Shakespeare's Kings (86 page)

1.
See p. 257.

2.
I can find no authority for the statement of Dr
Andrew Cairncross, the distin
guished editor of the Arden edition of the play, that
'the Cardinal dies in the same
house, and bed, as his victim Gloucester.' The house,
perhaps; but Beaufort is hardly
likely to have given up his
bed
to his prisoner.

pure
invention:
an
eyewitness
reports
that
he
spent
his
last
days
attending to
his
will.
On
the
evening
of
9
April
it
was
read
over
to
him,
and
he made
such
additions
and
corrections
as
were
necessary.
On
the
morning of
the
next
day
he
confirmed
it
in
an
audible
voice;
then
he
took
leave of
all
around
him
and
died
quietly
and
with
dignity.
He
was
buried
in Winchester
Cathedral,
where
his
magnificent
tomb
may
still
be
seen.
¹
Act
IV
of
the
play
is
concerned
with
two
themes
only:
the
murder of
Suffolk
and
the
rebellion
of
Jack
Cade.
On
the
face
of
it,
Shakespeare
makes
no
direct
suggestion
that
Suffolk's
captors
are
anything but
common
pirates;
certainly
they
appear
to
have
no
idea
of
their prisoner's
true
identity
until
he
himself
reveals
it.
The
pirate
'lieutenant', on
the
other
hand,
is
clearly
a
man
of
considerable
education.
His
first speech,
with
which
the
scene
opens,
begins
with
seven
lines
worthy
of the
most
high-flown
tragedy:

The
gaudy,
blabbing,
and
remorseful
day

Is
crept
into
the
bosom
of
the
sea,

And
now
loud-howling
wolves
arouse
the
jades

That
drag
the
tragic
melancholy
night;

Who
with
their
drowsy,
slow,
and
flagging
wings

Clip
dead
men's
graves,
and
from
their
misty
jaws

Breathe
foul
contagious
darkness
in
the
air.

and
the
long
diatribe
which
follows
shortly
afterwards
-
thirty-three lines
of
furious
invective,
obviously
well-informed,
embellished
with classical
allusion
and
even
a
Latin
tag
-
strikes
one
as
distin
ctly
unpiratical. It
could
hardly
provide
a
greater
contrast
with,
for
example,
the
language of
Jack
Cade
and
his
followers
in
the
following
scenes.
Is
Shakespeare hinting
that
there
may
after
all
be
something
more
in
the
Duke's
capture than
meets
the
eye,
or
is
this
merely
a
piece
of
literary
self-indulgence?

With
scene
ii,
set
at
Blackheath,
we
come
to
Cade's
insurrection. George
Bevis
and
John
Holland,
two
minor
characters
whom
we
meet here
for
the
first
and
last
time,
seem
to
have
been
actors
in
Shakespeare's company;
he
probably
saw
no
reason
to
change
their
names.
His
account

1. It seems a little hard that a modern statue of Joan of Arc should have been placed opposite it, the idea appare
ntly
being that she can confront her persecutor for all eternity. In fact Beaufort was only marginally involved in her trial and condemnation.

of the rising is inevitably no more than an imaginative reconstruction; as we saw in the previous chapter, Cade is unlikely to have been the unlettered rabble-rouser depicted here, with his unconcealed contempt for literacy or learning. A brief, somewhat macabre parenthesis in scene iv introduces Queen Margaret grieving over Suffolk's head, and there is another short passage in scene ix in which a messenger reports the return of the Duke of York from Ireland; for the rest, the act essentially follows Cade's progress, with a fair degree of accuracy, until his final flight, capture and death. There is no suggestion in Hall that the garden in which he was found was actually the property of sheriff Iden, but it hardly matters.

From Ireland thus comes York to claim his right,

And pluck the crown from feeble Henry's head:

Ring, bells, aloud; bum, bonfires, clear and bright,

To entertain great England's lawful king.

These opening words of Act V leave Shakespeare's audience in no doubt as to the reason for Richard of York's unauthorized return, in August
1450,
across the Irish Sea. It was not, however, as simple as that. For Shakespeare, as he has indicated many times before, York was a self-seeking villain consumed with personal ambition. In fact, from the moment of his arrival in Wales, Richard had never ceased to emphasize his personal loyalty to the King. His quarrel was with Somerset, who had returned from his disastrous regency in France and had been appointed - to almost universal dismay - Constable of England. Buckingham's assurance in the first scene that the King has already had Somerset arrested and imprisoned in the Tower is of course premature: it was only after Richard's second march on London - not from Ireland but from his northern estates — eighteen months later in the early spring of
1452,
that the King promised to take action against his favourite, and even then failed to do so. Shakespeare is thus telescoping the events of two years into a single scene: Cade's death in July
1450,
Richard's return from Ireland at the end of August and his interview with the King at Blackheath in early March
1452.
In the circumstances, this seems reasonable enough; more seriously off-beam, however, is the second part of that scene, after the entrance of Somerset. The sight of the man who he had been assured was in prison throws York into a fury:

King did I call thee? No, thou art not king;

Not fit to govern and rule multitudes,

Which dar'st not, no, nor canst not rule a traitor . . .

Give place: by heaven, thou shalt rule no more

O'er him whom heaven created for thy ruler.

A few moments later Salisbury and his son Warwick inform the King that they too must break their oath of allegiance and will henceforth look to York as their legitimate sovereign. The Duke of Buckingham and Lord Clifford remain loyal. The lines are drawn. War is now inevitable.

All this is, of course, a travesty of the truth. When he saw Somerset at Blackheath and realized that the King had broken his promise, Richard of York kept his head. To have behaved as Shakespeare describes, insulting both King and Queen ('O blood-bespotted Neapolitan!') and claiming the crown when surrounded by Henry's men, would have been suicidal. Instead, he wisely hid his resentment as best he could, returning with the King to London and swearing his oath in St Paul's. There followed Henry's mysterious illness and Richard's appointment as Protector, both events omitted altogether in the play. It was, as we know, only after Henry recovered and Somerset returned to power that the Duke of York relucta
ntly
gave the call to arms, protesting to the last his own personal loyalty to his King.

Another curious feature of the scene is the introduction of York's children - or, more accurately, of the eldest and the youngest of his four sons, the future Edward IV and Richard III. In March
1452,
the time of the meeting at Blackheath, young Edward was a month short of his tenth birthday - hardly a suitable age to stand surety for his father. As for Richard, he did not yet exist at all; he was to be born only on
2
October of that same year. Edward speaks but a single line; Richard, on the other hand, is already presented as a prematurely venomous youth, 'As crooked,' as Clifford unkindly points out, 'in thy manners as thy shape': the first reference in the canon of plays to Richard's deformity, to which Shakespeare gives so much prominence as his story continues.

The last two scenes cover the battle of St Albans. Clifford reappears at once. He is known to have played an important part in the engagement, fighting valiantly to keep the Yorkist forces out of the town; Shakespeare's account of his death at the hands of York himself is, however, based exclusively on a hint in Hall, who quotes Clifford's son as saying to York's second son, Edmund, the young Earl of Rutland: 'By God's blode, thy father slew mine, and so wil I do the and all thy kyn'. In the play, young Clifford is rather more articulate; the sight of his dead father inspires a long and savage speech before he sadly carries off the body. Poetic justice would dictate that York should also have dispatched his enemy Somerset, but Shakespeare rather surprisingly gives that task to young Prince Richard - who, at the time of the battle, was not quite three years old.

So, lie thou there;

For underneath an alehouse' paltry sign

The
Castle
in St Albans, Somerset

Hath made the wizard famous in his death.