Thursday - King Henry VI, Parts II and III
The Oregon Shakespeare Festival is presenting the Henry VI series this year. Part I is staged in their intimate new indoor theater. Parts II and III are fused together into a single play, and produced in the outdoor Elizabethan stage. Due to ticketing anomalies, we saw II and III Thursday night, and are seeing Part I Saturday night.
The Basic Story: The action in this period involves a mind-boggling number of characters and, owing to Henry V’s conquest of France, is spread across two countries. Shakespeare rearranged many lifespans and took more than a few historical liberties in order to render this dramatically. There is also a question of authorship and of the order in which the plays were written. Some hold that Shakespeare merely adapted Parts II and III from earlier plays, and wrote Part I later. My 1971 Kittredge Complete Works (a tome of about 10 pounds that I dutifully tote down here every year) holds that they were written in order, and by a single author. Since this text may no longer represent current scholarship. I vow to do some additional research, and maybe let go of my sentimental attachment to this green-bound behemoth.
The plays detail the Wars of the Roses, with Red representing the Lancaster kings and White the house of York. The Lancasters ascended to the throne with Henry Bolingbroke, Henry IV, who was installed after the disintegration of Richard II’s reign. The Yorks, of whom Richard II was one, have always felt that Bolingbroke usurped the crown from Yorkian rightful heirs. The success of the Henry IV and V reigns, however, has kept them at bay. With the death of Henry V, Henry VI ascends as a child king with an appointed Protector, the Duke of Gloucester. As VI matures, it becomes apparent that he is weak, irresolute and given to putting far too much into the hands of God. Successive defeats and loss of territory in France create unrest, and opportunity for the Yorks to assert their harbored grievances.
Civil wars ensue with shifting alliances and intrigue. As all of this bellicosity and hatred spews forth, it’s difficult to keep in mind that these people are all cousins of one flavor or another.
I don’t know enough about the texts of the plays to support or object to the fusing of II and III into a 2 1/2 hour play. I’m sure that there are major excisions of language. For instance, the entire Jack Cade “Let’s kill all the lawyers” thread was missing. In the end, though, I felt that the production had asserted a clarity of plot, a clarity that I had been resigned to forgo when I first contemplated the thicket of characters and motives.
One thing that jarred me and made me look askance at this production was a sequence where various folks were castigating York for plotting against Henry, and calling him a “fascist”, since I was almost certain that “fascism” was a 20th century concept. When we came back to our lodging, we looked up the lines, and the term used was “factious”. I’m still not convinced that the word used on stage wasn’t “fascist”, however. Suspending my scorn for now.
There were some opportunities, also, for strong performances - Margaret (VI’s French queen), York, Gloucester, and York’s sons Edward and Richard - with much stronger language than I expected from perhaps the first plays Shakespeare wrote.
The II and III plays (as I does, presumably, with Joan) also assert Shakespeare’s tendency toward, and perhaps fascination with, strong women characters. Margaret takes command of the royal forces in the vacuum created by her weak husband, and dominates much of the middle section. Gloucester’s wife, Eleanor, is a precursor to Lady MacBeth as she needles him to overthrow the king.
This production uses the last third of the play to portray the gathering force of Richard as a character. A cripple often taunted by enemy and friend, he eschews love and the other pleasures of normal men, and sets his singular course to becoming king. OSF will produce Richard III next year, hopefully with the same actor as this year’s Richard. They ended Henry VI, P. II/III with a soliloquy by Richard borrowing the “Now is the winter of our discontent” lines from the beginning of Richard III. It’s sort of a “trailer” strategy that I’m not sure I’m completely down with, but it was very powerful as an ending to a play that was already bastardized to an extent.
