The previous two plays have started with high stakes drama :
(i) an incredibly depressing funeral (RIP Henry V, you were swell), andThis one starts with York (Team White Rose) busting into the throne room with some of his cronies, claiming it for his own, then (and we're still on page one here) waving a severed head around - "the bloody stump really brings out the carmine in the tapestries" etc. Great start!
(ii) the wedding between Henry VI and Margaret of Anjou, followed by the Duke of York addressing the audience and regaling them with his best Mr Burns impression while he explains how he is going to make himself king.
Henry VI turns up with his cronies (Team Red Rose), is understandably miffed that someone's stolen his seat, and then there is a 'my dad is more awesomer than your dad' conversation in which York and Henry each try to prove that they have the better claim to the throne. I think I firmly established in my write up of part II that Henry isn't really a bloodthirsty, eye-of-the-tiger kinda guy, so his really soft-bellied compromise is that he be allowed to live out his life as king, and then York and his descendants can have the throne (or have it back, depending on whether you believe the Yorkists or the Lancastrians are cooler). This also means that Henry's son, Prince Edward, who has magically been born and grown up a bit between parts II and III, is disinherited. Stink buzz. Most of Henry's supporters leave in disgust.
Reaction from Interchangeable Lord 1:
Farewell, faint hearted and degenerate king / in whose cold blood no spark of honour bides
Reaction from Interchangeable Lord 2:
Be thou a prey unto the house of York / and die in bands for this unmanly deed
Incidentally, I didn't bother keeping track of which of the myriad lords were on whose side because I figured most of them would be dead soon enough anyway. (I was right.)
Enter Queen Margaret, who is straight up the best thing about this stupid play. In part I she's a coquettish French maiden, flirting with the Earl of Suffolk, who arranges the royal marriage and becomes her lover. In part II she is scheming and devious, and generally fed up with Henry's uselessness. Through the magic of character development, in part III (and now a mother), she is a wrathful fury:
It is hard to paraphrase her speech in colloquial terms without resorting to a litany of bad swears; suffice it to say she tells Henry that he is a bad king, a bad husband, a bad tactician, a bad judge of character, a bad father, and all up a complete and utter waste of space. She leaves and takes her son with her and FORMS AN ARMY, because if she has to live in shitty England with all these shitty people then at the very least her lovely English son should have his royal birthright.
Extreme ALARUMS AND EXCURSIONS for a couple of acts during multiple battles in which the Yorkists and the Lancastrians push to and fro. There are three key scenes that define the conflict, two of which employ a sense of poetry that's largely missing in these earlier plays.
The first is when Margaret, in full vengeful harpy mode,
apprehends York with the help of some of her supporters. She is exceedingly cruel: she taunts him with the deaths (actual and threatened) of his sons, and she offers him a hanky soaked in the blood of his youngest to wipe away his tears. She places a paper crown upon his head and mocks his regal ambitions. Margaret's invective is as much aimed at the general, treacherous awfulness and instability of the ongoing York-Lancaster conflict and its broader effects as it is a condemnation of York's own specific actions against the King and realm, but her callousness speaks more generally to the poison flowing throughout the country. After a period of venomous back-and-forths, she and her noble minions kill him and chop off his head so that it may look out across the city of York from a choice spot on the battlements. (I have, by this stage, lost count of all the severed heads.)
(Game of Thrones themed severed head cake pops recipe here)
The second key moment is equal parts poignant and heavy-handed. Henry, who has been instructed to keep the fuck out of the way, looks out across the fighting and bemoans his birthright. He thinks about how he would have preferred to have been born a simple shepherd, spending his days tending his flock and whittling and drinking curds, finding more beauty in his flock's fleeces than in royal tapestries and golden chalices. As he watches his subjects mow each other down he sees one man dragging a corpse with him, hoping to plunder it, before realising that it is his own father; likewise another man, bearing another corpse, discovers that he has killed his own son in the grime of battle because each were called to war by different factions. Henry cries out:
Woe above woe! grief more than common grief!The irony, really, is that if he hadn't been such a weak-willed numpty of a monarch, none of this would have happened in the first place.
O that my death would stay these ruthful deeds!
O pity, pity, gentle heaven, pity!
The red rose and the white are on his face,
The fatal colours of our striving houses:
The one his purple blood right well resembles;
The other his pale cheeks, methinks, presenteth:
Wither one rose, and let the other flourish;
If you contend, a thousand lives must wither.
The third (much less poetic) moment comes when Clifford, supporter of Henry and scourge of the Yorks, snuffs it in the field, and York's sons come and boot his body around like a football, shouting "helloooo? anyone still in there? Can't believe he died without letting us say goodbye."
So after more alarums and excursions the Yorks win, Henry is banished to Scotland, and Edward, dead York's eldest son, is king (although his brother Richard the hunchback gives a rousing speech as to his own plans to one day be king - you can look forward to for Richard III for more of his special antics and a lot of mwa-ha-ha-ing). Unfortunately Edward IV (whose reign is to be a bit patchy) thinks with his penis, marries the wrong person, fucks up an important alliance, and loses some key supporters. Once more its time for WAR, this time with France (again), who are allied with Team Red Rose.
War, war, politics, defections, war, "I'm king!", "no, I'm king!", fighting, politics, war.
Intermission!
Fast-forward to the end, because this is getting tiring and tedious and while I'm well aware of the didactic nature of the play - the way that it explores the abject destruction of a few generations due to political infighting and civil strife, and the ongoing political and civic ramifications - I don't really care for any of the characters except Margaret (who gives a rousing battle speech at the beginning of V.iv). (P.S. Bring back Talbot!)
Here is where it finishes:
- Edward IV is king and Team White Rose prevails
- Henry's son Prince Edward is stabbed to death in front of ex-Queen Margaret by Edward IV and his brothers, Clarence and Richard
- Henry is murdered in the Tower of London by Richard after FINALLY growing a pair and cussing out Richard to his face
- Margaret is imprisoned (boo)
- Richard repeatedly shouts to the audience I AM A DEFORMED POWER-HUNGRY SOCIOPATH AND EVERYONE IS GOING TO DIE, STARTING WITH MY DUMBASS BROTHER CLARENCE! STAY TUNED!
The end (for now).
Verdict: (i) Margaret is a badass and the first great female character in the canon, and (ii) multiple battles are surprisingly boring (paging Peter Jackson).
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