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Animal Similes and Metaphors
Carrying on with a motif first established in Henry VI, Part 2, Part 3 features numerous animal similes and metaphors. As with the earlier play, the animal references tend to be proverbial, and characters use them to describe how they perceive the behavior of others. York, for example, calls the cruel Margaret a “she-wolf of France, but worse than wolves of France, / Whose tongue more poisons than the adder’s tooth” (1.4.112–13). This mixing of animal references is typical, as further indicated by York’s more famous condemnation of Margaret as a “tiger’s heart wrapped in a woman’s hide” (1.4.138). Elsewhere, animals serve not as fodder for insults but as archetypes for instruction. For instance, when Clifford decries Henry’s decision to disinherit his son, he invokes a series of animals to illustrate that the paternal drive to protect one’s young should be natural: “To whom do lions cast their gentle looks? / Not to the beast that would usurp their den. / Whose hand is that the forest bear doth lick? Not his that spoils her young before her face” (2.2.11–14). In his attempt to chide Henry for his unnatural paternity, Clifford goes on to cite the examples of “the lurking serpent” (15), “the smallest worm” (17), and even “doves” (18).
Insults and Mockery
A defining feature of the early acts of the play is the amount of time Shakespeare devotes to the hurling of insults and the making of mockery. The opening scene stages an encounter between the Yorkists and Lancastrians, with the two groups bickering over which house has the stronger claim to the throne. Tempers seem temporarily to cool when Henry brokers a deal to entail the throne to York upon his death. But just as soon as the deal is struck, it instigates further wrangling within each camp. The Yorkists are furious that York would allow Henry to remain on the throne, and the Lancastrians are horrified that the king would deny his son the throne in the future. Thus, the insults and mockery continue apace, reaching an early height at the end of act 1, where Margaret mocks the captive York by placing a paper crown. By act 2, everyone is incensed at everyone else, and pages of dialogue are devoted to the exchange of insults. Eventually a limit is reached, and the only way to settle matters is through war. As Clifford puts it: “the wound that bred this meeting here / Cannot be cured by words” (2.2.121–22).
Prophecies and Omens
As with the first two installments of this sequence of plays, Henry VI, Part 3 makes significant use of prophecies and omens. In this play, the figure most closely associated with foresight is Henry. This may be unexpected, since his reputation as a weak and withdrawing leader doesn’t prepare the audience to think of him as a particularly prescient man. Even so, Henry has several important prophetic moments throughout the play, all of which turn out to be true. His first prophecy arrives in the opening scene, where he intuits that York’s claim to the throne may be stronger, and that he will lose the struggle when “all . . . revolt from me and turn to him” (1.1.152). His second prophecy comes in act 4, when he meets the earl of Richmond and foresees that he is “England’s hope” (4.7.68). In fact, the earl will succeed the throne after Richard III, marking the end of the ruinous Wars of the Roses and the beginning of the Tudor dynasty. Henry’s final prophecy comes just before his death, when he envisions the bloody reign of terror that Richard, the duke of Gloucester, will bring to England when he becomes its next king.
