button at the bottom right of the page returns to the top of the document.

[1] Geoffrey Bullough says the battles at St. Albans (May 22, 1455) and Northampton (July 10, 1460) are combined. See his Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare. Vol. III. Earlier English History Plays: Henry VI, Richard III, Richard II. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul; New York: Columbia UP, 1960. 72.

[2] As for the several Lancastrian lords killed or wounded at St. Albans: these were Henry Percy, 2^nd Earl of Northumberland (1392-1455, killed); Thomas Clifford, 8^th Baron de Clifford (1414-55, killed); Lord Stafford aka Humphrey Earl Stafford (1425-58, badly wounded), son to 1^st Duke of Buckingham; and Edmund Beaufort, the 2nd Duke of Somerset (1406-55).

[3] Shakespeare almost never clarifies these abrupt temporal transitions in his history plays, while he sometimes chooses to dwell on transitions that may span several years as if only a moment had gone by. An example of this treatment occurs in Pericles, Prince of Tyre, wherein the ghost of the medieval poet John Gower tells us he has sped time along to bring us to the next episodes.

[4] A good introduction to this powerful earl, Richard Neville (1428-1471), whose daughter Anne would one day become Richard III’s queen, is available at “Warwick the Kingmaker.” Historic-UK.com. Accessed 1/5/2026.

[5] Hall’s Chronicles and Holinshed’s Chronicles both affirm that Parliament was in session. See Boswell-Stone, Walter G. Shakespeare’s Holinshed: The Chronicle and the Historical Plays Compared. Wentworth Press, 2019 [repr. of London: Chatto & Windus 1907 ed.]. ISBN-13: 978-0530892863. 291-92.

[6] See “Holy of Holies.” Britannica.com. Accessed 1/5/2026.

[7] This level of doubt is surprising coming from the Duke of Exeter (i.e., Henry Holland, 3^rd Duke of Exeter, 1430-75), a strong Lancastrian supporter.

[8] Henry VI’s part was, historically, accompanied by negotiations and political considerations on the Parliament’s part. It was not as sudden or solitary a decision by York as it seems to be in Shakespeare’s play. See Ross, Charles. Edward IV. Berkeley: U of California Press, 1974. ISBN-10: 0520027817.

[9] On the October 31, 1460 “Act of Accord,” see “The brief triumph of Richard, duke of York ….” Historyofparliament.com. See also the text of the Accord. Wikisource.org. Accessed 1/5/2026.

[10] See “Battle of Northampton.” Battlefieldstrust.com. Accessed 1/5/2026.

[11] Edward of Westminster, Prince of Wales (1453-71). This young son of Henry VI and Margaret of Anjou was killed at the Battle of Tewkesbury in May 1471, ending his parents’ hopes for dynastic succession.

[12] Henry IV can speak for them all when he says, “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.” Shakespeare, William. The Second Part of Henry the Fourth, Continuing to His Death, and Coronation of Henry the Fifth. Quarto. In The Norton Shakespeare: Histories, 3rd ed. 710-78. See 740, 3.1.31.

[13] Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Macbeth. In The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies, 3rd ed. 917-69. See 926, 1.5.63-64.

[14] John Clifford, 9^th Baron Clifford (1435-61).

[15] On the mythical bird, see “Phoenix.” Theoi.com. Accessed 1/5/2026.

[16] In truth, the Christian chivalric code is in part a decorous cover for the ruthlessness and primal violence that have marred human history. It may restrain or temper violent impulses, but it also depends on them for its continued relevance. See, for example, Kathryn Mogk Wagner, “Constructing Chivalry.” Genealogiesofmodernity.org. Accessed 1/5/2026.

[17] See The Gospel According to St. Matthew, Chs. 26-27. Biblegateway.com. Accessed 1/5/2026.

[18] René (1409-80), King of Naples from 1435-42, at which point he was deposed. He was also Duke of Anjou and Count of Provence from 1434-80. René was Margaret of Anjou’s father by Isabella, Duchess of Lorraine (1400-53).

[19] This famous “tiger’s heart” passage was used by Robert Greene against the “upstart” Shakespeare, who dared to write excellent plays without the university education Greene and his friends enjoyed: “O tiger’s heart wrapped in a player’s hide …” wrote Greene sneeringly. See Greene’s Groatsworth of Wit, Bought with a Million of Repentance, 1592. HathiTrust.org. Accessed 1/5/2026.

[20] Recollecting how Regan and Cornwall mock the Earl of Gloucester before and as they blind him should suffice. When Regan’s husband Cornwall asks Gloucester why he traveled to Dover to find the king, the earl says, “Because I would not see thy cruel nails / Pluck out his poor old eyes, nor thy fierce sister / In his anointed flesh stick boarish fangs” (811-12, 3.7.56-58). This is all the prompting Cornwall needs—he plucks out one of Gloucester’s eyes, and then Regan goads him into doing the same with the other, screaming, “Out, vile jelly!” (812, 3.7.83)

Observing the many correspondences between various things and levels of things was an Elizabethan habit and part of their overall worldview, so it isn’t surprising that such wicked literalism should be a feature of the darker sort of humor: what the decent man Gloucester can scarcely imagine, rogues like Regan and Cornwall do without reflection or even hesitation, much less conscience. On the Elizabethan conception of order and correspondence, see Tillyard, E. M. W. The Elizabethan World Picture: A Study of the Idea of Order in the Age of Shakespeare, Donne and Milton. Vintage, 1959. ISBN-13: 978-0394701622.

[21] The triple-sun phenomenon is called a “parhelion” or sun-dog. See “Parhelion.” Skybrary.aero. Accessed 1/5/2026. We might also recall how in Richard III, Richard of Gloucester, ever selfish, arrogates the power of the sun to his use when, delighted at his success with Anne Neville, he blurts out, “Shine out, fair sun, till I have bought a glass, / That I may see my shadow as I pass.” See Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of King Richard the Third. Quarto. In The Norton Shakespeare: Histories, 3rd ed. 384-465. 1.2.248-49.

[22] The relevant historical birthdates are as follows: Edward, Earl of March and future King Edward IV (1442), Edmund, Earl of Rutland (1443), George (1449), Richard of Gloucester (1452). Rutland was only about a year younger than York’s eldest son and heir, Edward. Thus, only Edward and Rutland would have been old enough to be involved in the battles that occurred around this time (1460 or so). Edward was not at Wakefield but was stationed in the Welsh Marches. (He would soon avenge his father at Towton at the end of March 1461.) Right after the Battle of Wakefield, Richard and George were sent for safety to the Low Countries. See “The Western Campaign of 1461.” Battlefieldstrust.com. Accessed 1/5/2026.

[23] 3 Henry VI, 294, 5.6.80.

[24] Richard says at 441, 4.3.38, “The sons of Edward sleep in Abraham’s bosom.” The Norton footnote for this line reminds us that the language echoes Luke 16:22-23. Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of King Richard the Third. Quarto. In The Norton Shakespeare: Histories, 3rd ed. 384-465.

[25] In 1461, the real-life George or “Clarence” was around twelve years old.

[26] 3 Henry VI, 237, 1.2.28-31.

[27] See earlier endnote on the 1460 Act of Accord.

[28] See earlier endnote on Queen Margaret’s father, René, King of Naples.

[29] See also, for example, Anne Neville’s insulting language to Richard during the wooing scene: “Never hung poison on a fouler toad. / Out of my sight! Thou dost infect my eyes” (392, 1.2.145-46). Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of King Richard the Third. Quarto. In The Norton Shakespeare: Histories, 3rd ed. 384-465.

[30] John Neville, 1^st Marquess of Montagu (1431-71).

[31] Titus Andronicus would, in truth, be hard to top for outrageous language and ultra-violence. When Lucius returns to tell his father Titus that the captive Tamora, Queen of Goths’ eldest son has been sacrificed, he declares proudly, “Alarbus’ limbs are lopped / And entrails feed the sacrificing fire, / Whose smoke like incense doth perfume the sky” (149, 1.1.146-48).

[32] In England and other parts of today’s United Kingdom, wolves were for centuries much feared and subject to attempts to exterminate them. Those attempts go back at least as far as King Edward I (r. 1272-1307). To this day, there are no wild wolves in the UK. See “Are There Wild Wolves in the UK?” YouTube. Naturally Happy Dogs. Accessed 1/5/2026.

[33] Towton seems to be conflated here with Northampton—it was at the latter place that Henry VI was captured on July 10, 1460. His own Lancastrians “recaptured” him at the Second Battle of St. Albans on February 17, 1461, and then, after the disastrous outcome of the Battle of Towton on March 29, 1461, Henry fled north to Scotland with Queen Margaret. See Battles (British Battles) and other sites pertaining to the Wars of the Roses at the beginning of this commentary.

[34] See, for example, Theocritus’ Idylls 1-4. Trans. J. M. Edmonds, Loeb Library 1912. Theoi.com. Accessed 1/5/2026.

[35] He says to Warwick and York, “When I was crowned I was but nine months old” (233, 1.1.112).

[36] See Sir Philip Sidney’s circa 1580 treatise, “The Defence of Poesie.” Gutenberg e-text. Accessed 1/05/2026.

[37] Old Queen Margaret’s grief in Richard III 4.4 makes a similar, extended claim to superiority, too.

[38] The Norton footnote 8 for pg. 258 tells us about Bona of Savoy’s ancestry.

[39] The two dukes of Gloucester who were appointed before Richard were Edward III’s youngest surviving son, Thomas of Woodstock (1355-97), who was killed by order of Richard II in 1397, and son of King Henry IV Humphrey of Lancaster (1390-1447), who died under suspicious circumstances while under arrest on a charge of treason in 1447.

[40] Historically, Henry was looking for support, not wandering aimlessly. In 1464, the deposed king returned to England in support of an uprising that subsequently failed, and he was taken prisoner in 1465. See Britannica’s entry “Henry VI, King of England.” Accessed 1/5/2026.

[41] See Susan Higginbotham’s “Richard Grey, Elizabeth Woodville’s Second Son.” Susanhigginbotham.com. Accessed 1/5/2026.

[42] See Ross, Charles. Edward IV. Berkeley: U of California Press, 1974. ISBN-10: 0520027817. 86-87. Ross weighs common claims about Edward that he was “licentious,” perhaps to an extreme.

[43] Jeremy Bentham’s hedonic or felicific calculus comes to mind—it offered Victorians a way to “measure their pleasure” and factor in the pleasure to be experienced by others as well. Of course, Richard of Gloucester has little concern for the broader framework of utilitarianism, which concerns the achievement of “the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people.” See “Jeremy Bentham and the Felicific Calculus.” That Religious Studies Website. Accessed 1/5/2026.

[44] See Richard’s wooing of Anne Neville in The Norton Shakespeare: Histories, 3rd ed. 384-465. 1.2.

[45] See 100 Years’ War (Britannica), 100 Years’ War (WHE), and 100 Years’ War Timeline.

[46] See Ross, Charles. Edward IV. Berkeley: U of California Press, 1974. ISBN-10: 0520027817. 84-103. Ch. 5. “The King’s Marriage and the Rise of the Woodvilles.”

[47] See Kantorowicz, Ernst. The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology. Princeton UP, 2016. Orig. published in 1957.

[48] Pindar. “Olympian VII,” line 95. My translation of ἐν δὲ μιᾷ μοίρᾳ χρόνου / ἄλλοτ᾽ ἀλλοῖαι διαιθύσσοισιν αὖραι. Topostext.org. Accessed 1/5/2026.

[49] See Ross, Charles. Edward IV. Berkeley: U of California Press, 1974. ISBN-10: 0520027817. 84-103. Ch. 7. “The Years of Crisis, 1469-71.” 135. See full chapter for Ross’s coverage of the crisis period discussed at this point of the commentary.

[50] Historically, Lord Rivers, or Richard Woodville, 1^st Earl Rivers, was to be executed by Warwick’s forces on August 12, 1469.

[51] This passage is not included in Norton’s print-copy of Richard III, which is based upon the 1597 quarto edition.

[52] See Boswell-Stone, Walter G. Shakespeare’s Holinshed: The Chronicle and the Historical Plays Compared. Wentworth Press, 2019 [repr. of London: Chatto & Windus 1907 ed.]. ISBN-13: 978-0530892863. 324-25. The story is also told in Hall’s Chronicle, “Edward IV” 275-76.

[53] The famous line is spoken by Al Pacino as “Michael Corleone” in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather, Part 3. (Paramount, 1995)

[54] On the “Trinovantum” legend, see “Legendary Origins and the Origin of London’s place name.” Cultural Heritage Resources. Accessed 1/5/2026.

[55] Machiavelli, Niccolò. The Prince, Ch. 17. Gutenberg e-text. Accessed 1/5/2026.

[56] on clarence’s longer-frame decision to return to Edward IV again.

[57] Circumstances of Montague’s death.

[58] Info about Warwick and Montague being displayed after death.

[59] See “A Difficult Birth?” on the legends surrounding Richard of Gloucester’s birth. The Richard III Society, Dr. Joanna Laynesmith. Accessed 1/5/2026.

[60] Edward was actually born on November 2, 1470, during Edward IV’s period of deposition.

[61] Historically, this ransom was tendered in 1475, not 1471. But Margaret returned to France, ransomed by King Louis XI, and lived at Dampierre-sur-Loire near Anjou until her death in 1482. Her death in France will not stop her from showing up in England, however, in Shakespeare’s Richard III, to curse the Yorkist rascals who killed her husband and her only son.

[62] Peacock, Thomas Love. From “The Four Ages of Poetry,” 1820. Poetry Foundation. Accessed 1/5/2026.