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3.34 AVERAGE
3.34 AVERAGE
Court intrigue! Random pirates! A trip to Ireland! A peasant uprising/invasion of London! And finally a big ole battle at St. Alban! Overall it felt inconsistent.
"Burn all the records of the realm. My mouth shall be the Parliament of England."
- Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 2, Act IV.7
So, I liked Part 2 of Henry VI a lot better than Part 1. It still isn't Hamlet, but it is complicated, funny, twisted in parts. One of my favorite aspects of the play are the scenes with Queen Margaret and Suffolk. No. They aren't great people, but they are a great couple. Their parting is amazing and poetic. My other favorite part is, well, anything with Jack Cade/Sir John Mortimer (how can you not love a guy who knights himself?). He is one of those great populists in literature and history, belonging on the shelf next to Huey Long and Donald Trump. Dammit. I'm trying to avoid Trump by reading the classics and I come across Cade and the Butcher and all their anti-intellectual followers. Burn the accountants and kill all the lawyers. We march on Washington D.C. boys.
There were also several nice lines, specifically:
―“The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.”
―"Let them obey that knows not how to rule.”
―"Could I come near your beauty with my nails,
I could set my ten commandments in your face.”
―"My shame will not be shifted with my sheet --"
―"A staff is quickly found to beat a dog."
―"So he be dead; for that is good conceit
Which mates him first that first intends deceit."
―"For where thou art, there is the world itself,
With every several pleasure in the world;
And where thou art not, desolation."
―"If I depart from thee, I cannot live.
And in thy sight to die, what were it else
But like a pleasant slumber in thy lap?"
―"This way fall I to death."
―"Because my book preferred me to the king,
And seeing ignorance is the curse of God,
Knowledge the wing wherewith we fly to heaven."
- Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 2, Act IV.7
So, I liked Part 2 of Henry VI a lot better than Part 1. It still isn't Hamlet, but it is complicated, funny, twisted in parts. One of my favorite aspects of the play are the scenes with Queen Margaret and Suffolk. No. They aren't great people, but they are a great couple. Their parting is amazing and poetic. My other favorite part is, well, anything with Jack Cade/Sir John Mortimer (how can you not love a guy who knights himself?). He is one of those great populists in literature and history, belonging on the shelf next to Huey Long and Donald Trump. Dammit. I'm trying to avoid Trump by reading the classics and I come across Cade and the Butcher and all their anti-intellectual followers. Burn the accountants and kill all the lawyers. We march on Washington D.C. boys.
There were also several nice lines, specifically:
―“The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.”
―"Let them obey that knows not how to rule.”
―"Could I come near your beauty with my nails,
I could set my ten commandments in your face.”
―"My shame will not be shifted with my sheet --"
―"A staff is quickly found to beat a dog."
―"So he be dead; for that is good conceit
Which mates him first that first intends deceit."
―"For where thou art, there is the world itself,
With every several pleasure in the world;
And where thou art not, desolation."
―"If I depart from thee, I cannot live.
And in thy sight to die, what were it else
But like a pleasant slumber in thy lap?"
―"This way fall I to death."
―"Because my book preferred me to the king,
And seeing ignorance is the curse of God,
Knowledge the wing wherewith we fly to heaven."
I think this has more to do with me just losing focus with these histories, but I just couldn't get into this one. Apparently, it's one of the more popular in Shakespeare's histories, but I was really losing touch with the characters. It felt much less like the earlier plays, and a lot more like a modern screenplay, which was sort of odd to read. I don't really like any of the characters at this point, and I'm not super invested in the plot. I'm so close to the end though.... so.... close....
From BBC One:
After the Battle of St Albans, Plantagenet and the Yorkists ride to London to claim the throne. Henry negotiates to keep the crown for his lifetime but agrees to disinherit his son Prince Edward.
Margaret is outraged and attacks Plantagenet at his house, slaughtering the duke and his youngest son Edmund. Elder brothers Edward, George and Richard escape and swear to avenge the murders and destruction of their house.
The Yorkists are victorious at the Battle of Towton and Plantagenet's eldest son is crowned Edward IV. Henry VI is imprisoned in the tower and Margaret escapes to France with her son Prince Edward.
Warwick travels to the French court to find Edward a bride. Word arrives that Edward is already betrothed to Elizabeth Woodville. Humiliated, Warwick switches sides and joins the House of Lancaster. Together with Margaret and the French king, Warwick forms an alliance to place Henry back on the throne.
George, Edward IV's brother, also joins with Warwick after failing to secure a good marriage or advance at court, but returns to the Yorkist cause moments before the Battle of Tewkesbury. The Lancastrians are defeated and Warwick is killed.
In the aftermath of battle, Richard slays Prince Edward in front of a distraught Margaret. Richard returns to London and murders the former King Henry in his cell. The court of Edward IV congregates for the christening of a new heir to the throne. The Yorkist dynasty seems secure.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b07cc779/the-hollow-crown-the-wars-of-the-roses-2-henry-vi-part-2
After the Battle of St Albans, Plantagenet and the Yorkists ride to London to claim the throne. Henry negotiates to keep the crown for his lifetime but agrees to disinherit his son Prince Edward.
Margaret is outraged and attacks Plantagenet at his house, slaughtering the duke and his youngest son Edmund. Elder brothers Edward, George and Richard escape and swear to avenge the murders and destruction of their house.
The Yorkists are victorious at the Battle of Towton and Plantagenet's eldest son is crowned Edward IV. Henry VI is imprisoned in the tower and Margaret escapes to France with her son Prince Edward.
Warwick travels to the French court to find Edward a bride. Word arrives that Edward is already betrothed to Elizabeth Woodville. Humiliated, Warwick switches sides and joins the House of Lancaster. Together with Margaret and the French king, Warwick forms an alliance to place Henry back on the throne.
George, Edward IV's brother, also joins with Warwick after failing to secure a good marriage or advance at court, but returns to the Yorkist cause moments before the Battle of Tewkesbury. The Lancastrians are defeated and Warwick is killed.
In the aftermath of battle, Richard slays Prince Edward in front of a distraught Margaret. Richard returns to London and murders the former King Henry in his cell. The court of Edward IV congregates for the christening of a new heir to the throne. The Yorkist dynasty seems secure.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b07cc779/the-hollow-crown-the-wars-of-the-roses-2-henry-vi-part-2
Episodic, tonally inconsistent, polyphonic, awkwardly paced—in other words, true to life. I had to keep reminding myself that the thorny and hard-to-follow arguments for competing claims to the throne are written that way on purpose, as a kind of theatrical historiography. Every character in this play is trying to seize its center of gravity, to grab the mic, to be the protagonist. As though they know that their speeches will shape their audiences’ perceptions both of Britain’s history and of the present day.
To me, this sense of let-me-speak urgency suggests that Shakespeare and his co-writers were uncertain of the cultural power/potential of staging history. They sure picked a crazy story to start with.
To me, this sense of let-me-speak urgency suggests that Shakespeare and his co-writers were uncertain of the cultural power/potential of staging history. They sure picked a crazy story to start with.
Again, it was good but not great. I finally figured out that Henry VI is voiced by David Tennant. The voice sounded familiar, but I didn't make the connection until, well now. Again, more or less setting the stage for the overthrow. Just like I forgot about Joan of Arc in the first part, I forgot that Jack Cade was a person and a thing. Really, I think that Shakespeare could have just done one play on Henry VI. Narrowed it down. Spent more time on the widening gap of the Yorks and Lancasters and the different factions that were for and against it. However, the Hollow Crown's rendition of Henry VI was very good and I highly recommend it. They cut stuff out that was unneeded to get the scope of things.
Possibly not the best place to start with Shakespeare's history plays, but a rather good one anyway. Prince Hal has now become King Henry V and has gone from a riotous jackass to a stately man burdened by the deathbed confession of his father about how they got to be kings. Reading the previous two plays, King Henry IV Parts 1 & 2, would have probably made it more shocking to see the changed Henry V and would have made it truly heartwrenching to see Falstaff, Nym and Bardolph die in a questionably successful but ultimately pointless war in France.
However, the play was solidly entertaining, with comic scenes between the more serious ones. My favourite has to be Act 3, Scene VII, where the French lords won't shut up about how dark it is and how magnificent their horses are. Considering the actors would have played this in broad daylight and the horses would have been only in the audience's imagination, as the Chorus prays us to do, it all is quite comical. I'm not so keen on the rapey nature of the comic and romantic scenes with Princess Katherine, but I understand that back in the day some of it would have been hilarious. The best parts of the play are without doubt Henry's monologues and speeches. Many of them are famous and duly so, but I'm a bit sad that the contrast between the goofy scenes, the great speeches, and the not so great action has been mostly ignored in productions and film adaptations.
Andrew Gurr's introduction and editorial notes were really informative and almost faultless. My only complaint is the lengths he goes to explain that two dying lords kissing each other and talking about how their blood seals their marriage is not, by any means, homosexual. I mean, it is true that the expression of affection between two friends was really different in Elizabethan times than it is today, but I think that it is at least plausible that the Duke of York and the Earl of Suffolk had something going on. Not acknowledging the implications of Act 4, Scene VI in the light of modern queer theory is just silly and a tad irresponsible I think.
However, the play was solidly entertaining, with comic scenes between the more serious ones. My favourite has to be Act 3, Scene VII, where the French lords won't shut up about how dark it is and how magnificent their horses are. Considering the actors would have played this in broad daylight and the horses would have been only in the audience's imagination, as the Chorus prays us to do, it all is quite comical. I'm not so keen on the rapey nature of the comic and romantic scenes with Princess Katherine, but I understand that back in the day some of it would have been hilarious. The best parts of the play are without doubt Henry's monologues and speeches. Many of them are famous and duly so, but I'm a bit sad that the contrast between the goofy scenes, the great speeches, and the not so great action has been mostly ignored in productions and film adaptations.
Andrew Gurr's introduction and editorial notes were really informative and almost faultless. My only complaint is the lengths he goes to explain that two dying lords kissing each other and talking about how their blood seals their marriage is not, by any means, homosexual. I mean, it is true that the expression of affection between two friends was really different in Elizabethan times than it is today, but I think that it is at least plausible that the Duke of York and the Earl of Suffolk had something going on. Not acknowledging the implications of Act 4, Scene VI in the light of modern queer theory is just silly and a tad irresponsible I think.
i've cracked the code! "ambitious woman" = hates men, loves black magic, about to be either burned alive or imprisoned
All I have to say about this play is that Act IV is a glorious mess and I am so glad it exists.