Henry VI, Part II: The Squeakquel

“I don’t like Shakespeare. I’d rather be in Malibu” (Anthony Hopkins).

That quote cracks me up. Some would lament it as indicative of the plight of high culture, as Shakespeare’s status declines in the face of the Hollywood machine. I prefer to think of it as a case of shifting cultural capital, forging synergies between old and new, high and low, literature/theatre and film/television. After all, Hopkins’ next starring role is playing a Norse deity in the film adaptation of Marvel’s iconic Thor, a role that will no doubt milk and exploit his “Shakespearean” baggage. That film’s director, Kenneth Branagh, is another player who brings Shakespearean baggage to the game.

The thing to remember is, Shakespeare was a capitalist too. Like me (I’m sorry to say) and probably like you (don’t deny it, and take off your Che beret). I imagine Shakespeare at one point in his lifetime said “I don’t like Stratford-upon-Avon. I’d rather be in London”, and proceeded to trade rural life for the London entertainment industry. As suggested in my last post, the Henry VI plays are testament to this, as early modern examples of franchise building. They were also, like most of Shakespeare’s plays, drawn from existing source material with some brand recognition attached.

Anthony (Castle, not Hopkins) rightly pointed out in his post on Henry VI, Part I that the plays are intersections of history and myth. I’d go further than that, and say that history and myth also intersect closely with ideology and commerce in these plays. The Joan of Arc we saw in Part I isn’t the hero she’s usually depicted as, but a bit of an unlikeable slag. Why? Because she was Catholic, and England at the time Shakespeare wrote the play was ruled by the Church of England. And she was French, which obviously didn’t help either. Richard III, who we first meet in Part II and who will steadily rise through the ranks over the next couple of plays, is depicted as a villainous Machiavel rather than the intelligent leader that most modern historians would agree he was. Why? The dude who defeated Richard III was Queen Elizabeth’s grandfather, so it was in Shakespeare’s interests to stick to the official spin perpetuated by Elizabeth’s family? And King Henry VI is depicted here and elsewhere as wet, ineffectual, and – Anthony probably put it best – ‘bland white meat’. Why? Again, it was in the interests of the Tudors to paint previous dynasties as flawed and ineffectual. Thus we see Shakespeare heavily informed by ideology and commerce: it’s treasonous to suggest that the French-Catholic Joan of Arc was heroic, that Richard III was nice to children, and that Henry VI was a good King, so it’s far better practice to keep spinning the spin and reap financial booty from perpetuating it for the masses.

Unfortunately, there’s something dramatically unsatisfying about the play, and that’s largely to do with its titular character. The play’s called Henry VI, Part II, which implies that the King is at its gravitational core and provides its emotional centre, and yet the King is… a blank. Passive. Uncharismatic. Boring. A dupe. But that sense of dramatic dissastisfaction is very deliberate on Shakespeare’s part, and not just for ideological reasons: he wants the reader/viewer to feel frustrated by this useless, impotent leader and this shitty situation. And you do. Or at least I did.

I used the term soap opera to describe Part I and that’s even more true of Part II, but I’d say this is also the Shakespearean equivalent of an Agatha Christie thriller. A victim – Henry VI – treads the stage with pretty much a big red target attached to his back, and we the reader/audience watch as Shakespeare moves all the different chess pieces across the board, as conspirators and co-conspirators sfuffle about and warring factions spar, and gradually we get closer and closer to the inevitable murder of the inevitable victim. The thing is, we don’t quite get there, and Shakespeare leaves us hanging. Of course, if you know history, you know who did it. If you don’t, you have to keep reading. Which is exactly what I hope you’ll keep doing, when I return next week with my take on Henry VI, Part III. Until then…

Ben