The Shakespeare Project

So, a last minute trip tied me up at the end of the month, so I’ll wrap up H6A here with a final couple of notes that of course won’t do justice to what I’ve seen digging through the excellent essays in the Signet Classics edition of the H6 plays that I picked up so that I wouldn’t have to drag my complete works on planes criss-crossing the country this month.

Summary Note I - Staging, & Language:
If we assume that H6A is an early play written exclusively by Shakespeare, we’re left with the simple fact that the language isn’t nearly as well developed as the language in his later plays. We see a couple of interesting flashes, but even the more interesting moments, such as the rhyming dialog between Talbot and his Son come of as a bit contrived. The use of images and symbols that give distinct characters to some of his later plays (see: Romeo and Juliet’s astronomical metaphors or Hamlet’s decay) seem largely absent from this play.

What we do have is a play with round and robust characters and a strong dramatic structure that makes this a much more successful play to view than to read. I was fortunate to see all three parts of this play (as I’m sure I’ll mention throughout the next couple of months) in Michael Boyd’s run at the RSC in Stratford-Upon-Avon. Boyd did a fantastic job staging a very difficult set of plays. The plays were bloody, violent, and extremely entertaining.

Summary Note 2: Structure

While the play may lack the more mature Shakespeare’s deft hand at dialog, the playwright has left us with a play who’s structure is very well defined into a repetitive series of triads. While the strong England should be united in a simple war with the French we see in nearly all aspects of the play that things are never that simple — conflict is always aimed in three directions instead of the simple head-to-head conflict that would result in the obvious victory of Talbot.

The first time we’re instance of these “triads” that will come to dominate the play is from the three messengers who each bring news of England and Talbot’s losses in France. By the time the third messenger delivers his message we see an England that appears united, but quickly we see three sides develop: The older noblemen Bedford and Exeter head off to France to aid Talbot while Gloucester heads to the king and Bishop Winchester announces his plans to undermine Gloucester.

We see a second triad in the battles in France — each mirror the previous one becoming more and more tragic at they go along. Each of the three battles of Orleans, Roeun, and Bordeaux follow a similar pattern with French victory early victory followed by their repulsion by English forces until Bordeaux where the English come to an un-easy peace with the French, which marks a kind of short-lived victory for England.

In each of these battles we also see the deaths of the greatest English nobles — starting with Salisbury’s being shot in Orleans, following with the wounded Bedford dying in his chair upon the field at Rouen, and finally the fall of Talbot in Bordeaux.

The play features only three female Characters, the Countess of Avergne, Joan, and Margaret. Each are refelctions upon each other and they get progressively more dangerous. While Joan takes center-stage throughout the play, without the aid of the demons that (drive her?) help her, she’s helpless against the English. Avergne shows a cunning plan to capture Talbot, but his nobility and power charm her/coerce her into helping them out. The final female character will be addressed more in the coming plays, but by the end of this play we’re left with Margaret, a Frenchwoman, betrothed to the king of England.

In the end of Talbot, we see the English forces obviously divided into three — Exeter and Somerset’s internal squabbling leave the third great English general, Talbot surrounded and destroyed. This is the struggle that all other triads presage.

In between each battle, we see two conflicts on English soil that seem prove to be more dangerous than any battle in France, no matter how bloody it is - the arguments at Henry V’s funeral and the fight outside the tower before Orleans, the argument in the temple garden and the fight at parliament, before Roeun, and the fight at Paris and the withholding of support by both York and Somerset before Talbot’s fall at Bordeaux.

Summary Note 3: Themes & Motifs

An Individual’s Role in History & Free Will
One of the areas that this play differs from most of Shakespeare’s other plays is the way that it addresses the role of individual free will in history. In looking at the way the characters act, they seem less like the driving forces of history and more like cogs moved by outside forces. These players in history don’t have a choice in what’s happening, unlike a character like Macbeth who’s choices lead to his downfall, these characters merely react to their required roles.

The Decay of England

The constant victory against the French, who regularly outnumber them is a validation that England is so far superior to France that one Englishman is equal to at least half a dozen Frenchmen. However, throughout the play we’re lead from a unified England in which all men are as noble as Talbot to one full of self-serving men. This loss of nobility is finalized when the two selfish generals of York and Somerset leave Talbot to die, Suffolk woos Margaret, and the King selfishly changes his marriage plans. No one thinks of England anymore, and we see England fall to a corrupt state rife for the chaos that we will see in the next two plays.

The Corruption of Ceremony

Throughout this play we see a variety of ceremonies defiled — showing the corruption that’s eating apart the English. The play opens with a solemn funeral destroyed by conflict. The coronation of the king is continuously interrupted by strife. One of the most dramatic examples that we see of this is in the death of Talbot. When Sir Lucy arrives at the battle scene, he asks for Talbot by his full list of titles as they’re named on his epitaph, Joan replies:

Here’s a silly stately style indeed!
The Turk, that to and fifty kingdoms hath,
Writes not so tedious a style as this.
Him that thou magnifi’st with all these titles
Stinking and fly-blown lies here at our feet.

Summary Note 4: The Idealized King

I’ll address this in more depth as we get to know Henry VI more, but I’d like to point out at this time that throughout this play more attention is payed to the dead Henry V than to the newly crowned Henry VI.

I’m sure I’ll mention some of these more in the future, by I’m behind schedule, so now we’re off to Henry VI, Part II.