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Henry VI, Part 2 depicts the brutality set loose in England as the king’s weakness enables nobles to plot against each other and the commoners to revolt against the ruling class. King Henry VI, who was crowned while still very young, has never been completely in control of his kingdom. He’s long been pushed around by his courtiers, each of whom has a scheme of his own. Now he’s also under the influence of his manipulative new wife, Margaret of Anjou, who denounces what she sees as his excessive piety, yet also takes advantage of his tendency to be withdrawn and unassertive. Throughout the play, Margaret manages a near-complete reversal of their gender roles, taking control of conversations at court and eventually making demands of both the king and his army by the play’s end.
As this description of the king’s troubles suggests, the play is marked by numerous power struggles throughout. The scheming of the nobles first comes to a head when the honorable Gloucester, Lord Protector during Henry’s youth, is ousted from his office through the plotting of Margaret, Suffolk, and Winchester. Although these schemers conspire to remove and then murder Gloucester in an effort to empower themselves, they don’t realize that a second plot has been formulated in secret. This plot revolves around the duke of York and his followers, who believe York has a stronger claim to the throne based on genealogical analysis. Unbeknownst to Margaret, Suffolk, and Winchester, the killing of Gloucester is a key element of York’s plan: with the Protector out of the picture, no one remains to protect the king from an attack on the throne.
Gloucester’s violent death sets loose a chain of events ending in the deaths of Winchester, Suffolk, Somerset, and other nobles. As the body of the kingdom is threatened by popular revolt and civil war, this suffering first registers in the death and destruction of actual bodies.
Gloucester’s cause of death, for instance, draws much attention to the state of his body—namely, to the unnaturalness of his bulging eyes and disordered features. Many other bodies suffer throughout the play. Simpcox, who tries to fool the king into believing that his sight was restored, is revealed to be a liar and beaten until he runs away. Suffolk is beheaded by pirates; his head is delivered to Margaret, who carries it around the court. Lord Saye and his son-in-law are executed, and their pike-mounted heads are paraded through the streets of the city. Jack Cade, leader of the rebels, is likewise beheaded. Cade kills Stafford and his brother and drags their bodies behind his horse on the way to London. Meanwhile, many others die in battle, including Clifford and Somerset, the latter of whom is left crumpled outside an alehouse.
After Gloucester’s death, the king loses control of the machinery of justice and violence. Henry does manage to banish Suffolk, removing a dangerous influence from the state, but he is unable to stop Jack Cade, the formidable rebel leader hired by York to stir up trouble. Cade enters the play just as Gloucester departs from it, leaving a vacuum. The commoners had loved the “good duke Humphrey.” Now that he’s dead, they need someone else who will champion their cause. Enter Jack Cade, who announces a topsy-turvy new England that will honor the laborers above all. His rhetoric echoes a tradition of popular radicalism, which stressed that there was as much nobility in honest labor as in the educated speech of the gentry. With references to this egalitarian tradition, Cade mobilizes the anger of the commoners against the nobles, directing most of his violence against those who can read or write. Yet Cade also contradicts these same egalitarian claims by insisting that he will be king. His army seems to recognize the hypocrisy, but they don’t mind, as they are motivated by their dislike of the ruling class and their apparent enjoyment of mayhem.
Ultimately, Cade’s main role in the play is to stoke an emerging conflict. In addition to the numerous rivalries amongst the nobility, now there is an increasing class rift between the nobility and the commoners. The commoners assert their power by demanding punishment for Suffolk in the immediate aftermath of Gloucester’s death. Their power only grows under Cade’s leadership, though it also grows increasingly disorderly, to the point where the commoners appear mere agents of chaos—thereby confirming contemporary Elizabethan fears of mob rule. Just as the commoners give in to their hatred of the nobility, the nobles in the play frequently dismiss commoners with phrases like “the rude multitude” (3.2.135). The class conflict comes to a head with Cade’s invasion of London, but it also plays out on a smaller scale when Suffolk is captured at sea. His contempt for his lowborn captors leads him to spurn them, believing that no commoner would dare harm him. But the ship’s crew has had enough of highborn haughtiness, and they proceed immediately to cut off his head.
As the play hurdles toward its cliffhanger conclusion, the kingdom moves into an increasingly disordered state. The various schemes and subplots have caused everything to spin out of control. Then, into this mayhem strolls the duke of York with his army, ready to take advantage of the chaos to assert his rightful authority and, presumably, to restore peace and order to the realm. Returning to English soil, York proclaims his hatred of the king and his intention to take the Crown. At this point, the Wars of the Roses at last become literal, as the house of York takes up arms against the house of Lancaster. After the first battle, the Yorkists claim a tentative victory. They have bested their foes on the field, but now their enemies retreat to a different arena of battle: the court. It remains to be seen how the next stage of the war will play out.
