Henry VI, Part 3

Summary

Henry VI, Part 3 is Shakespeare's most unrelenting play of civil war. It opens in Parliament just after St Albans, with Richard, Duke of York, sitting on the throne. Henry, wanting peace more than a crown, makes a bargain: he will reign for life if York and his heirs succeed him. That bargain disinherits Henry's own son, Prince Edward, and Queen Margaret refuses it. She leaves her husband's table and bed, raises an army in the north, and the war that follows is fought by people who no longer recognize any limit. The first movement is a cycle of revenge. York's sons persuade him that his oath to Henry does not bind. At Wakefield, Young Clifford kills York's young son Rutland, a boy still with his tutor, in cold blood; Margaret and Clifford then capture York, stand him on a molehill, crown him with paper, and give him a napkin soaked in Rutland's blood to wipe his tears before they stab him. York's sons, Edward, George and Richard, see three suns join in the sky and march to avenge him. At Towton, Henry, chased from the field by his own queen, sits on a molehill and wishes he were a shepherd, while a son discovers he has killed his father and a father that he has killed his son. Clifford dies with an arrow in his neck, and the Yorkists taunt his corpse. Edward is crowned. The second movement is a cycle of betrayal. Henry is captured by gamekeepers who have sworn new oaths to Edward. Edward, sending Warwick to France to arrange a royal marriage, instead marries Lady Elizabeth Grey, a widow who resisted his advances; Warwick, humiliated before the French king, changes sides, and so does Edward's brother George, Duke of Clarence. Henry is restored briefly and blesses the boy Henry, Earl of Richmond, as 'England's hope.' Then Edward returns, Clarence changes sides again, Warwick is killed at Barnet, and at Tewkesbury the three York brothers stab Prince Edward in front of his mother. Richard rides to the Tower and kills Henry. Running beneath all of this is the rise of Richard of Gloucester. His long soliloquy in Act 3, Scene 2 is the first full statement of the villain of Richard III: born deformed, unfit for love, he will smile and murder and set the murderous Machiavel to school. Over Henry's body he declares that he has no brother and is himself alone. The play ends with King Edward celebrating what he calls lasting joy while Richard kisses the infant heir and, aside, compares himself to Judas. The play is built from formal symmetries, such as the matching laments of father and son, and set speeches of great power, especially York's on the molehill and Henry's on the shepherd's life. It shows civil war as the destruction of every bond that holds a people together: oath, marriage, kinship, mercy.

Plot or Argument

• Act 1: An heir disinherited and a father on a molehill

  York takes the throne in Parliament; Henry agrees that York's line will succeed him, and Margaret, furious at her son's disinheritance, leaves to raise an army. At Sandal Castle, Richard argues that York's oath is void because Henry was not a lawful magistrate, and York resolves to fight. Clifford kills the child Rutland. Margaret and Clifford set the captured York on a molehill, crown him with paper and hand him a napkin stained with Rutland's blood. York answers with his 'tiger's heart' speech and is stabbed to death.

• Act 2: Three suns and the field of Towton

  Edward and Richard see three suns become one and hear of their father's death; Warwick arrives with news of defeat and the armies regroup. Before York, the two sides exchange insults and Margaret rebukes Henry for disinheriting his son. At Towton, Henry, sent from the field, sits on a molehill and longs for a shepherd's life while a son who killed his father and a father who killed his son lament before him. Clifford, wounded, dies; the Yorkists mock his body and Edward goes to be crowned, creating Richard Duke of Gloucester and George Duke of Clarence.

• Act 3: A widow's suit and a turncoat earl

  Two gamekeepers capture Henry, who has crept back from Scotland, and argue with him about their oaths. King Edward tries to seduce Lady Grey, who has come to recover her husband's lands; refused, he proposes marriage. Alone, Richard counts the lives between him and the crown and resolves to win it by murder and deceit. In France, Margaret and Warwick both court King Lewis; when news of Edward's marriage arrives, Warwick switches to Margaret and promises his daughter to Prince Edward.

• Act 4: Kings made and unmade

  Clarence, offended by the marriage and by Edward's favours to the queen's kin, joins Warwick. Warwick surprises Edward in his tent and takes his crown; Edward escapes with Richard's help. Henry, released from the Tower, makes Warwick and Clarence protectors and blesses young Richmond. Edward lands, gains York by claiming only his dukedom, then proclaims himself king again and captures Henry in London.

• Act 5: Barnet, Tewkesbury and the Tower

  At Coventry, Clarence takes the red rose from his hat and rejoins his brothers. Warwick dies at Barnet. At Tewkesbury, Margaret's army is defeated; Prince Edward defies the York brothers, and Edward, Richard and George stab him one after another. Richard goes to the Tower, where Henry prophesies the misery Richard will cause; Richard kills him and, alone, declares he has no brother. Edward celebrates his restored peace while Richard plots against Clarence.

Characters

• King Henry VI, King of England

  Gentle, prayerful and powerless; he trades his son's inheritance for a quiet reign, is driven from the battlefield by his own wife, and meets his murderer with prophecy rather than fear.

• Queen Margaret, Henry's queen

  The play's most forceful commander: she leads armies, mocks York with his son's blood, and is broken only when her son is killed before her eyes.

• Richard, Duke of York, claimant

  Takes the throne, breaks his oath to fight for it, and dies on a molehill wearing a paper crown; his last speech turns him from schemer into grieving father.

• Edward, Earl of March, later King Edward IV, York's eldest son

  Brave, popular and self-indulgent; his marriage to Lady Grey costs him Warwick and Clarence.

• George, Duke of Clarence, York's second son

  Changes sides twice, joining Warwick and then returning to Edward; his perjury is thrown in his face by Prince Edward.

• Richard, later Duke of Gloucester, York's youngest son

  A fierce soldier and fluent talker whose soliloquies reveal a resolve to win the crown by any means; he kills Henry and ends the play kissing his nephew like Judas.

• Edmund, Earl of Rutland, York's youngest son, a boy

  Murdered by Clifford at Wakefield, pleading for his life; his death sets the cycle of revenge in motion.

• Lord Clifford, Lancastrian noble

  Avenges his father by killing Rutland and helping kill York; he dies of his wounds at Towton and is mocked in death.

• Earl of Warwick, the 'kingmaker'

  Makes Edward king, is humiliated by Edward's marriage, restores Henry, and dies at Barnet reflecting that nothing remains of his lands but his body's length.

• Lady Grey (Elizabeth Woodville), widow, then Queen Elizabeth

  Comes to petition for her children's lands, refuses to become the king's mistress, and becomes his queen.

• Prince Edward, son of Henry and Margaret

  Disinherited by his father, defiant to the end; stabbed at Tewkesbury by the three York brothers.

• King Lewis XI of France, French king

  Courted by both Warwick and Margaret; Edward's marriage turns him to the Lancastrian side.

• Henry, Earl of Richmond, a boy

  Blessed by Henry as England's hope in Act 4, Scene 6; the future Henry VII who will end the wars in Richard III.

• A Son that has killed his father; a Father that has killed his son, soldiers at Towton

  Unnamed common men whose discoveries over the bodies they have looted give civil war its plainest image.

Lessons

• Oaths that no one keeps

  Nearly every turn in the plot is an oath broken. York swears to let Henry reign and is talked out of it within a scene by Richard's argument that an oath to a usurper means nothing. The gamekeepers have sworn to Edward, Warwick swears to Edward and then to Margaret, Clarence swears to both, and Edward swears at York's gates that he wants only his dukedom. The play shows what becomes of a nation when sworn words are treated as tools.

  • Examine Richard's argument in Act 1, Scene 2. Is it sound? What would follow if it were true?
  • How does Henry answer the gamekeepers about their oaths in Act 3, Scene 1?
  • Why does Prince Edward's taunt about perjury provoke Clarence to stab him?

• The shepherd on the molehill

  Henry, sent away from the battle, imagines the ordered hours of a shepherd's life, counting days, months and years until a quiet grave. Immediately a son and a father enter, each carrying a man he has killed and learning who it is. The scene sets a longing for peace beside the reality that civil war turns families against themselves. It asks whether Henry's wish to be a shepherd is wisdom, or an escape from the duty he owes as king.

  • Why does Shakespeare place the son and the father immediately after Henry's speech?
  • The Son and Father speak in matching lines. What does the symmetry add?
  • Is Henry's longing for a private life a virtue, a fault, or both?

• A napkin, a child and the logic of revenge

  Clifford kills Rutland because York killed his father. Margaret uses Rutland's blood to torment York. York's sons mock Clifford's corpse; later they stab Margaret's son. Each killer has a grievance, and each act is crueller than the last. The play makes the cost of revenge visible by letting the audience see children die for their fathers' wars, and it invites students to ask where the chain could have been broken.

  • What reasons does Clifford give Rutland in Act 1, Scene 3, and why do they fail as reasons?
  • York calls Margaret a 'tiger's heart wrapped in a woman's hide.' What does his speech reveal about his own past?
  • Compare Margaret's grief at Tewkesbury with York's at Wakefield.

• Richard's choice

  Richard blames his body for his villainy: love forswore him in the womb, and since heaven shaped his body crookedly, hell may make his mind answer it. The soliloquies are brilliant and seductive, but they are arguments, and Richard is the one making them. A body does not dictate a soul; Richard chooses to smile and murder. Students should notice how the play lets a villain persuade them, and then test his reasons.

  • Read Act 3, Scene 2. Where does Richard move from complaint to decision?
  • Is Richard's claim that heaven shaped him for evil a reason or an excuse?
  • What does 'I am myself alone' say about the bonds the play has been destroying?

Context

The play covers the years from the Act of Accord (1460), by which Henry accepted York as his heir, to Edward IV's restoration and the deaths of Prince Edward and Henry VI in 1471. Shakespeare compresses and alters freely: the historical Rutland was about seventeen at Wakefield, not a child; Richard of Gloucester was eight at the time of Wakefield and could not have fought there or at St Albans; and the parhelion of three suns was recorded before the battle of Mortimer's Cross in 1461. Edward's secret marriage to Elizabeth Woodville took place in 1464, and Warwick's break with him followed over several years. Hall's chronicle, which Shakespeare followed, treated these events as part of a providential sequence from Richard II's deposition to the Tudor union.

Composition

An earlier, shorter text was printed in octavo in 1595 as The True Tragedy of Richard Duke of York and the Death of Good King Henry the Sixth; the Folio of 1623 prints The Third Part of Henry the Sixth. The play existed by 1592, since Robert Greene's Groatsworth of Wit (1592) parodies York's line about a 'tiger's heart wrapped in a woman's hide' in its attack on an 'upstart crow' usually identified as Shakespeare. Collaboration has been proposed for parts of it.

Reception

The play was popular in the 1590s and its octavo was reprinted. It was seldom staged on its own afterward, but Richard's soliloquy and the molehill scenes have long been anthologized. Modern cycle productions, which often combine the Henry VI plays with Richard III, have shown its theatrical force, and Greene's parody makes it an important document in the record of Shakespeare's early career.

Comparisons

• Henry VI, Part 2

  Part 2 closes with the first Battle of St Albans and Young Clifford's vow over his father; Part 3 opens hours later in Parliament and carries out that vow at Wakefield. York's patient scheming in Part 2 becomes open war here.

• Richard III

  Richard's Act 3, Scene 2 soliloquy and his Act 5, Scene 6 speech over Henry's body lead directly to the opening soliloquy of Richard III. Henry's blessing of Richmond and prophecy over Richard anticipate the final battle at Bosworth.

• Macbeth

  Both plays follow a man who murders his way toward a crown while knowing what he does. Richard plans with relish and speaks to the audience as a confederate; Macbeth is tormented by imagination and conscience, which makes their soliloquies a useful contrast.

• The Prince

  Richard boasts that he will 'set the murderous Machiavel to school,' using the Elizabethan stage caricature of Machiavelli. Reading The Prince shows how far that caricature departs from Machiavelli's actual argument about fortune, cruelty and the founding of states.

• King Lear

  Both plays show the division of a kingdom by a ruler who gives away what he should have kept, Henry his son's inheritance and Lear his own authority, and both stage the cruelty that rushes in after.

Quotes

Medical Lens

Part 3 is a useful text on how the Elizabethan stage linked bodily difference with moral character, and how that link can be questioned. Richard's deformity is described by himself (Act 3, Scene 2) and by Henry and Richard in terms of portentous birth (Act 5, Scene 6); the plays present this as omen and as Richard's self-justification, and any modern diagnosis of the historical Richard III's scoliosis is a separate matter. The war scenes record grief and wounds with unusual specificity, including Clifford's belief that air entering his wounds is killing him. The plays do not stage Henry VI's documented mental illness of 1453-54; readings of his passivity as illness are interpretation, not text.

• Act 1, Scene 4

  York, captured at Wakefield, is given a napkin dipped in his murdered son's blood to dry his tears; he weeps and speaks of his grief before he is stabbed.

  Grief Death Dying
• Act 2, Scene 5

  At Towton a son finds he has killed his father and a father that he has killed his son; Henry joins their lament.

  Grief WAR Wounds Death Dying
• Act 2, Scene 6

  Clifford, wounded, says the air has got into his deadly wounds and loss of blood makes him faint; he faints and dies.

  WAR Wounds Death Dying
• Act 3, Scene 2

  Richard describes his withered arm, the 'envious mountain' on his back and legs of unequal size, and argues that he was made unfit for love.

  Disability Deformity
• Act 5, Scene 2

  Warwick, mortally wounded at Barnet, describes his failing sight and body and dies after hearing of his brother Montague's death.

  WAR Wounds Death Dying
• Act 5, Scene 6

  Henry recounts the omens of Richard's birth, including his mother's pain and his being born with teeth; Richard confirms the midwife's report.

  Childbirth Maternal Disability Deformity

Creative Prompts

• Poetry

  Write a pair of matched sonnets, one in the voice of the Son and one in the voice of the Father from Act 2, Scene 5, using the same rhyme sounds in each.

• Essay

  Is Henry a saint, a failure, or both? Use the molehill speech, his words to the gamekeepers, and his death scene to argue your answer.

• Dialogue

  Write the conversation between Clarence and Warwick on the night before Clarence decides to rejoin his brothers at Coventry.

• Fiction

  Tell Lady Grey's first audience with King Edward from her point of view, as she realizes what he is asking and decides how to answer.

• Classroom

  Chart every oath sworn and broken in the play on a timeline, then debate which broken oath did the most damage.

Further Reading

• The True Tragedy of Richard Duke of York (1595 octavo), William Shakespeare (attributed)

  The early printing of the play, useful for comparing passages with the Folio.

• Greene's Groatsworth of Wit, Robert Greene (attributed; possibly Henry Chettle)

  The 1592 pamphlet whose 'upstart crow' passage parodies York's tiger line.

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

  The chronicle Shakespeare followed for Wakefield, Towton, Barnet and Tewkesbury.

• Shakespeare's English Kings, Peter Saccio

  Clarifies the real ages and movements of Rutland, Richard and the other figures the play rearranges.

• The Prince, Niccolò Machiavelli

  Read beside Richard's boast about the 'murderous Machiavel' to see the gap between the stage figure and the book.

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

  The classic providential reading of the first tetralogy, to be tested against the play's moral chaos.