First off I’m just going to say that next weeks Shakespeare post will be delayed. I will be out of town starting this weekend through to the following weekend, so I will not have time to read the play and make the post. I was hoping to actually read it this week along with part 2, but the added length with these histories has made that too difficult. I probably could have done it, but it may well have burnt me out, particularly since I’m not enjoying these plays as much as I did the comedies.
So after a decent first part, I’ve now moved on to the second part of this play. I found the first part to be okay, but it seemed to focus less on the actual plot than it did on the wars in France and the people involved in that. Since there was so little focus on what seemed to be the overall storyline this play focuses on in the first part, I honestly wasn’t sure how I would perceive the following two parts.
Story
Honestly, I would rather go back to the mode of operation of the first part than continue reading where the second part is going. This part of the story was just dull, and had no real protagonists to be honest, just a bunch of douchebag Dukes with egos the size of their country scheming to take or control the crown. The worst offender is the Duke of York, who was seemingly painted as a good guy in the first part, but now is just a scheming dick who seems to think all the world is his birthright, and demonstrates how he doesn’t actually deserve even what he has in the process.
Not only is all this political crap redundant and boring, but it takes forever for anything to happen and it all happens in a predictable fashion when it finally does. It also suffers from an obsession with the antagonists and hardly bothers to build up or focus on anyone else. I have to be honest, there’s no point reading or watching any story about a conflict when only one side bothers to show up and ever seems to have any victories. This whole story has been incredibly one-sided, and equally bland and one-dimensional as a result.
I don’t generally mind politically oriented stories, but that’s because there’s usually a lot of trickery and deception and a lot going on in general. That isn’t the case here, and it’s instead just a story about some egotistical Dukes dragging their country in to war due to a belief that one of them should be the rightful ruler. Of course, in all this it only becomes clear that they don’t deserve to rule due to the means in which they pursue the crown.
The most lacking part of the story is the lack of any real protagonist that you can identify with. Instead you just have a bunch of antagonists and victims, and nothing beyond that, and none of these characters are remotely interesting. Heck, the story is supposed to be about Henry VI, but so far he’s hardly had much of a role in the story. It might be titled “Henry VI”, but it’s actually just a story about a bunch of Duke’s who want to fuck him over, and hardly focuses on him at all.
As you can probably tell, I’m really not caring for this play at all to be honest. There’s some truth in it, since Britains history is full of idiot Kings and idiot Dukes, but that doesn’t mean it’s interesting. Obviously Shakespeare also took a great deal of license with the play as well, since it’s hardly an accurate representation of the events of this time period as we know and understand them. This is no different than the first part, which also took quite a few liberties as well.
Still, the killer for me is the lack of any good characters and the pure bland one-dimensional nature of the play. I’m hoping the final part of the play will be more interesting, but I’m not holding my breath. The first part at least had some promise since it had a hero and some interesting events, but all that has been absent from the second part. Since most the characters have now been introduced I’m not counting on any new characters being introduced to fill the gaping hole this play currently has. Maybe the next part will at least be less boring, who knows.
Characters
Margaret, the Queen, comes to some prominence in this play as she was only first introduced in the previous play. She is definitely not painted in a good light in the play at all. She spends her time scheming with Suffolk, who is either a very close friend or lover to the Queen, and she then seems to mourn his death to a completely ridiculous degree. It seems that Shakespeare had no love for Queen Margaret at all, since history seems to at least paint her in a kinder light, though she certainly still had her faults.
The Duke of Gloucester is a main character that is one of the victims of all the scheming. He seems to be a good man and is one of the few Dukes that doesn’t spend his time scheming, and he meets a rather unfortunate fate at the hands of the others as a result. He’s probably the closest thing the story has to a hero, but he doesn’t really do enough to warrant a designation above that of a plain victim. The character had potential, but Shakespeare spent more time with the villains and so Gloucester never really became much of anything.
The Cardinal Winchester is one of the schemers, working with Somerset, Suffolk and the Queen to topple and remove Gloucester. He meets a rather odd end, and really doesn’t do anything in the story aside from being a complete dick, like most of the others. Somerset is similar in the story, as he is mostly a tool to his fellow schemers.
On the other side you have York, Salisbury and Warwick. Warwick and Salisbury are just tools of York that he manages to convince to side with him with hardly any real effort. Obviously Warwick and Salisbury had little honor or loyalty if they were swayed so easily, and that they were also so willing to take part in the deceptions and scheming. While the play attempts to paint these three in a somewhat better light, they are still clearly villains and still don’t come across any better.
York is the ultimate villain in all of this. In the first part you’re inclined to lend him a little sympathy, but any sympathy he may have then deserved is completely lost in this part. He’s a true schemer and spends this entire part of the play working to usurp the crown from King Henry, including staging a rebellion to test the waters, which results in the death of many. For someone who wants to be a King, he sure spends a lot of time being completely dishonorable, egotistical, and demonstrating an utter disregard for the people of England.
The final character of note is King Henry himself, who has a somewhat greater role in this play, but is still seemingly a minor character in all of this. He’s completely trusting and oblivious to the actions of his Dukes and they play him like a puppet. Even his Queen plays the political games behind his back, and may well be taking the Duke of Suffolk as her lover. Still, he’s painted as a good man and an unfortunate victim of the douchebags in his court.
Writing
The writing is good and the wordplay is well done. Shakespeare’s talent is obviously present in the writing of this play, but it’s just unfortunate that the subject matter is hardly deserving of it. Of course, Shakespeare still could have done a better job in making it at least interesting, or giving us a protagonist, so it’s still probably not the best example of his talent. I mean, the lines he writes are top notch for the characters, but the story that is told and how he tells it still doesn’t work.
The pacing is really lacking, and I spent half the play just hoping something would happen. I’ve read shorter single plays earlier in the book that progressed further and did more in their few pages than this play has done in two larger parts. If the play was actually intriguing and interesting I might have been able to get myself through two of them this week and finished next weeks post as well, but I just couldn’t do it.
Closing Comments
I think it’s safe to say that the histories are not really agreeing with me so far. Part of it is that I just don’t care for the infighting and political wars that make up much of Britains history during the monarchy, but other than that I just find them dull and one-dimensional as well. The first part was decent because it didn’t really focus on the overall story, but now that the play is focusing on that I’m finding it much less enjoyable.
I’m hopeful that later histories will prove more interesting than the story of Henry VI, but I doubt it. The stories of Britains Kings are full of tragic endings and political conflicts, so I kind of feel like all of the histories are just going to feel a bit repetitive by the end. Maybe not, and I sure hope not, but that’s the impression I’m getting at this point, but it’s early.
© 2010, Keonyn. All rights reserved.
Tags: Shakespeare, The Histories, The Yale Shakespeare, William Shakespeare
