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Red Roses and White Roses
The Henry VI plays dramatize the central conflicts that historians refer to as the Wars of the Roses. Back in Henry VI, Part 1, Shakespeare offered a fictitious account of where this grandiose name first originated. An early scene in the Temple Garden featured Richard Plantagenet and the duke of Somerset embroiled in a legal disagreement that led each man’s followers to pluck a different-colored rose to show their allegiance. Somerset (representing the house of Lancaster) took the red rose, while Plantagenet (representing the house of York) took the white. The rose symbolism first encountered in Part 1 makes a powerful appearance in the opening scene of Part 3, where the Yorkists and Lancastrians square off against each other, with the members of each company each wearing the appropriately colored rose in their hat. Once again, the roses symbolize a complex political dispute that has already proved to have ruinous consequences, and which will continue to tear the kingdom apart. Henry recognizes as much when he comments on the blood-spattered faces of dying soldiers: “The red rose and the white are on his face, / The fatal colors of our striving houses; / The one his purple blood right well resembles, / The other his pale cheeks, methinks, presenteth” (2.5.97–100).
Paper Crown
In act 1, scene 4, Margaret and Clifford capture York in battle. Margaret torments her captive by presenting him with a handkerchief soaked in the blood of his son, the earl of Rutland, inviting him to try drying his tears with the already-saturated cloth. When York refuses to shed a tear, Margaret takes a different tack and places a paper crown on his head. Thus begins a miniature performance in which Margaret pretends that York’s crown symbolizes the breaking of his vow to Henry: “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” (1.4.100–103). Concluding that this broken oath is an act of treason and therefore punishable by execution, she knocks the crown off his head and condemns him to death. Margaret’s self-indulgent performance aims to make a mockery of York and his ambition for the Crown. It’s therefore suitably ironic that the “crown” he wears should be made of paper, a contemptuous symbol of his vanity. From a more general perspective, however, the paper crown may be read as symbolizing the vanity of all ambition and the fragility of power.
Three Suns
In the opening scene of act 2, Edward and Richard witness a strange phenomenon that occurs at dawn. Out of nowhere, as Richard is speaking, a stage direction indicates that “three suns appear in the air.” Edward is first to notice, and Richard confirms that he sees it too: “Three glorious suns, each one a perfect sun; / Not separated with the racking clouds, / But severed in a pale clear-shining sky” (2.1.26–28). At this point, there appears another stage direction: “The three suns begin to join.” Seeing this event, and making the phonic link between sun and son, Edward declares it a sign that the sons of York must be united. This declaration comes with an element of dramatic irony, since Edward and Richard don’t yet know that their brother, the earl of Rutland, has been killed by Clifford. Edward’s reading is therefore prescient in the sense that, of York’s four sons, only three are left alive. However, as the events that follow will make perfectly clear, these three remaining sons are anything but united—a fact registered in Richard’s initial emphasis on how the suns are “separated” and “severed.” In this sense, the three suns symbolize the disunity of York’s sons—and, more broadly, the disunity of the kingdom.
