HENRY VI PART 3 –The One With the Paper Crown

Also known as The Third Part of Henry the Sixth, with the Death of the Duke of York (Folio of 1623 title), and The True Tragedy of Richard, Duke of York, and the Death of Good King Henry the Sixth, with the whole Contention between the two houses Lancaster and York (1595 version), this play is my own favourite of the three plays about Henry VI. It’s certainly not the end of the story, because Richard III will soon follow, but it brings together lots of different threads and is in a sense a series of small dramas with no one character dominating throughout, but each having his or her ”moment” as the continuing struggle for power evolves. Thus it is an ensemble piece rather than a ”star” vehicle like Richard III. Richard himself (here still Duke of Gloucester) does steal almost every scene he is in, but it is mostly towards the end of the play that the focus shifts to him –a portent of things to come; and I am quite sure Shakespeare was already looking ahead to writing the play about his reign and looking forward to exploring this fascinating character more. Here Richard is coarser, more direct and more viscerally violent than in the play that bears his name (and where, though just as ruthless, he schemes with such deliciously evil charm). Here in Henry VI Part 3, however, we get much of the background to his character –how and why he became what he is– and quite often some of the latter scenes and speeches from this play are incorporated in productions of Richard III –the Olivier film from 1955 does this, for instance.

Act One of the play is one of the most dramatic of all the history plays, and there are some quite shocking scenes –torture, killing, taunting, and it doesn’t really stop until the end. The tone of the play is extremely grim and frantic, with the crown passing back and forth from side to side like a football, and the war causing the disintegration of moral codes and hardening of hearts as it rolls on. And as an examination of what war does to men, this play is Shakespeare’s harshest. One scene in particular stands out as a striking example of this –scene 5 in Act II, where a father who has inadvertently killed his own son and a son who has killed his own father in battle share the stage and lament, and are observed by King Henry, who is aghast at what he sees. It is one of the few scenes in the play that involves ”common” men, and must have packed as much of punch when it was originally performed as it does when we read it today; it is unusually modern, and quite outside the main line of the story, but it brings the war into instant sobering perspective, both to the king and, through him, the audience. Unfortunately, because this play is so seldom performed the scene is not very well known, but it deserves to be right up there with the best of Shakespeare.

The contrast between Henry and his wife, Queen Margaret, is stretched even further in this play than in Part 2, with Margaret’s viciousness reaching new heights and Henry’s diffidence making him touchingly sympathetic. It’s not that he does not wish to be king; he just would prefer it if the job did not come with so much trouble. And his gentleness among such harshness is curiously alluring. My second favourite scene in the play is the final confrontation between him and Richard who comes to the Tower of London to murder him. In their brief altercation lies all the differences between them, and for a moment or two Henry really shows his fire. This is a great little scene for drama students, by the way; and there are many other similar one-on-one encounters that make terrific workshop pieces. There are also some excellent speeches for both men and women that can be used for auditions. I myself have several times used Henry’s musing on how much more peaceful it would be to be a shepherd than a king (Act II, Sc. 5) for this purpose and in Shakspeare programmes.

The play certainly deserves more recognition and I thoroughly recommend reading it, though once again it does help to have a genealogical table close by to keep track of who is who. You are fortunate if you manage to catch a full production of it because when it is presented it is often an condensed version of Parts 1, 2 and 3, or 2 and 3. The English Shakespeare Company famously performed the whole cycle of history plays in the late 1980s and these were televised and issued on VHS. I hope they pop up on DVD some day as I remember being captivated by the energy of these productions, presented in a contemporary setting on a fairly bare stage which allowed the characters and words and unfolding plot to be in focus. The BBC also produced a fairly good version of this and the other Henry VI plays in their BBC TV Shakespeare series.

Favourite Lines:

Gloucester
But where the fox hath once got in his nose,
He’ll soon fins means to make the body follow.
(Act IV, Sc.7)

Warwick
Why, what is pomp, rule, reign, but earth and dust?
And live we how we can, yet die we must.
(Act V, Sc.2)

plus
All of Richard’s ”plan” speech
(Act II, Sc.2)

Character I would most like to play: Richard, Duke of Gloucester