Shakespeare's Kings (100 page)

And so, in scene vii, we find him with his small army before the walls of York. At first he demands his dukedom only; but when Sir John Montgomery threatens to leave him unless he proclaims himself King, he agrees to do so. (Historically, he delayed this proclamation until he reached Nottingham.) He then heads south, and the last scene of the act finds him entering the Bishop's palace in London. Before his arrival Warwick, Clarence and other lords are discussing their resistance with King Henry: each will go to his own particular territory to rally what troops he can, and they will all meet Warwick at Coventry. Edward then appears, with Richard of Gloucester, and summarily returns Henry to the Tower. Then he and his men themselves set off for Coventry, for what they hope and believe will be the final reckoning.

There was, as it turned out, no fighting at Coventry, and the confrontation in V.i at the walls of the city, in the course of which Edward challenges Warwick to come out and fight and Warwick refuses ('Alas, I am not coop'd here for defence!'), in fact occurred on
29
March, a fortnight before Edward's arrival in London. Shakespeare is right, on
the
other
hand,
in
making
Coventry
the
scene
of
Clarence's
second betrayal
-
of
Warwick
this
time
-
and
of
his
return
to
his
brother's allegiance;
we
learn
from
Polydore
Vergil
that
he
had
first
prevented Warwick
from
fighting
by
urging
him
to
await
his
coming,
and
then on
his
arrival
ordered
the
4,000
men
whom
he
had
levied
in
the
cause of
Henry
VI
to
espouse
the
Yorkist
cause
instead.
When
he
and
Edward met,
the
two
brothers
had
'right
kind
and
loving
language',
swearing 'perfect
accord
for
ever
hereafter'.
They
were
to
fight
side
by
side
both at
Barnet
and
at
Tewkesbury.

The
story
of
Barnet
is
quickly
told.
We
hear
nothing
of
the
fighting, nor
of
the
fog
that
shrouded
the
field
and
was
as
much
a
feature
of
the battle
as
the
cold
had
been
at
Towton,
almost
exactly
ten
years
before. For
Shakespeare
-
and
perhaps
for
us
too
—
all
that
really
matters
is
the death
of
Warwick,
who
lives
just
long
enough
to
hear
of
the
fate
of
his brother
Montagu,
and
whose
last
words
suggest
a
certainty
of his
own salvation
that
cannot
have
been
shared
by
many
of his
hearers.
A
brief scene
iii
establishes
that
victory
has
been
won,
announces
the
landing of
Margaret
and
her
son
and
prepares
us
for
Tewkesbury.
Hall's
account of
the
three
weeks
that
followed
stresses
the
Queen's
despondency;
and indeed
she
had
good
reason
for
gloom.
But
for
the
bad
weather
that had
delayed
her
for
three
weeks
in
Normandy
she
would
have
been able
to
join
Warwick
before
Barnet,
and
the
result
of
that
battle
might have
been
very
different.
The
news
that
her
most
powerful
ally
was dead
had
very
nearly
sent
her
straight
back
to
France.
Only
the
assurances of
Somerset
that
Edward
too
had
sustained
heavy
losses
and
that
feeling in
England
was
still
overwhelmingly
Lancastrian
had
persuaded
her
to stay,
but
they
had
not
improved
her
spirits.

Shakespeare,
on
the
other
hand,
stresses
her
courage.
Addressing
her son,
Somerset,
Oxford
and
her
soldiers
on
'the
plains
near
Tewkesbury', she
makes
no
attempt
to
conceal
the
gravity
of
the
situation,
but
bids them
take
heart
none
the
less;
there
can
be
no
going
back
now:

Great lords, wise men ne'er sit and wail their loss,

But cheerly seek how to redress their harms.
¹

1.
Compare
Richard III,
Ill.ii:

My lord, wise men ne'er sit and wail their woes,

But presently prevent the ways to wail.

What though the mast be now blown overboard,

The cable broke, the holding anchor lost,

And half our sailors swallow'd in the flood;

Yet lives our pilot still. . .

The young Prince of Wales follows in similar vein, inviting - like his grandfather before Agincourt - all those who have no stomach for the coming fight to depart,

Lest in our need he might infect another

And make him of like spirit to himself.

So begins the penultimate battle of the long an
d tragic civil war. Scene V
represents its end: Margaret, Somerset and Oxford have all been captured. The two last are sentenced to execution and go bravely to their fate; Margaret's life is of course spared, but she is obliged to stand by while her son is murdered before her eyes, stabbed by Edward, Clarence and Gloucester in turn. At this point the dramatist in Shakespeare has once again taken over from the historian. He has chosen, quite legitimately, the alternative - and far more dramatic - version of the Prince's death as reported by Hall,
¹
and has then subdy improved it. In Hall's account the King does no more than strike the boy with his gauntlet, while Dorset and Hastings use their daggers. Nor is it anywhere suggested that Queen Margaret was present, either during the battle or afterwards - still less that Gloucester was about to kill her too, but was restrained at the last moment by the King.

Edward was now supreme. The House of Lancaster was effectively destroyed, and would never again imperil his throne. True, one or two Lancastrian lords, Oxford in particular and his friend Lord Beaumont, would continue to amuse themselves with isolated raids and short bursts of irregular warfare - in September
1473
the two of them would actually seize St Michael's Mount in Cornwall and hold it for several months -but they scarcely affected the security of the realm. A more serious danger in the long term might be the fourteen-year-old Henry of Richmond, who soon after Tewkesbury would sail with his uncle Jasper Tudor to France. But heavy storms in the Channel would oblige them

1. See Chapter 15, p. 303.

to put in at one of the Breton ports; and Duke Francis of Brittany, fully aware of Henry's potential importance, would keep him under close watch.

There remained the sad, defeated Henry VI - by now more an inconvenience than a threat, but still theoretically a rival to the throne. Whether the King himself would ever have ordered his elimination is arguable: Henry was widely seen to be a saint, and to Edward his murder would certainly have had overtones of sacrilege. His brother Richard, however, had no such qualms. We may perhaps doubt whether he left Tewkesbury quite as precipitately as Shakespeare suggests, 'to make a bloody supper in the Tower'; but the events represented in scene vi are, so far as we can tell, substantially true. One would love to think that the doomed King showed as much spirit at his end as his last great vituperative speech suggests; alas, it seems unlikely.

It remains only for Shakespeare to draw the various threads together and to provide a suitable closing scene. Edward refers in generous terms to the slaughtered enemies through whose blood he has 'repurchas'd' the throne, discreedy refraining to mention that several of them were not killed in battle but executed by the Yorkists afterwards; he then turns affectionately to his son — the future Edward V:

Young Ned, for thee thine uncles and myself

Have in our armours watch'd the winter's night,

Went all afoot in summer's scalding heat,

That thou might'st repossess the crown in peace;

And of our labours thou shalt reap the gain.

The irony would not have been lost on Shakespeare's audiences, even without Richard's two asides - in the second of which he cheerfully compares himself with Judas Iscariot. One tends to forget that at the time of King Henry's death the Duke of Gloucester was just eighteen years old.

A few lines before the end of this short scene we learn of the ransoming of Queen Margaret by her father and her return to France. This, as we have seen, did not actually occur until four years later, in
1475
- but where otherwise could it be reported? It forms, in any case, little more than a parenthesis. The true subject of the scene - even though it is covered in only nine lines - is Richard's villainy and duplicity:

And, that I love the tree from whence thou sprang'st,

Witness the loving kiss I give the fruit.
[Aside]

To say the truth, so Judas kiss'd his master

And cried 'All hail!' when as he meant all harm.