Shakespeare's Kings (76 page)

ordered
a
reconciliation,
and
the
two
men
were
forced
to
take
each other
by
the
hand;
but
they
did
so
with
an
ill
grace,
and
Beaufort resigned
the
chancellorship
shortly
afterwards.

In
the
play
it
is
not
the
parliament
but
King
Henry
himself,
now making
a
curiously
belated
first
appearance,
who
urges
the
two
to
make up
their
quarrel;
he
then
goes
on
to
restore
Richard
of
York
to
his inheritance.
Shakespeare's
authority
once
again
is
Hall;
but
where
did Hall
find
this
totally
untrue
story?
The
attainder
and
execution
of Richard's
father,
the
Earl
of
Cambridge,
would
not
have
prevented
his son
from
inheriting
his
estate,
while
the
dukedom
would
have
been
his by
the
normal
process
of
succession
after
his
uncle's
death
at
Agincourt. Eleven
years
later,
on
19
May
1426,
the
fourteen-year-old
Richard
was knighted
by
the
young
King
at
Leicester;
it
is
hard
to
see
what
more Henry
could
have
done
for
him.
The
salient
point
here,
however,
is that
by
his
public
support
of
Richard
he
is,
consciously
or
unconsciously, advancing
the
Yorkist
claim
to
the
succession.

And
indeed
Shakespeare
himself
is
doing
much
the
same:
he
is deliberately
building
up
the
character
of
Richard,
in
order
to
make
him the
chief
protagonist
in
the
coming
plays
that
will
portray
the
civil
war. We
have
now
watched
this
process
in
three
consecutive
scenes:
in
the Temple
Garden,
where
the
lines
between
York
and
Lancaster
are
first drawn;
in
Mortimer's
cell,
where
the
dying
man
confirms
Richard
as his
heir;
and
now
in
the
Parliament
House,
where
the
young
prince
is restored
to
his
blood'
and
girded
with
'the
valiant
sword
of
York'.
It is
important
to
remember,
however,
that
Richard's
claims
extended well
beyond
those
of
his
dukedom,
for
he
was
descended
from
Edward III
through
both
his
parents
-
his
paternal
grandfather
being
Edward's fifth
son,
Edmund
of
Langley,
while
his
mother
traced
her
descent through
the
Mortimers
(Earls
of
March)
to
the
third
son,
Lionel
Duke of
Clarence.
Heir
to
the
vast
estates
of
York,
March
and
Cambridge
-which
included
property
in
virtually
every
county
between
Yorkshire and
the
English
Channel
-
he
was
now,
after
the
King
himself,
the greatest
landowner
in
the
realm.
At
this
point
in
the
play
-
with
all allowances
made
for
its
cavalier
chronology
-
he
is
still
a
boy
in
his teens;
but
Shakespeare
is
already
grooming
him
for
stardom.

The
scene
ends,
none
the
less,
on
a
note
of
menace.
The
Duke
of Somerset
—
the
foremost
champion
of
the
Lancastrian
cause
and
the first
to
pick
a
red
rose
from
the
Temple
Garden
—
has
muttered
his
curse on York, in an aside worthy of the highest tradition of the stage villain, while the rest of those present are cheering the Duke to the echo; and a moment later the stage is empty of all but the King's great-uncle, the old Duke of Exeter, who speaks the sad words quoted at the head of this chapter. The play has run barely half its course, but we can no longer be in any doubt: catastrophe is on the way.

In France, meanwhile, the fighting continues. After three fairly long and static scenes the time has come once again for action, and we are treated to one of the most improbable representations of battle that even Shakespeare ever penned, in which Rouen is captured by the Pucelle and regained by the English in little more than a hundred lines. Joan, it need hardly be said, succeeds in entering the city only by a trick, infiltrating her men in the disguise of poor farmers going to market; but her magic, such as it is, has lost its potency. The Duke of Bedford, now mortally sick, has the satisfaction of seeing the final triumph of English arms and dies happy. The scene, short as it is, somehow contrives also to introduce a panic-stricken Sir John Falstaff in full flight from the enemy and, in contrast, the heroic Talbot - to whom, we are led to suppose, the victory is due.

For his version of the French capture of Rouen Shakespeare has turned either to Hall or, more probably, to an account by a certain Robert Fabyan - whose
New Chronicles
of
England and France
were published in
1516
- of the taking of the minor
castle
of Cornill, for which the Pucelle's unremarkable
little
ruse might have been more appropriate and even conceivably successful. As for his chronology, it is as cheerfully confused as ever. We cannot put even a putative date on the scene, since Rouen remained in English hands until
1449;
but Joan was burnt in May
1431,
'Old Bedford' surviving her for well over four years until he died peacefully in his bed at the age of forty-six. There is some serious telescoping, too, in the scene that follows, in which Joan effortlessly persuades Philip of Burgundy to change sides. Change he did, as we saw in the previous chapter; but his alienation from the English was a long, slow process, prompted by several different considerations. Perhaps the most important of these was the readiness of the French King to make a public apology for the assassination of Philip's father, John the Fearless; Burgundy himself, moreover, had never quite forgiven the English for their refusal to allow him to accept the surrender of Orleans in
1429.
Finally there were persistent rumours
that
the
English
were
considering
the
early
release
-
in
return
for
a sizeable
ransom-
of
Philip's
old
enemy
Charles
of
Orleans,
their
prisoner since
Agincourt.
The
one
suggestion
that
can
be
confidently
ruled
out is
that
Philip
suddenly
yielded
to
the
blandishments
of
Joan,
whom
it is
extremely
unlikely
that
he
ever
met.
Even
if
he
had,
she
could
hardly have
mentioned
the
liberation
of
Charles
of
Orleans,
who
was
to
remain a
prisoner
for
nine
and
a
half
years
after
her
death.

The
act
ends
with
a
short
scene,
set
in
'Paris,
the
Palace',
in
which King
Henry
creates
Talbot
Earl
of
Shrewsbury
before
moving
on
to his
coronation.
Once
again
the
chronology
is
awry:
Henry's
French coronation
took
place
in
December
1431,
Talbot's
ennoblement
-
as Earl
of
Salop,
incidentally,
though
he
and
his
successors
always
took the
name
of
Shrewsbury
—
not
until
May
1442.
The
true
purpose
of the
scene
seems
to
be
to
prepare
the
audience
for
the
act
to
follow, which
Talbot
and
his
splendid
son
are
to
dominate
-
though
Shakespeare actually
brings
down
the
curtain
with
another
bad-tempered
spat between
Vernon
and
Basset,
reminding
us
once
again
that
however desperate
the
fight
against
the
French,
the
growing
breach
between York
and
Lancaster
is
more
significant
still.