Figure 1.-- This is Jack May as the boy king in "Henry VI, Part 1"from an Old Vic production staged in 1953. |
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The play depicts England's surrender of its French possessions as the English
lose out to the Dauphin Charles under the influence of La Pucelle, Joan of
Arc. Shakespeare characterizes Joan as a whorish impostor and hypocrite who
is controlled by "fiends" (infernal forces from Hell) and who, in order to
save herself from being burned at the stake after she is captured, pretends to
be pregnant. This obviously contradicts her claim to virginity. The treatment
is very biased and very anti-French, but this is
what Shakespeare knew would appeal to English Protestant audiences in 1590 or
1591 when the play was written and staged. Early in the play we hear news of
the Dauphin's coronation at Rheims (the scene depicted in an existing HBC
image with Joan of Arc standing by). But while the English have sporadic
victories and losses in France (they do capture Joan and have her executed),
the situation at home is almost as chaotic because the country is riven by
division and bitter political factionalism. Shakespeare's theme is that
divided loyalties within the realm of England become the cause of disastrous
events abroad. The chief quarrelling adults are Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester
(Lord Protector over Henry VI) and Cardinal Beaufort (the Bishop of
Winchester). The chief English military hero is Lord Talbot, who becomes Earl
of Shrewsbury and is tragically killed in battle in France. Henry the Sixth
is ultimately crowned in Paris as a child king, but controlled by the
ambitious and unscrupulous Duke of Suffolk who persuades him to break off a
politically suitable marriage already contracted and marry instead Margaret of
Anjou (who becomes adulterously involved with Suffolk). There is a famous
scene in the Temple Garden at one of the Inns of Court in London in which
nobles with Lancastrian and Yorkist sympathies meet to pluck roses (red and
white), the symbols of the civil war to come. This is the emblematic
beginning of the wars of the roses in the play.
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