Mojo, The Bard, & Me

My lord, I long to hear it at full.

Salisbury

King Henry The Sixth Part II                     Act II, Scene ii    Line 6

Lo, I present your grace a traitor’s head,

The head of Cade, whom I in combat slew.

Iden

King Henry The Sixth Part II                     Act V, Scene i     Line 66

Here we have a pair of lines from King Henry The Sixth Part II, and a pretty long post. Both lines are very much involved with the real life history that is at the heart of this play. And both manage to twist that history to good effect.

The first line is from early on in the play where Richard Plantagenet is explaining why he, Richard, has more right to the throne than Henry. That’s Salisbury, not the steak, talking to the Duke of York. What he wants to hear in full is the Duke’s explanation of his title to the English crown. I have to say that I long to hear it in full as well. What follows is York’s explanation of what’s gone on with the succession of the crown since Edward III. Now I’ve gone over an awful lot of this in this blog previously, so you readers should be somewhat familiar with this stuff. But I still find it interesting and I had no idea that Will took the time to explain this all out in significant detail in any of the plays. But he does, and here it is. The Duke of York speaking here is Richard III’s father. This guy here is going to make a play for the throne, but it will be his sons, Richard and Edward, who both end up being kings. 

Here’s Will’s explanation of Richard’s right to the throne, as told by Richard (Richard is York). 

YORK 

Then thus: Edward the Third, my lords, had seven sons: The first, Edward the Black Prince, Prince of Wales; The second, William of Hatfield, and the third, Lionel Duke of Clarence: next to whom Was John of Gaunt, the Duke of Lancaster; The fifth was Edmund Langley, Duke of York; The sixth was Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester; William of Windsor was the seventh and last. Edward the Black Prince died before his father And left behind him Richard, his only son, Who after Edward the Third's death reign'd as king; Till Henry Bolingbroke, Duke of Lancaster, The eldest son and heir of John of Gaunt, Crown'd by the name of Henry the Fourth, Seized on the realm, deposed the rightful king, Sent his poor queen to France, from whence she came, And him to Pomfret; where, as all you know, Harmless Richard was murder'd traitorously.

WARWICK 

Father, the duke hath told the truth: Thus got the house of Lancaster the crown.

YORK 

Which now they hold by force and not by right; For Richard, the first son's heir, being dead, The issue of the next son should have reign'd.

SALISBURY 

But William of Hatfield died without an heir.

YORK

The third son, Duke of Clarence, from whose line I claimed the crown, had issue, Philippe, a daughter, Who married Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March: Edmund had issue, Roger Earl of March; Roger had issue, Edmund, Anne and Eleanor.

SALISBURY 

This Edmund, in the reign of Bolingbroke, As I have read, laid claim unto the crown; And, but for Owen Glendower, had been king, Who kept him in captivity till he died. But to the rest.

YORK 

His eldest sister, Anne, My mother, being heir unto the crown Married Richard Earl of Cambridge; who was son To Edmund Langley, Edward the Third's fifth son. By her I claim the kingdom: she was heir To Roger Earl of March, who was the son Of Edmund Mortimer, who married Philippe, Sole daughter unto Lionel Duke of Clarence: So, if the issue of the elder son Succeed before the younger, I am king.

 WARWICK

What plain proceeding is more plain than this? Henry doth claim the crown from John of Gaunt, The fourth son; York claims it from the third. Till Lionel's issue fails, his should not reign: It fails not yet, but flourishes in thee And in thy sons, fair slips of such a stock. Then, father Salisbury, kneel we together; And in this private plot be we the first That shall salute our rightful sovereign With honour of his birthright to the crown.

BOTH 

Long live our sovereign Richard, England's king!

Okay, so did you get all that? Yeah, it's definitely a little hard to follow, but York makes sense. He’s not making stuff up. And did you catch the fact that his father is the grandson of Edward III and his mother is the great-great granddaughter of this same Edward III? So the guy has a legitimate claim to the throne, arguably more legitimate than the guy sitting on the throne, but he's also got a legitimate claim to some very screwed up DNA from inbreeding. But I guess that's another issue.

In any event, it’s a pretty sure thing that the guys in this scene listening really didn’t need to be told this stuff. They knew these details. Will gave us this scene so that we, the audience, can understand all this. Remember, the action of this play (based on historical events) took place about 150 years before the year that this was written and performed. So that while the audience would have been familiar with this historical data, a quick brush up on the facts like this would have been helpful. And to a twenty first century American audience it would be indispensable (not that most of us follow all this ‘issue of Edmund, who was issue of Henry, issue of etc, etc, etc).

Now the speaker of today’s second Totally Random line is a fellow named Alexander Iden. Mr. Iden has a very small part in the play and this line is from much later in the play. It involves, of all things, a severed  head. Well then, it’s been a long time since we’ve had a severed head. Remember back in August when it seemed like we had a severed head every other day? We were lousy with severed heads. Ahhh, those were the good old days!  Anyway, this is the head of Jack Cade, a real life person who led a bit of a rebellion against the crown. Will uses Mr. Cade, or at least his head, to great theatrical effect here in Henry VI part II. I guess you would expect Jack Cade to be a real person since this is a history play. But it’s certain that not all of what Will presents in his history plays is pure historical fact. For one thing, there’s very little documentation of what was said by these historical figures, so Will is making up almost all of the dialogue. And if you read up on this stuff you’ll find that Will also gets a little bit creative with who was where, and when they were there. Occasionally he even makes up characters all together. But not Jack. And in fact, Jack was indeed caught by this Iden fellow in a garden (that’s played out in the scene before this one). But it appears that in true life Cade was dragged in dead but whole. It wasn’t until later that his head was lopped off. But it was good theatrics for Iden to walk in waving a severed head. Old Will was obviously a big fan of the severed head. And good theatrics.

 Today's two lines are both good examples of Will's use of theatrics. In the first one he's got a guy explaining stuff to two other guys what they already full well know (so that we the audience can learn it), and in the second one he's got a character waving a severed head around that was actually still attached to the body (so that we the audience can go 'Ahhhhhhh!!!'). Will: a true man of the theater.

This is me and my buddy doing some our own theatrics. But these theatrics are from about eight years ago and, you know, I'll be darned if I can remember what the heck we were trying to act out.

Pete: not so much a man of the theater.