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.

Top 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

Verified 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.