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Hung be the heavens with black! Yield, day, to night!
Comets, importing change of times and states,
Brandish your crystal tresses in the sky,
And with them scourge the bad revolting stars
That have consented unto Henry’s death—
King Henry the Fifth, too famous to live long.
England ne’er lost a king of so much worth. (1.1.1–7)
Henry VI, Part 1 opens with these lines, which are spoken by the aging duke of Bedford, the Regent of France and uncle to the new king. Bedford’s words offer a eulogy for the recently deceased King Henry V, whose greatness will go on to be celebrated in several speeches subsequently offered by other noblemen. It’s significant that the play should open with such high-minded praise of the late king, whose reign was defined by significant territorial expansion for the Kingdom of England, mainly in France. Yet the greatness of Henry V’s reign also bodes ill for the new king, who is prophesied to lose all the lands his father has won. In this sense, Bedford’s words of mournful praise mark the high point from which England can’t help but decline.
It is typical in Shakespeare’s plays that speeches given early on often hold secret keys that suggest what is to come. Such is arguably the case regarding Bedford’s speech, in which he looks to the heavens and sees signs “importing change of times and states.” This is the first of several astrological references in which characters call on the heavens to not to ensure good happenings but to avoid bad ones. Here, Bedford commands the “comets” to take their own “crystal tresses”—that is, their tails—and use them as whips to “scourge the bad revolting stars / That have consented unto Henry’s death.” The point here, slightly obscured by Bedford’s poetic language, is that the astrological phenomena have portended Henry V’s death and inaugurated unwanted change. It’s implied, then, that other bad events may also be written in the stars. Arguably, though, the warning signs are already present in Bedford’s introduction of oppositions between day and night as well as crystal comets and revolting stars. These celestial antagonisms foreshadow the many rivalries that will take place down below on earth—between Gloucester and Winchester, Plantagenet and Somerset, male and female, and of course England and France.
My thoughts are whirlèd like a potter’s wheel.
I know not where I am nor what I do.
A witch by fear, not force, like Hannibal
Drives back our troops and conquers as she lists.
So bees with smoke and doves with noisome stench
Are from their hives and houses driven away.
They called us, for our fierceness, English dogs;
Now, like to whelps, we crying run away. (1.7.19–26)
Talbot’s first encounter with Joan la Pucelle on the battlefield is bewildering for him. Although he had previously heard about this woman who has taken up arms for the French, he is clearly shocked when he first sees her in person, expertly wielding a sword. His initial shock is registered in his uncharacteristically plainspoken statement of fact: “A woman clad in armor chaseth men” (1.7.3). Clearly, Talbot feels that Joan is out of place, dressed as she is in a man’s traditional costume, performing the conventionally masculine role of the warrior, and indeed beating men at their own game. Such a transgression immediately betokens evil, and Talbot reacts by calling Joan a “devil’s dam” (1.7.5) and a “witch” (6). All this takes place before Talbot comes to blows with Joan in single combat. They charge at each other and fight for a while, but the battle is indecisive, and Joan eventually exits. Talbot, meanwhile, is left behind feeling confused as to how a woman could prove his equal in a fight. It is at this point, when he’s onstage alone, that Talbot speaks the lines quoted here.
Talbot’s reflection on his own bewilderment showcases his depth as a character. Whereas most characters in this play are relatively two-dimensional and have straightforward motives, Talbot stands apart as a man in genuine internal conflict. He upholds the values and ideals of the chivalric order, and yet he constantly faces signs of that order’s erosion. The fact that a woman has now nearly bested him in battle provides another clear omen that epochal change is afoot. This change is plainly visible in the fact that Joan has, like the fearsome Carthaginian general Hannibal, made the English retreat like yelping dogs. The tides of power are thus beginning to turn against England. Yet it’s also worth underscoring how Talbot’s insistence that Joan must be a “witch” relates to the broader question of women in this play. Very few women appear in Henry VI, Part 1, but they are all figures with an ominous presence. Joan is obviously a formidable military foe. But there is also the Countess of Auvergne, who attempts to capture Talbot through deceit. Finally, there is Margaret of Anjou, who is set to become not just Henry’s queen but also Suffolk’s puppet. Women have power in this play, but their power is always evil.
And, by my soul, this pale and angry rose,
As cognizance of my blood-drinking hate,
Will I forever, and my faction, wear
Until it wither with me to my grave
Or flourish to the height of my degree. (2.4.107–111)
Act 2, scene 4, stages a dispute between Richard Plantagenet and the duke of Somerset that is already in its advanced stages by the time we find them. Having left the Inns of Court, where they were being too loud, they’ve come out to the Temple Garden to continue their debate about an obscure point of law. It isn’t entirely clear what this point is, but it seems likely that it relates to issues of inheritance. This, at least, is what becomes the subject of discussion in this scene, when Somerset calls Plantagenet a “yeoman” (2.4.81), which is a property owner ranked lower than the gentry. Somerset then disparages the memory of Plantagenet’s father, who was found to be a traitor to the Crown, stripped of his land and title, and executed without trial. With this insult, the legal dispute between Plantagenet and Somerset becomes personal, and each man calls on his followers to pluck a different-colored rose as signs of their support. Plantagenet’s allies take a white rose, while Somerset’s allies take a red rose. Then, to pledge his enduring hatred of Somerset, Plantagenet speaks the lines quoted above.
This scene is pivotal in the sense that it introduces a conflict that will have wide-ranging effects both in this play and in the subsequent installments of the Henry VI cycle. In this play, the dispute between Plantagenet (later the duke of York) and Somerset will lead indirectly to the tragic death of the great English general Lord Talbot. Yet for all its importance to the story, the Temple Garden scene probably never took place. Instead, Shakespeare invented it as a convenient way to stage the origins of the so-called “Wars of the Roses.” Historically, these political “wars” have their roots in the power struggle between Henry VI and the duke of York—a struggle that will play out in Henry VI, Part 2 and Henry VI, Part 3. Though subtle hints about that straggle arise in Henry VI, Part 1, it has not yet begun in earnest. Even so, Shakespeare has chosen to symbolize the origin of the struggle by making literal the symbolic reference to roses. As Warwick prophesies at the end of this scene, the wars that will come from this dispute “shall send, between the red rose and the white, / A thousand souls to death and deadly night” (2.4.126–27).
YOUNG TALBOT No more can I be severed from your side
Than can yourself yourself in twain divide.
Stay, go, do what you will: the like do I,
For live I will not if my father die.
TALBOT Then here I take my leave of thee, fair son,
Born to eclipse thy life this afternoon.
Come, side by side together live and die,
And soul with soul from France to heaven fly. (4.5.48–55)
The tragic climax of the play occurs in the fifth and sixth scenes of act 4. Scene 5 dramatizes the reunion between Talbot and his son John, who have not seen each other in seven years. Talbot has summoned John to join in him Bordeaux, where he’d hoped to teach him about life as a soldier. Unfortunately, John arrives just as the French forces close in around the city, trapping them both. Fearing for his son’s life, Talbot urges John to flee, but John refuses. Having been brought up on his father’s commitment to the ideals of chivalry, John argues that he would besmirch the Talbot name if he fled. And even if he saved his own life with the idea of avenging his father’s imminent death, John reasons that no army would accept a man who fled from his first battle. Talbot is ultimately forced to accept his son’s decision to stay, and their argument concludes with the exchange quoted above.
Shakespeare underscores the dramatic gravitas of this situation on a formal level. The conversation between father and son concludes with a neat pair of quatrains that each rhyme AABB. Such formality is an appropriate end to a conversation that has transpired almost entirely through rhyming couplets, where each man supplies one of the lines. For example, when Talbot asks, “Shall all thy mother’s hopes lie in one tomb?” his son responds, “Ay, rather than I’ll shame my mother’s womb” (4.5.34–35). Their conversation continues in this way for another twelve lines before arriving at this conclusion, where John affirms that he will remain by his father’s side, and Talbot, relenting, utters a prayer for their souls. It is somewhat unusual in Shakespeare to find a scene that plays out in such neat, typically end-stopped couplets. Such a technique is more typical in the earlier plays (such as this one), and it stands in contrast with the more famous blank verse of his later, more mature plays. Even so, the emotional power is undeniable, and it expertly sets up the tragedy that is to come in act 5, scene 6, when John is killed in battle and Talbot, cradling his dead son in his arms, dies of grief.
First let me tell you whom you have condemned:
Not one begotten of a shepherd swain,
But issued from the progeny of kings;
Virtuous and holy, chosen from above
By inspiration of celestial grace
To work exceeding miracles on earth.
I never had to do with wicked spirits;
But you that are polluted with your lusts,
Stained with the guiltless blood of innocents,
Corrupt and tainted with a thousand vices—
Because you want the grace that others have,
You judge it straight a thing impossible
To compass wonders but by help of devils. (5.6.36–48)
Act 5, scene 6, dramatizes the famous trial of Joan la Pucelle—better known today as “Joan of Arc.” Having been captured in battle by York, she is arrested and put on trial as a witch. In these lines, Joan offers testimony on her own behalf, while also issuing a damning critique of the English. These men have persisted in calling her a witch and a devil, believing that she could never summon the strength to defeat them on her own. But Joan implies that these insults are merely symptomatic of the English’s own villainy. Insisting on her own holy purity and virtue, Joan asserts that it’s the English who have “polluted” themselves with their own lust for power. This pollution has left their spirits “stained with the guiltless blood of innocents, / Corrupt and tainted with a thousand vices.” For the audience, having watched on as internal disputes driven by selfish power grabs have created dangerous rifts among the English, Joan’s words have a striking ring of truth.
Yet however true her words may be about the English, the audience also senses the falseness of Joan’s self-presentation. First, she rejects the supposition that she is a shepherd’s daughter and asserts that she’s “issued from the progeny of kings.” We know these claims to be patently false, since when we first met her back in act 1, she explicitly told Charles that she was “by birth a shepherd’s daughter” (1.3.51). Although that could have been a lie, the appearance of her shepherd father in this scene provides compelling evidence that she is, in fact, a shepherd’s daughter. Another point of dispute arises in her claim to take “inspiration of celestial grace” rather than “wicked spirits.” In fact, the only reason Joan was captured was because she was busy summoning devilish “fiends” (SD 5.3.7) to help her see into France’s future. It isn’t entirely clear what these fiends are, but what is clear is that Joan isn’t receiving visions from the Virgin Mary, as she’s previously asserted. The contradictions that emerge in this speech underscores Joan’s fundamental ambiguity in the play, where she is at once viewed as a man and a woman, a saint and a witch, a virgin and a whore.
