Variously saints and she-wolves, Shakespeare’s martial maids figure prominently in his Henry VI trilogy which CHRISTINE CHAPMAN makes the focus of this week’s feature
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OUT of the mouths of babes, wise words sometimes emerge. Surrounded by feuding nobles, boy king Henry VI warns that “civil dissension is a viperous worm”.
As Part II of Shakespeare’s trilogy ends, his words prove prophetic. The Wars of the Roses, the bloodiest civil war in English history, are about to begin.
Henry VI, Parts I and II, boast a cast which reads like a medieval Who’s Who of English and French nobility.
For an audience, they appear inter-changeable, claiming and counter-claiming the moral high ground – and eventually even the crown.
Four striking characters stand out above the rest: saintly Henry, rebellious Jack Cade and two fiery French females, Joan La Pucelle and Margaret of Anjou.
The trilogy opens with the realms of England and France governed by Henry V’s nine-month-old son who is ruling under the protection of ambitious uncles. Signs of dissension soon appear - in French territories first, then closer to home.
Shakespeare often condenses time in these plays. He is also not averse to altering or even making up events.
Part I features just such a scene, dramatising the budding division between the Houses of Lancaster and York.
Angry nobles pluck red or white roses in Temple Garden, henceforth wearing them to indicate allegiance.
The young king is shown to be “cold in great affairs”. Preaching “blessed are the peace-makers”, Henry fuels factionalism further by picking a red rose to prove his point.
Led by this unworldly man, England fast comes to resemble a Paradise Lost.
It is no surprise when Part II leads us to a walled garden owned by Alexander Iden (pronounced Eden).
Here Jack Cade – the serpent of deceit in Henry’s realm – is cornered and killed. His final symbolic utterance, “Iden, farewell”, reverberates like thunder.
“These are no woman’s matters,” exclaims the Lord Protector.
Historically, Margaret of Anjou was 15 when she married Henry by proxy. Shakespeare’s Margaret is a much more worldly creature.
His story of the proud Frenchwoman spans four separate plays. A hag-like presence in the last of them, Richard III, she progresses from blushing virgin to she-wolf of France throughout the three plays of Henry VI.
On her entrance, Shakespeare invests her with the spirit of another Damsel of France, Joan of Arc. The exact moment the “enchantress” is imprisoned and led off to the stake, alarms sound and magically Margaret, nature’s miracle, arrives on Suffolk’s arm.
Beauteous ladies without mercy are a common literary motif and Shakespeare draws on this tradition in Henry VI.
On meeting Margaret, the Duke of Suffolk muses: “She’s beautiful, and therefore to be wooed/ She is a woman, therefore to be won.”
Suffolk represents King Henry when wooing and marrying Margaret. But who ultimately bewitches who always remains unclear.