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Summary
In a London hall of justice, the court convenes for the sentencing of the Duchess and her collaborators. Henry condemns Marjorie Jordan the witch, Roger Bolingbroke the conjurer, John Southwell, and Sir John Hume to death—the witch is to be burned at the stake, and the three men are set to be hanged. However, because she is nobly born, the Duchess must endure three days of penance in the streets before suffering banishment to the Isle of Man.
Gloucester voices his agreement with the king, but he is grief-stricken and asks to leave the court. The king asks for Gloucester’s staff, promises to be his protector, and tells him to go in peace. Margaret reiterates the king’s demand for his staff, telling Gloucester that he need not be Protector at all now that Henry is old enough to rule. Gloucester lays the staff at the king’s feet and takes his leave, saying that he hopes peace will come to the throne after he dies. Margaret picks up the staff and gives it to Henry.
York announces it is the day for the single combat between Peter and Horner. York says he has never seen anyone less prepared to fight than Peter. The two men enter, each with their own entourage of supporters. Several men offer drinks to Horner, who readily accepts, but Peter refuses all such offers. The two men fight, and Peter beats Horner, who confesses his guilt before dying.
Meanwhile, Gloucester and his men, in mourning clothes, wait in the street for the Duchess to pass by while performing her penance. She enters, barefoot, holding a candle, with her crimes written on papers and pinned to the sheet on her back. The Duchess tells Gloucester how “the giddy multitude” (2.4.22) is now staring at them both with hateful eyes. She says she shouldn’t be thus punished as the wife to the Protector, and she asks him how she shall bear the shame. She says Gloucester is in danger, too, as Suffolk, Winchester, and York have made plans to trap him. But Gloucester insists that he has done nothing wrong, and so long as he is loyal and without crime, he remains above reproach. Just then, a herald enters to summon Gloucester to a parliament to be held at Bury St. Edmunds. Gloucester bids the Duchess farewell, so teary he can barely speak. The Duchess says her only joy now will come in death, and she is escorted to the Isle of Man by an attendant.
Analysis
Scene 3 opens with Henry delivering his judgment on those whose engagements with witchcraft have threatened the realm. The execution of those directly involved in the sorcery is to be expected, death being the only sure way to purge the kingdom of such malevolent forces. Yet the king shows some degree of mercy to the Duchess, whose status as a noblewoman convinces him she deserves a softer punishment. Even so, her banishment to the Isle of Man will effectively rid the court of the danger clearly present in her ambitions for the throne.
But even as scene 3 opens with a pageant of justice and the purging of threats to the Crown, it ends with the foreshadowing of threats to come, but which as yet remain concealed. When Peter and Horner enter the court for their fight to the death, the purpose is ostensibly to determine which of these men is a traitor to the Crown: whoever dies is the guilty party. However, from the audience’s perspective, something else is clearly going on. York makes a point of emphasizing Peter’s status as an underdog. Not only is he young and inexperienced as a fighter, but his social insignificance relative to Horner, the master armorer, makes him easy to distrust. In many ways, Peter is a symbolic stand-in for York, who also views himself as a righteous underdog in his own plot to dethrone Henry. Just as it may seem impossible for York to capture the throne, it seems extremely unlikely that Peter will prevail in single combat. And yet, Horner is so sure of himself that he readily accepts drinks from his comrades, which ultimately causes him to lose the fight, confess his treason, and die. This fight, then, plays out York’s plot to defeat the king in miniature.
Just as the king doesn’t yet see that he’s already embroiled in a symbolic “single combat” with York, neither does Gloucester understand the trouble that’s coming for him. Even though Margaret and her supporters have accused him of being overly ambitious and now treat him openly with scorn, he remains fundamentally unworried about his future. His mistake, of course, is to believe that Henry is the true power behind the throne. He accepts Henry’s moving promise to be his protector in this time of grief, not seeming to realize that the ambitious and pushy Margaret is increasingly in charge. But even if Gloucester can’t see the truth of what’s going on at court, his wife can. The Duchess laments that her shame has tainted Gloucester’s reputation. She warns him to beware the shifting tides, but Gloucester, in his naïveté, persists in believing that harm can only come to him if he commits a crime. And since he’s been steadfast and genuine in his loyalty, he thinks nothing can touch him. But the audience knows how wrong he is, and we feel the tension of dramatic irony rising.
