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WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE – HANRY VI PART ONE – BBC – 1983
We are entering the realm
and reign of the last Lancaster king of the red
rose against the white rose of York.
This rivalry is costing England
a lot: the successive defeats in France with the final death of Talbot,
Senior and Junior, the latter in the arms of the former, the former the grave
of the latter, the latter enhearsed in the embrace of the former. Another red
rose supporter negotiates a wife for his king who still is a child, at the most
a rather young teenager. And at the same time Richard of York who has been
reinstated in his dukedom and made regent of France is forced by the clergy to
accept a compromise with Charles VII, a compromise that is meant to be
humiliating and binding under feudal law and oath. What the English forget is that
this long one hundred year war has created something that is far from feudal:
national feeling and pride in France
with the change in alliance of the Duke of Burgundy who plunges England into
defeat when he sides with the King of France. Shakespeare makes fun of Joan of
Arc and makes her pregnant of who knows who in the French court, many names are
uttered and none prevails. But it is not sure he understood the real national
feeling that emerged from this long historical episode covering four or five
generations (life expectancy down to hardly twenty with the Black Death raging
at the time.
But one thing is sure. France is building some kind of unity whereas England is torn apart by the mounting quarrel
between the roses of the two houses of York and Lancaster. Henry VI is a
child still and seems to be very weak and very dependent on advice and
counselors, though his decision to marry the woman the Earl of Suffolk has
negotiated for him though Henry does not know anything about her, nor what she
looks like, sounds like a teenage whim and his last words sound like some private
engulfment in playing with his body more than anything else:
I may revolve and
ruminate my grief.” (Act
V Scene v)
Since kings in France make maps of France
in such games, I guess Henry VI retired to make a map of England in
solitude.
But the play is full of
battles. The misery of war is represented I guess by the setting made up of old
planks and boards, old disarrayed doors and other recuperated disparaged flotsam
of some shipwreck retrieved from the Thames, the whole shabby construction in
the shape and form of a central space surrounded by what would be houses, city
walls, or any other urban building. It is mostly an all-purpose décor for the
miserable dealings of the English crown with a situation they cannot even
control since they are deeply divided and ready to riot at any time. The French
king accepts the compromise imposed onto him on the advice of his counselors that
he will be able to break it any time he wants, which is more than true since
then the English crown and the regent of France, the Duke of York, first of all
will have other errands to run and secondly other predators to take care of as
well as other preys to gobble up, starting with this king of no dignity,
authority and prestige. This production chose an actor, slightly too old for
this first part, but so meager and so locked up onto and into himself, unable of any empathy or physical
openness, that he looks like a teenager for sure, nearly effeminate, certainly
not the siege of power and force. He is the perfect fence made of spiky chicken
wire to keep the roaming scavenging beasts of prey away though not the flying
vultures smoothly gliding and soaring overhead.
The king of England will
thus pretend to be the King of France till the Glorious Revolution – at least –
but that is a sham and a lie and the dice got cast by Joan of Arc and Charles
VII. In fact in this desire to control a good chunk of the continent and the
tremendous frustration they come to in the 15th century lies the ferment
that will lead them to Brexit: since they cannot have the terms they want, they
step out of Europe in the 21st century.
You can’t teach new tricks to old dogs I guess especially now they cannot practice
their favorite fox hunting.
But the play is in many
ways hilarious. Hilarious in this Henry VI that looks like some library rat
cornered by the light and baffled by the promise of a woman he will call his
wife. Hilarious with the innumerable running in and out, out and in of the
various English and French soldiers with a few in between like the Burgundians
or some other turncoats and volatile allies. Hilarious in the way they present
Joan of Arc at first and the use of French words like Pucelle, and when they
use an English word they come down to maid, which is a nice euphemism for her
virginal state, at least today, maybe less in Shakespeare’s time. Hilarious in
the fake trial, the appearance of the “father,” if he is, while she claims she
is of noble descent, and her pleading for pardon and pity with arguments like
being in child and trying to explain who the father is with multiple men who
could be or have been. Hilarious in nearly every single scene that is made
trite not out of spite but because they are trite with narrow minded people and
obstinate asinine caricatures of soldiers, nobles or plain human beings.
Only one scene stands
out though probably too long, especially since it is repeated as if we had not
understood: it is the confrontation between Lord Talbot and his son John Talbot
about saving their skins, or at least the skin of one to be able to get a
vengeance or revenge. It is in a way empathetic though the boy seems stubborn
and too feudal to be true:
My death's revenge, thy
youth, and England's
fame:
All these and more we
hazard by thy stay;
All these are saved if
thou wilt fly away.
These words of yours
draw life-blood from my heart:
On that advantage,
bought with such a shame,
To save a paltry life
and slay bright fame,
Before young Talbot from
old Talbot fly,
The coward horse that
bears me fail and die!
And like me to the
peasant boys of France,
To be shame's scorn and
subject of mischance!
Surely, by all the glory
you have won,
An if I fly, I am not
Talbot's son:
Then talk no more of
flight, it is no boot;
If son to Talbot, die at
Talbot's foot.” (Act
IV, Scene vi)
Of course the demand from the father is reasonable but foolish.
Yet the response from the son is unreasonable and just as foolish as the father’s
demand. We are dealing here with a father who would die twice if his son died
with him, and at the same time a son who would be dishonored, shamed by his
flying away, and twice as much if flying away with his father. The son is so
feudal that he does not even have any survival instinct. It is empathetic but
not that poignant. It becomes poignant when the dead son is brought into the arms
of the dying father.
Had death been French,
then death had died to-day.
Come, come and lay him
in his father's arms:
My spirit can no longer
bear these harms.
Soldiers, adieu! I have
what I would have,
Now my old arms are young
John Talbot's grave.” (Act
IV, Scene vii)
The noble families of England and France are so intertwined and
inbred that they are all English and French and they are all cousins of any
rank. That makes such scenes like this one when acted properly, and it sure is the
case, very heartfelt but it does not erase the sorry aftertaste they have: ridiculous
values, vain glory, in many ways fake ethics and yet ethics nevertheless. They
sound more pitiful and even pathetic than human, humane, sensitive and in any
way sensuous or sensual. Manly sensual but sensual nevertheless. Impossible
here. It is all prefabricated, standardized. When Shakespeare introduces some
desire of a man for a woman, for example Henry VI for Margaret, it is some
lascivious innuendo and when the Earl of Suffolk desires the same woman for his
king it is purely perverse: to negotiate her freedom against her marriage with
Henry VI so that he, the Earl of Suffolk, will be able to manipulate the king through
his wife, and take advantage of the queen in the back of the king. In many ways
disgusting. That’s not tragic at all but extremely sinister and melodramatic.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
# posted by Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU @ 4:11 PM