Henry VI, Part 1

Summary

Henry VI, Part 1 begins at a coffin. The lords of England stand around the body of Henry V in Westminster Abbey, and before the funeral is finished three messengers arrive: towns in France are lost, the Dauphin has been crowned at Rheims, and Lord Talbot, England's most feared soldier, has been taken prisoner through the cowardice of Sir John Fastolfe. The heir to all of this is an infant. The rest of the play shows what happens when a conquering king is replaced by a child and the men who should govern for him spend their strength on one another. Two stories run side by side. In France, Talbot fights a war of sieges and reversals at Orleans, Rouen and Bordeaux against the Dauphin Charles and a shepherd's daughter, Joan la Pucelle, who claims that the Virgin Mary has called her to save her country. In England, quarrels multiply: Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, the Lord Protector, brawls with Henry Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester, at the gates of the Tower and in Parliament; and in the Temple Garden, Richard Plantagenet and the Duke of Somerset pick white and red roses to mark a legal dispute that will become the emblem of a civil war. A dying Edmund Mortimer, brought out of his prison in a chair, tells Richard that his family has a better right to the throne than the house of Lancaster. The two stories meet at Bordeaux. Talbot, surrounded, sends for reinforcements, but York and Somerset each blame the other and neither moves. Talbot's son refuses to flee, father and son die together, and a herald, Sir William Lucy, recites Talbot's titles over a corpse that a French bastard calls stinking and fly-blown. Joan, deserted by the fiends she conjures in Act 5, is captured, denies her shepherd father, and is sent to the fire. The play ends not with victory but with a bad bargain: the Earl of Suffolk, who has captured Margaret of Anjou and fallen for her, persuades young Henry to break a marriage contract and take her as queen, intending to rule her and, through her, the king. The play is early Shakespeare, perhaps written with collaborators, and it shows: much of the verse is end-stopped and declamatory, and the scenes are built as debates and set speeches. Yet its design is clear. Heroism in the field is real, but it cannot survive faction at home, and the play makes that point by letting the audience watch a great soldier die because two noblemen would rather be right than help. Students should also know what kind of history this is. Shakespeare compresses three decades, invents the rose-picking, keeps Talbot alive twenty years after Joan's death, and presents Joan through the eyes of the English chronicles that hated her. The library's record of her trial and Shaw's Saint Joan offer the necessary correction.

Plot or Argument

• Act 1: A coffin and three messengers

  At Henry V's funeral, Bedford, Gloucester, Exeter and Winchester trade blame while messengers report the loss of French towns, the Dauphin's coronation and Talbot's capture. In France, Joan la Pucelle presents herself to Charles, beats him in single combat, and promises to raise the siege of Orleans. In London, Gloucester's and Winchester's men fight at the Tower. At Orleans a French cannon kills Salisbury, and Joan drives Talbot's troops back and relieves the city.

• Act 2: Night assault, a countess's trap, two roses

  Talbot retakes Orleans by a surprise night assault. The Countess of Auvergne lures him to her castle to imprison him and learns that his 'substance' is his army, which arrives at a horn-blast. In the Temple Garden, Richard Plantagenet and Somerset ask the lawyers and lords to choose white or red roses, and Warwick, Suffolk and Vernon take sides. In the Tower, the dying Mortimer explains Richard's descent from Lionel, Duke of Clarence, and his claim to the crown.

• Act 3: Parliament brawls, Rouen changes hands

  In Parliament, Gloucester and Winchester exchange charges, their servingmen riot with stones, and the boy king pleads for peace; Richard is restored as Duke of York. Joan takes Rouen by disguising soldiers as peasants; Talbot and Burgundy retake it while the dying Bedford watches from his chair. Joan then talks Burgundy into deserting England for France, and Henry rewards Talbot with the earldom of Shrewsbury.

• Act 4: Coronation in Paris and death at Bordeaux

  Henry is crowned in Paris, tears the Garter from Fastolfe's leg, and, trying to calm the York-Somerset dispute, idly puts on a red rose, deepening it. Talbot is trapped before Bordeaux. York and Somerset each refuse to send horse until the other does, and Sir William Lucy shuttles between them in vain. Talbot urges his son John to escape; John will not, and both die. Lucy reclaims the bodies after reciting Talbot's titles.

• Act 5: Fiends, a fire and a bargain

  Gloucester arranges peace and a marriage for Henry with the Earl of Armagnac's daughter. In Anjou, Joan calls on fiends who will no longer answer her, and York captures her; Suffolk captures Margaret, daughter of Reignier, and courts her for the king. Joan rejects her father, pleads virginity and then pregnancy, and is led to the stake. A truce is made in which Charles becomes England's viceroy. Suffolk talks Henry out of the Armagnac contract and into marrying Margaret, closing with his plan to rule queen, king and realm.

Characters

• Lord Talbot (later Earl of Shrewsbury), English general

  The play's martial hero: blunt, fearless, scornful of witches and cowards, and capable of tenderness toward his son. His name terrifies the French, and he dies because the lords at home will not support him.

• John Talbot, Talbot's son

  A young man on his first campaign who refuses his father's command to flee because flight would shame the name. Their exchange in rhymed couplets at Bordeaux is the emotional center of Act 4.

• Joan la Pucelle (Joan of Arc), French military leader

  A shepherd's daughter who claims a heavenly vision and leads the French to victories. The play shows her as eloquent and brave in the early acts and then, following the English chroniclers, as a conjurer of fiends who disowns her father.

• Henry VI, King of England

  A boy at the start, gentle and devout, who pleads for peace among his uncles but does not grasp that symbols such as a rose carry danger. His last act in the play, breaking a betrothal for Margaret, shows how easily he is led.

• Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, Lord Protector

  The king's uncle and a patriot who wants England's French gains kept; hot-tempered in his feud with Winchester but loyal to the crown.

• Henry Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester, great-uncle of the king, later Cardinal

  An ambitious churchman who quarrels openly with Gloucester and buys a cardinal's hat. His enmity carries over into Part 2.

• Richard Plantagenet, later Duke of York, claimant

  Son of the executed Earl of Cambridge; he plucks the white rose, learns his claim from Mortimer, and nurses his grievance while serving the crown in France.

• Duke of Somerset, Lancastrian noble

  York's rival who plucks the red rose; his refusal to send cavalry to Talbot matches York's own.

• Earl of Suffolk, courtier

  Takes the red rose and, in Act 5, captures Margaret and arranges her marriage to Henry for his own advantage.

• Edmund Mortimer, imprisoned claimant

  An old man dying in the Tower who passes his family's claim to Richard. Shakespeare conflates two historical Mortimers in him.

• Charles the Dauphin, French prince

  Joan's patron, alternately admiring and blaming her, quick to claim credit and quick to flee.

• Duke of Burgundy, England's ally, then France's

  Fights beside Talbot at Rouen until Joan's appeal to his French blood persuades him to change sides.

• Sir William Lucy, messenger and herald

  Carries Talbot's appeals between York and Somerset and delivers the roll of Talbot's titles over his body.

• Margaret of Anjou, French noblewoman

  Captured by Suffolk in Act 5; sharp-tongued in their first exchange, and destined to become the formidable queen of Parts 2 and 3.

Lessons

• A kingdom lost by its own lords

  The French do not defeat Talbot at Bordeaux; York and Somerset do, each waiting for the other to move first. Sir William Lucy names the cause plainly in Act 4, Scene 4. The scene teaches that pride in being right can be as lethal as cowardice, and that the duty to help a comrade does not wait for the settlement of one's own quarrel.

  • Read York's and Somerset's speeches in Act 4, Scenes 3 and 4. Which of them has the better case, and does it matter?
  • Lucy speaks of 'the fraud of England, not the force of France.' What does 'fraud' mean here?
  • When have you seen a group fail because two members would not yield to each other?

• The son who would not fly

  Talbot begs John to escape so that the family name will survive; John answers that a Talbot who runs is no Talbot. Their dialogue in rhymed couplets (Act 4, Scenes 5-7) sets two loves against each other, a father's care and a son's honor, and the play does not make either simply wrong. It is worth asking what courage is, and when it shades into a refusal of prudence.

  • Why does Shakespeare shift into rhymed couplets for the Talbots at Bordeaux?
  • Is John's refusal obedience to his father's example or disobedience to his father's command?
  • Compare Talbot's lament over his son with the French lords' treatment of the bodies. What does each reveal?

• How a garden quarrel becomes a civil war

  The rose-picking in Act 2, Scene 4 begins as a point of law the lawyers would rather not judge. By Act 4, Scene 1, servingmen are fighting over badges and the king himself puts on a red rose while claiming it means nothing. The play shows how symbols harden private disputes into public parties, and how a ruler's carelessness with them can spread a feud he meant to calm.

  • Why will Suffolk and Warwick not say what the legal question is?
  • Henry says, 'I see no reason if I wear this rose.' What does he fail to see?
  • What badges or tokens divide groups in your own world, and what keeps them from becoming feuds?

• Reading Joan through hostile eyes

  The play's Joan is first brave and persuasive, then a conjurer whose fiends desert her and a daughter who disowns her father. This portrait follows English chronicles written by her enemies. Students should study it as Elizabethan wartime drama, distinguishing what the play claims, what her trial records show, and how later Christian readers came to honor her; the Church declared her a saint in 1920.

  • Where does the play let Joan speak most persuasively, and what does she persuade Burgundy to do?
  • Why might an English audience in the 1590s want her shown as a witch?
  • How does a historian test a hostile source without simply reversing it?

Context

The play covers, loosely, the years from Henry V's death in 1422 to Henry VI's marriage to Margaret of Anjou in 1445, but it rearranges them freely. Talbot actually died at Castillon in 1453, more than twenty years after Joan was burned at Rouen in 1431; the Temple Garden scene has no known historical source; and the loss of English France is concentrated into a few campaigns. Shakespeare's main sources were Edward Hall's chronicle, The Union of the Two Noble and Illustre Families of Lancaster and York (1548), and Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles (second edition, 1587), both of which read the fifteenth-century wars as a long punishment that ended with the Tudor union of the roses. The play was staged when English troops were again fighting in France: the Earl of Essex led a force to support Henri IV at the siege of Rouen in 1591-92.

Composition

A play called 'harey the vj' was recorded as new by Philip Henslowe at the Rose in March 1592 and drew large audiences; most scholars take it to be this play. Thomas Nashe's Pierce Penniless (1592) praised a stage Talbot who drew the tears of ten thousand spectators. The text was first printed in the First Folio of 1623 as The First Part of Henry the Sixth. Many scholars think it was written collaboratively, with Nashe among the possible contributors, and its order of composition relative to Parts 2 and 3 is disputed: some think it was written afterward as a prequel.

Reception

Popular in the 1590s, the play was rarely staged for long afterward and was often dismissed as crude or doubted as Shakespeare's. Twentieth-century productions revived it as part of the full cycle, notably the Royal Shakespeare Company's The Wars of the Roses (1963-64) and later complete-sequence stagings, where Talbot's death and the roses scene play strongly. Its treatment of Joan has drawn steady attention since her canonization in 1920.

Comparisons

• Henry V

  Henry V ends with a chorus that names this sequel in advance: the infant Henry VI 'whose state so many had the managing' lost France and made England bleed. Part 1 opens at that king's coffin and stages the loss the chorus foretold, so the conqueror's glory and its rapid squandering can be read as one arc.

• Henry VI, Part 2

  Part 2 picks up immediately with Margaret's arrival in England and the price Suffolk paid for her. Gloucester's feud with Winchester, the York claim taught by Mortimer, and Suffolk's ambition all ripen there into murder and rebellion.

• Richard III

  The red and white roses first plucked in the Temple Garden are finally united by Richmond's marriage at the end of Richard III. Read the first and last plays of the tetralogy together to see how Shakespeare frames the whole war from its petty start to its providential settlement.

• The Trial of Joan of Arc

  The trial records give Joan's own answers to her judges, and they cannot be squared with the play's Act 5, where she summons fiends and disowns her father. Set side by side, the two documents teach students to weigh a hostile dramatic source against the historical record.

• Saint Joan

  Shaw wrote his play in 1923, three years after Joan's canonization, and answers the English tradition Shakespeare inherited with a Joan of practical genius and stubborn faith. Comparing his trial scene with Shakespeare's stake scene shows how the same figure served opposite national and religious purposes.

Quotes

Medical Lens

The play is not about medicine, but it stages several bodies at their limits in ways a history-of-medicine reader can use. Battlefield injury from gunpowder weapons is shown when a cannon shot takes off Salisbury's eye and cheek at Orleans. Old age is anatomized in Mortimer's dying speech and in Bedford, carried to Rouen in a chair, who dies watching the city retaken. The plays notably do not stage the documented mental collapse Henry VI suffered in 1453-54; any connection drawn between his character here and that later illness is an interpretation, not something the text asserts.

• Act 1, Scene 4

  A French cannon fired from the walls of Orleans strikes Salisbury and Sir Thomas Gargrave; Talbot describes Salisbury's eye and cheek struck off and his loss of speech before he dies.

  WAR Wounds Death Dying
• Act 2, Scene 5

  Mortimer, carried from his cell in a chair, describes dim eyes, weak shoulders, withered arms and numb feet, then dies after passing on his claim.

  Aging Senescence Death Dying
• Act 3, Scene 2

  The sick Duke of Bedford insists on being carried to the field before Rouen, citing the example of Uther Pendragon in his litter, and dies in his chair once the town is retaken.

  Aging Senescence Death Dying
• Act 4, Scene 7

  The wounded Talbot dies holding his son's body; the French discuss mutilating the corpses before Lucy claims them.

  WAR Wounds Death Dying

Creative Prompts

• Dialogue

  Write the scene the play leaves offstage: York and Somerset, after Talbot's death, meeting face to face and each trying to make the other accept the blame.

• Essay

  Is Talbot a model of Christian knighthood or of a pagan honor ethic? Argue from his speeches to the Countess, to his son and over Salisbury.

• Fiction

  Retell the Temple Garden scene from the point of view of Vernon, the young gentleman who plucks a white rose and does not yet know what he has joined.

• Classroom

  Stage Lucy's roll of Talbot's titles in Act 4, Scene 7, then the Bastard's reply. Discuss what a list of honors means beside a dead body.

• Adaptation

  Design a set of three rose badges for a modern-dress production and write a director's note explaining how they will be used from Act 2 to Act 4.

Further Reading

• The Union of the Two Noble and Illustre Families of Lancaster and York, Edward Hall

  The 1548 chronicle that gave Shakespeare his providential shape for the Wars of the Roses.

• Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2nd ed., 1587), Raphael Holinshed

  Shakespeare's other main chronicle source for the reign.

• Pierce Penniless his Supplication to the Devil, Thomas Nashe

  Contains the 1592 description of audiences weeping at the stage death of Talbot.

• Shakespeare's History Plays, E. M. W. Tillyard

  The influential 1944 reading of the histories as a providential 'Tudor myth', worth testing against the plays themselves.

• Shakespeare's English Kings, Peter Saccio

  A clear guide to what actually happened in each reign Shakespeare dramatized.

• Joan of Arc: A History, Helen Castor

  A modern narrative that sets Joan within the civil war of Armagnacs and Burgundians.