I Have What I Would Have

In William Shakespeare’s Henry VI, Part I, the first play of his first tetralogy of English History Plays, we are not only brought into some of the playwright’s early works that immediately caught the attention of the theatre going public of Elizabethan London, but to works that exhibit a profound level of insight and political acumen, as well as daring.  The theme of this cycle of plays is England’s Wars of The Roses that culminates with the iconographic Richard III. It also provides the link to Queen Elizabeth’s grandfather Henry VII, and the opening of the Tudor Dynasty.

Based on the enormous success of this cycle of plays, Shakespeare went on to write another tetralogy, moving back further in time, that would end at the point where Henry VI begins. There is no doubt that the second series exhibits a more highly developed manner of both writing and performing, as Shakespeare pioneered what he referred to as ‘personation’, whereby the player on stage took on the role of the character, employing a more natural characterisation by means of what today we would simply understand as ‘acting’.  The first plays emphasised versification and oratory skill accompanied by established gestures for various emotions that were all well known to the audience. As Shakespeare’s skill progressed so did the talent of his leading actors. Nevertheless, going back to this early play, Henry VI Part I, admittedly more difficult to stage and dramaturgically less accommodating to the overall enjoyment of the play as a theatrical event, we have the opportunity to witness the early stages of a great genius that was directly involved in the pressing issues of his time.

It is part of the foundational premise I construct in my book The PowerTemplate – Shakespeare’s Political Plays, that the two tetralogies of History Plays were for Shakespeare a profound meditation on his current political milieu by carefully reflecting upon an earlier period of England’s history and recognising existing corollaries that were of the utmost exigency for the time he was living in.  He certainly did not construct a simplistic model whereby a stage character depicting an historical figure from the past represented a present-day figure on the Elizabethan political stage.  Elizabeth had seen Shakespeare’s Richard II precisely because of it having a relation to her, and was well aware of its second round of performances at a time when people were eager for new works, and the play was already considered a survivor from the previous season.

The timing of this second run presaged the famous, albeit failed, Essex Rebellion. Preserved in the archives containing her letters and various other correspondences, Elizabeth is recorded as having said: “I am Richard II, know ye not that”.  Of course, Richard II was based on actual historical material Shakespeare obtained by his reading of Holinshed’s Chronicles, whose work was enjoying a high degree of notoriety in Tudor England. Shakespeare was most liberal in his use of poetic licence when dealing with certain facts. He was a creative playwright, not an historian making dramatised documentaries.

 But Richard II tells the tale of an erudite and scholarly king who suffered from being seen as effeminate, as well as being considered imprudent in the choice of his ‘favourites’ who were meant to serve as his advisors. Elizabeth, obviously feminine, was thought by some to have been wrapped in a gilded cocoon by her cunning advisors, most notably Lord Burghley and his conniving son, Robert Cecil. There was a connection to be made. From the material mentioned above, Elizabeth herself apparently saw it.  And who was at the fore of this elite coterie of noblemen who saw that governance and rule was already on a slope made slippery by what is easily recognised today as the muck of a political class? It was Lord Essex, together with the Earl of Southampton, to whom Shakespeare dedicated two of his most famous narrative poems, and other such men for whom the code of honour attributed to their role as knights was inextricably bound to loyalty, service and protection: noblesse oblige. 

In order to arrive at the precise point at which I am aiming, and for what is my hope in this short essay, it will be sufficient to state a few key events. The play begins with the funeral of the heroic Henry V, and then ‘fast-forwards’ to Henry VI, who was nine months old when his father died, as a young man. From the time that the infant king was crowned up till the present, the Duke of Gloucester, uncle to the King, has been the Lord Protector and therefore, the de facto king of England. He stands as the only bulwark of defence between a politically inert and mentally ill equipped king and a swarming pack of vicious political animals all of whom have their eye on either seizing the crown, or at least, controlling Henry and the realm by proxy. While the whole lot are opposed to one another, despite various shifting alliances that are made, broken and rearranged, what they all concur on is that for any of their designs to unfold Gloucester must go!

Opposite Gloucester is the Bishop of Winchester, great uncle to the king. He is Prelate to the Pope; known for his licentiousness, covetous of the role of Lord Protector, lustful for power and exhibits a naked ambition to seize control of the realm. All of these things are exactly what he accuses Gloucester of. Early on in the play he deliberately blocks men sent by Gloucester to the armoury in the Tower to procure additional weapons and supplies urgently needed by the English troops fighting in France. This for no other reason than to spite his nemesis with a military failure in France that will reflect poorly on his stewardship of the kingdom, apparently little fazed by the fact that it is the troops who will be most adversely effected. A sordid old man is playing politics while other men are exposed to mortal danger.

The next key axis of opposition is that between Richard Plantagenet, soon to be reinstated as the Duke of York and the Duke of Somerset, self-proclaimed advocate of the House of Lancaster, in spite of the king himself who is presumably inconsequential. The Temple Garden in London provides the historic scene whereby York and his party plucked the white rose to show support for his claim traced back to the illegal usurpation of Richard II by his cousin Henry Bolingbroke (later Henry IV), while Somerset and his allies, including the Earl of Suffolk, picked the red one. Hence, we have the Wars of The Roses.

The last piece to be put in place is that the English army is in France led by the greatest of England’s noble knights, Lord Talbot. Lionised by his countrymen, feared and held in awe by the French, Talbot epitomises the great art of chivalry and honour that stood as the hallmark of England’s greatness. York has been made Regent of France, and therefore, the highest authority in the land. He sends an urgent dispatch to Somerset who has a substantial army at his command, to proceed at once to assist Talbot who is trapped between the well garrisoned city of Bordeaux and an army of 10,000 strong led by Charles, the King of France.  To his great ignominy Somerset prevaricates and remains immobile. Just as York will blame Somerset, so Somerset will blame York. The outcome presages a future in which a recreant political class will routinely spill the blood of the flower of their country’s courage with impunity.

Here we must also remember Lord Essex, who 150 years after these events took place was executed upon the relentless persistence of Robert Cecil, who could not bear the accusation implicit in the presence of a man of such exemplary stature. When Shakespeare penned this play Essex was alive and well, but the writing was on the wall and Shakespeare was, I believe, able to read it. He would continue to refine this theme in others of his plays that dealt with legitimacy, the rule of law and the protection it was to provide, sustained by the requisite loyalty of a body of men who would stand to ensure that it was upheld.

This is something that can never be obtained from salaried politicians. Therefore, we are inevitably reminded of the craven behaviour of Tony Blair and his corruption riddled government; their willingness to be led into a war predicated on false premises by a country openly promoting its own self-interests; their perfidious behaviour being matched by that of Sarkozy and the other complicit heads of state, including one who may yet prove to be the longest running lame duck in Washington and his British hanger-on, the present leader of the Conservative controlled coalition in Britain.

One by one the despotic regimes in the Arab lands, none of which possessed a shred of honour, propped up as they were, by the same outside support structure that has worked to topple each and every one of them, is seeing what is toted as an Arab Spring of revolutions named after different flowers. One can hardly bear the bitter irony as this disgraceful sham continues to be played out on the world stage today.

Henry VI, Part I, Act IV scene vii (Another part of the battlefield where Talbot is fatally wounded),

Talbot: Where is my other life? – mine own is gone;
O! Where is young Talbot? Where is my valiant John?

Triumphant death, smear’d with captivity,

Young Talbot’s valour makes me smile at thee.

When he perceiv’d me shrink upon my knee,

His bloody sword he brandish’d over me,

And like a hungry lion did commence

Rough deeds of rage and stern impatience;

But when my angry guardant stood alone,

Tendering my ruin and assail’d of none,

Dizzy-ey’d fury and great rage of heart

Suddenly made him from my side to start

Into the clustering battle of the French;

And in that sea of blood my boy did drench

His overmounting spirit; and there died

My Icarus, my blossom, my pride.

[Soldiers enter bearing the body of young Talbot]

Come, come, and lay him in his father’s arms:

My spirit can no longer bear these harms.

Soldiers, adieu! I have what I would have,

Now my old arms are young John Talbot’s grave. [Talbot dies]