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Ay, marry, sir, now looks he like a king.
Ay, this is he that took King Henry’s chair,
And this is he was his adopted heir.
But how is it that great Plantagenet
Is crowned so soon and broke his solemn oath?
As I bethink me, you should not be king
Till our King Henry had shook hands with death.
And will you pale your head in Henry’s glory
And rob his temples of the diadem
Now, in his life, against your holy oath?
O, ’tis a fault too, too, unpardonable.
Off with the crown, and with the crown his head,
And whilst we breathe, take time to do him dead. (1.4.97–109)
In the play’s opening scene, Henry makes a deal with York to entail the Crown to him after his death. York pledges to remain content with his dukedom and not agitate for the throne, and in the meantime, he will return to the town of York. No one is more upset about this arrangement than Margaret, who rails against her husband for disinheriting their son, Prince Edward. Seeing that Henry won’t do anything to defend his claim, Margaret takes matters into her own hands. She gathers the king’s troops and leads them to York, where she and Clifford capture the duke. At first, Margaret sets out to torment York by presenting him with a kerchief soaked in the blood of his son, the earl of Rutland. When York refuses to satisfy her with a suitable display of grief, she shifts from torment to mockery and places a paper crown on his head. It is at this point that Margaret speaks the lines quoted here.
When she sets the flimsy crown on York’s head, Margaret initiates a miniature play within a play in which she takes on the role of an interrogator. She pretends that in wearing the crown, York has broken the “solemn” and “holy” oath he made with Henry to wait patiently until his death before assuming the throne. Judging this action “unpardonable,” she condemns York to death by the measure conventionally used for traitorous nobles: beheading. The miniature scene of judgment played out here showcases Margaret’s penchant for drama. Indeed, it recalls a similar scene in Henry VI, Part 2, where she intentionally dropped an item then pretended that Gloucester’s wife, the Duchess, had stolen it from her. Slapping her across the face in plain view of the court, Margaret demonstrated her power while humiliating her hated rival. Here again, Margaret shows her unmatched ability to humiliate her enemies on her way to defeating them. Clearly, her power is still on the ascendant, and it will continue to grow in the coming acts.
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.
Who scapes the lurking serpent’s mortal sting?
Not he that sets his foot upon her back.
The smallest worm will turn, being trodden on,
And doves will peck in safeguard of their brood.
. . .
For shame, my liege, make them your precedent. (2.2.11–18, 33)
After the forces led by Margaret triumph over York and his army, Henry comes to the town of York to reunite with his wife and inspect the damage. He is horrified by York’s death and aghast when he sees the late duke’s head mounted to the town gate. The king then attempts to assert his innocence in the matter, uttering a prayer: “dear God—’tis not my fault, / Nor wittingly have I infringed my vow” (2.2.7–8). Upon hearing this move to innocence, Clifford responds with the words of chastisement quoted here. Tapping into a motif that continues throughout the play, Clifford uses animal references to comment on the perversity of Henry’s decision to disinherit his son. Through a series of rhetorical questions about how lions, bears, and “the lurking serpent” might each respond to enemy threats, Clifford underscores how unnatural Henry’s act was. Even proverbially gentle creatures like doves would seek to defend themselves and their young. Henry, meanwhile, has proven so weak that he’s meeker than “the smallest worm.” Clifford therefore enjoins him to model his actions on the natural world and ensure that the Crown will pass to his son.
The others present at this scene agree with Clifford, and they share his desire to see the Crown remain on the head of a Lancaster. However, Clifford has a special reason for being upset with Henry’s decision to entail the Crown to York. Yorkist forces killed Clifford’s father in the battle at St. Albans, which concluded Henry VI, Part 2. In that play, the young Clifford discovered his father’s corpse on the battlefield and gave a rousing speech about how he would repay any York he met with bloody vengeance. His lust for revenge explains his eagerness to kill Rutland as well as York himself. But what’s also key is the fact that Clifford lost his father at a young age. As an orphan, he is perhaps more triggered than most by the king’s deprivation of his son. In a sense, then, Clifford takes it personally—or, at the least, he identifies with Prince Edward and wants to ensure that he gets the inheritance that Clifford himself never got. This concern about the relationship between fathers and sons resonates throughout all the Henry VI plays, and particularly this one, in which we will later see sons killing fathers and fathers killing sons.
Ah, what a life were this! How sweet! How lovely!
Gives not the hawthorn bush a sweeter shade
To shepherds looking on their silly sheep
Than doth a rich embroidered canopy
To kings that fear their subjects’ treachery?
O yes, it doth—a thousandfold it doth.
And to conclude, the shepherd’s homely curds,
His cold thin drink out of his leather bottle,
His wonted sleep under a fresh tree’s shade,
All which secure and sweetly he enjoys,
Is far beyond a prince’s delicates,
His viands sparkling in a golden cup,
His body couchèd in a curious bed,
When care, mistrust, and treason waits on him. (2.5.41–54)
After Margaret has defeated the Yorkist forces, the armies regroup and return to the battlefield. As she prepares for the fight, Margaret orders Henry to leave the scene—she thinks he’s bad luck and that she’ll have a better chance of success if he goes away. Henry therefore retreats to a nearby hill, where he sits and watches the battle play out down below. He initially comments on how the soldiers flow back and forth like ocean tides, with the advantage constantly oscillating between the two armies. As he continues to watch, he witnesses soldiers looting corpses, only to find that they’ve killed their own kinsmen. Henry mourns with the men, trying to rationalize that the mayhem playing out before him isn’t his fault. As we in the audience look on as Henry, in turn, watches the battle, we grow increasingly aware that Shakespeare is staging a version of the play-within-a-play technique that will become so important in his later works. Given his passivity and preference for withdrawal, it’s appropriate that Henry is playing the role of the distanced observer, contemplating the action rather than participating in it directly.
Yet even as Henry observes and laments the violence playing out below, he also fantasizes about abandoning the Crown altogether and becoming a shepherd. In a remarkable bit of irony, the king adopts a rhetorical register that would be more appropriate for a pastoral poet than a king witnessing violence and death. Waxing poetic about the sweetness and leisure of the shepherd’s lifestyle, Henry makes it clear how much he’d prefer to live a simpler, more rustic lifestyle. When placed side by side, he has no doubt that the lowly shepherd enjoys a more satisfying and secure life than a king, who, despite his riches and creature comforts, must always remain alert to treachery. However out of step with the scene he’s watching, Henry’s words generate a sense of pathos for this man who is so clearly ill-suited to his inherited role. Indeed, he is so incapable of dealing with the reality of war that his first response is essentially to dissociate, dreaming of sheep while gaping at corpses.
Why, I can smile, and murder whiles I smile,
And cry “Content!” to that which grieves my heart,
And wet my cheeks with artificial tears,
And frame my face to all occasions.
I’ll drown more sailors than the mermaid shall;
I’ll slay more gazers than the basilisk;
I’ll play the orator as well as Nestor,
Deceive more slyly than Ulysses could,
And, like a Sinon, take another Troy.
I can add colors to the chameleon,
Change shapes with Proteus for advantages,
And set the murderous Machiavel to school.
Can I do this and cannot get a crown?
Tut, were it farther off, I’ll pluck it down. (3.2.182–95)
These are the chilling final lines of Richard’s first soliloquy, which he delivers at the end of the scene where his brother, King Edward, lures the widowed noblewoman Lady Grey into marriage. Edward’s awkward attempt to seduce Lady Grey is as painful to watch for the audience as for his brothers. Richard comments, “The widow likes him not—she knits her brows,” while George notes, “He is the bluntest wooer in Christendom” (3.2.82–83). Eventually, though, Edward convinces Lady Grey to marry him. When he presents the news to his brothers, neither seems particularly excited for him. But their discussion is interrupted by a nobleman who enters and announces that Henry has been captured. At this point, everyone leaves the stage save Richard, who for the first time in the play reveals his deeply embittered perspective. He begins by wishing that Lady Grey won’t give Edward a child, since that would place another person before him in the line for the throne. He then meditates at length about how his physical abnormalities leave him with no other option in life than to pursue power at all costs.
By the time Richard arrives at the end of his soliloquy, he has made up his mind to seek the Crown for himself, and he concludes with the rallying words quoted here. He affirms that, going forward, he will essentially be an actor playing the part. He will “frame [his] face to all occasions,” allowing him to hide in plain sight as he plots the murder of everyone who stands between him and the throne—including his brothers. As if to psych himself up for the task, Richard makes a series of boasts where he compares himself to several legendary Greeks who fought in the Trojan War. He claims that he will surpass the aged Nestor in wisdom and prove a greater deceiver than Ulysses. Furthermore, like Sinon, who persuaded the Trojans to accept the wooden horse containing concealed warriors, Richard will sneak his way into the citadel of power and take it by force. As he concludes, he makes a more contemporary reference to the notorious Italian philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli, who advocated for the use of ruthlessness in pursuit of political aims. Declaring that he will school even “the murderous Machiavel,” Richard promises to find a way to claim the Crown.
And thus I prophesy: that many a thousand
Which now mistrust no parcel of my fear,
And many an old man’s sigh, and many a widow’s
And many an orphan’s water-standing eye—
Men for their sons’, wives for their husbands’,
Orphans for their parents’ timeless death—
Shall rue the hour that ever thou wast born. (5.6.37–43)
With these lines, Henry makes his third and final prophecy of the play. His first prophecy appeared in the opening scene, where he intuited that York’s claim to the throne may be stronger, and that he would lose the struggle when “all . . . revolt from me and turn to him” (1.1.152). His second prophecy came in act 4, when he met the earl of Richmond and foresaw that he would one day be “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 third prophecy comes in the final moments of his life. After Edward has won the battle against Margaret’s forces and the York brothers have killed her son in front of her, Richard slips out of the room and heads to the Tower. There, he finds Henry in his cell. Henry knows that Richard has come to kill him, so he wastes no time in telling the youngest living son of York what he thinks.
Henry begins by communicating his vision of an even more degraded future England. Though the details are hazy, Henry sees universal torment on the horizon. Young and old alike will suffer, and Henry implies that widespread death will lead to an epidemic of orphans. This image of orphanhood recalls a thematic concern that animated the early acts of this play, when the sons of York were suddenly orphaned, and the orphan Clifford chastised Henry for disinheriting his son. If Richard is to be responsible for this orphan-filled future, it’s somewhat appropriate, given that he has declared himself an orphan in the most radical sense. Not only is his father dead, but he recognizes no other authority above him, including God. Audiences who go on to see or read Richard III will see this future unfold on the stage or the page. For now, though, it’s important to note that, despite his lack of political prescience, Henry has turned out to be the most far-sighted character in the play. In this sense, the religious king who has always preferred prayerful devotion over political provocation ends his life as something of a mystic, warning of an ominous England to come.
