United We Stand. Divided We Make an Ass of Ourselves

~or
Henry VI, Part I, part one

Well, here we are at the beginning of Henry VI, Part I again. Now that we are clear on our history (see last week's entry), I'll lay out the action for you. Only, due to finger-muscle constraints, I'm only going to sketch out the action for Act I. Since there is no real pretense of this being a stand-alone sort of work, an estimated 59,430 plots and subplots are provided for the audience in this play, to be resolved in subsequent Henry VIs. If we can get through Act I, we will meet 2 of the 3 major plots for this play, as well as one of the major sub-plots. It will help if you take notes with color-coded pens, by the way, to keep everything straight. I recommend red, blue and black, but crayons will work too. Oh, and a ruler might be useful.

Materials in hand? Okay, here we go.

The story, Act I, scene i:
At the opening of the first scene, we see a bunch of men in fancy clothes standing around a coffin. That's no ordinary coffin, though. We've secretly replaced today's corpse with Henry V, who is (conveniently) dead. Let's see the mourners reactions!

Everybody agrees that Henry V was a great king. In fact, they agree that he was the greatest of all kings, guided by the King of Kings, yadda yadda. This is worth noting, since it is the only thing everybody can agree on in the entire play. There can be no doubt of V's popularity, since the corpse is attended by one heck of a lot of Dukes, all of whom seem to be related to each other, Henry V and, of course, Henry VI, in one way or another. (Basically, every Englishman in the play is a Duke unless another title is given. Since this play is supposed to be about King Henry VI and almost everybody is related to him, I'll refer to people as Uncle, Great-Uncle, etc., instead of all as Dukes, which is just confusing.)

The next thing we learn is that two of these relatives, Uncle Gloster and Great-Uncle Winchester, hate each other. Gloster distrusts the church (Winchester is a cardinal), and thinks Win is only interested in Henry VI because he is so young and can be led on. Win is jealous of Gloster's title of Lord Protector, which makes Gloster the effective monarch until Henry VI comes of age.

No sooner is this bit of dissension is revealed, (in front of dead Henry and all- illustrating a sad lack of respect for corpses in this play), than Messenger 1 comes trotting into the funeral. He's just dropping by to let everyone knows they've just lost Guienne, Champaigne, Rheims, Orleans, Paris, Guysors, Poictiers. (These are Shakespeare's spellings, by the way, not France's.) I'm no military expert (probably one of only a handful of DC residents to admit this), but I suspect this is bad news. But hey! At least now we have a time period firmly established for those not intimately familiar with Henry V's year of death: we are in the 100 Years War, at about the last part of it where the manure starts to hit the servants waving big palm leaves (or are they fronds?) for the British.

Now that we've had half a mo' to digest that bit of unsavory battlefield news, Messenger 2 arrives. He lets everyone know that Charles, the Dauphin (for those of you who don't speak the language of love, 'Dauphin' is French for 'the French guy who is not king but really wants to be, maybe should be, and has about a 50/50 shot of being crowned at some point') has crowned himself king, and all the big guns in the French leadership have united under him.

I lied earlier, because everybody agrees again; this time they agree that this crowning stuff is really bad news (except Henry V, who is still lying dead in his casket, but we can probably assume he's not too happy, either). It's all very awkward, since Henry VI also claims to be king of France, and Uncle Bedford (one of the Dukes around the corpse) is supposed to be the British regent of France. Clearly, we are facing some senior management redundancy. Just then - you guessed it! Messenger 3 arrives. He lets everybody know all those other messages were just an April Fool's joke. Everybody laughs and the play is over.

Just kidding of course. Trouble comes in threes. Messenger 3 informs the funereal throng that England's badass knight/general, Lord Talbot, got into a bit of difficulty during the siege of Orleans. His brave band of 6000 was fending off the newly united French force of 23,000 (trusting that Messenger 3 is better at crowd count than the National Park Service), when Sir John Fastolfe (England's weenie knight/general) turned tail and ran. Lord Talbot was struck by a spear by "a base Walloon" in the back, (how embarrassing!) and taken prisoner. Now the Earl of Salisbury, with an English army "grown weak and faint," and down one badass knight/general and one weenie knight/general, leads the defense of the besieged city. Finally, Messenger 3 stops talking. This ends the introduction of Plot #1: "England versus France".

It appears that no more Messengers are coming, so everybody rushes about to do something, declaiming as they go. Uncle Gloster, as Protector, is going to check on munitions in the Tower and proclaim the young Henry to be King Henry VI. Uncle Bedford as Regent of France and Great-Uncle Exeter as special governor to Henry VI, are going to go rush to relieve the Earl of Salisbury and meet Henry VI to provide for his safety respectively. Both these guys have been there the entire time, but have done nothing important yet; a harbinger of things to come in their character development.

After they clear out, Great-Uncle Winchester tips off the audience; he doesn't seem to have much to do at the moment, but just you wait. He's going to steal the confidence of King Henry VI, thus undercutting Gloster, and become the real Big Man on Britain. Welcome to Plot #2: "Gloster versus Winchester". End Act I, scene i.

Act I, scene ii finds us back in plot #1, with the Frenchies getting some stage-time. Outside Orleans, Charles the Dauphin waits with his forces and talks things over with the Duke of Alencon and Reignier, the Duke of Anjou. Alencon wants to starve the English out of Orleans, and Reignier wants to seize the offensive. He figures the English will be push-overs without Talbot to inspire them. Charles decides to go on the offensive.

Next comes a lot of noises, and everybody charges off stage to take back Orleans. A lot more noises, and everybody charges back on stage, having taking, not Orleans, but a butt-whuping. Charles complains that all his soldiers are dogs, cowards, and dastards, in that order. Charles, Alencon, and Reignier marvel at the Englishmen's reckless abandon and determination (know thy audience). His forces cowering around him, Charles decides to give that whole starve-them-out thing a try.

Enter the Bastard of Orleans. This is the only name given to this character throughout the entire play. I have to assume that the French did not refer to their own boy as the Bastard of anything, and he's probably the Duc d'Orleans, or something like that. Will calls him Bastard, so I do too (perhaps he's related Henry VI, too?). Anyway, Bastard assures Charles that he's brought the solution to all their problems; a 'holy maid' whose infallible visions will lead France to glory, and the English back to Dover. Meet Subplot A of Plot #1, aka La Pucelle, aka the savior of France, aka Joan of Arc (La Pucelle is French for maid or virigin, and is apparently Joan's French 'handle', like they call the Mona Lisa 'La Joconde' and we call Jerry Mathers 'the Beave'.).

Naturally, everyone is a bit skeptical about a shepherdess-turned-divinely-inspired savior. Charles test Joan by having Alencon pretend to be the Dauphin, but Joan is not fooled, for she has seen all this in her visions before. Then Charles takes Joan into a private room, and declares that if she can beat him in a duel, he'll believe she is the chosen one. (If only this would have worked for Neo in The Matrix, we could have been spared at least one of those stupid sequels.) Joan bests Charles, explaining that Christ's mother helps her. Charles avoids the saint/witch issue by declaring "whoe'er helps thee, 'tis thou that must help me: Impatiently I burn with thou desire; My heart and hands thou host at once subdu'd. Let me thy servant and not sovereign be:..." Joan tells him to ask her again after the English are chased from France, and she doesn't have to be holy anymore. Charles makes it clear he doesn't care if she's guided by God or the Devil, so long as the result is favorable. (In my mind, this sort of thinking strengthens the legitmacy of Charles's claim to the crown.) Joan tells him to re-attack Orleans. Everybody is excited and united and ready to retake France. End scene ii.

And now for something completely different, to whit, Act I, scene iii. Back in London, at the Tower thereof, Uncle Gloster wants in to check on things and develop Plot #2. (He fears "conveyance" since Henry V's death. At first I thought this just meant "a transfer" of something unspecified in the scene, but according to the 1913 edition of Webster's dictionary, "conveyance" has an obsolete usage meaning "dishonest management or artifice." This knowledge is going to come in very handy to me living in Washington, DC.) Even though Gloster's the Lord Protector, ruling in Henry VI's stead, the Tower guards won't let him in because Great-Uncle Winchester said not too. (Gloster may be Lord Protector, but Winchester is a Cardinal; I figure he threatened the guards with excommunication or making them permanent altar boys, or some such thing.)

Unsurprisingly, Gloster is not happy about any of this. Then Great-Uncle Winchester arrives with his serving men, in tawny coats. They make a nice contrast to Uncle Gloster's serving men in blue coats. Uncle and Great-Uncle exchange words, accusing one another of being ambitious. Big tawny-blue coat scuffle.

The Mayor of London arrives and tells everybody to cut it out. All are forbidden to use or carry weapons. The scene breaks up amidst threats and grumbling.

The internal strife brings us to the end of Act I, scene iii. However, some of the suspense of Plot #2 is destroyed for modern readers. Clearly neither Gloster nor Winchester carry the day, since every American school child knows that the English wind up with RED coats. (So glad they finally settled on one color. It makes the Revolutionary War so much easier to portray in film and TV. Not to mention the fact that they seem so silly, wearing bright red, like targets, compared to the frontier togs of Francis Marion and the other rag-tag rebels.)

Now is probably a good time to point out that Shakespeare makes it clear to us, given Win's evil aside by the corpse at the end of scene i, who the Bard thinks the worse of these two guys are. History gives a more complicated version. Funny how history always seems to be more complicated than the infotainment dramatization of events. Take, for example, the evening network news. (A pause in the action as the Bardblogger makes a mental note to destroy the television set, takes a deep breath, and refocuses on Shakespeare.)

Anyway, back to Act I, scene iv, and Plot #1, across the channel in France. The mighty Lord Talbot is back with the British in a tower around Orleans, having participated in a prisoner exchange. Talbot would have been back sooner, only he disapproved of the studliness of the first guy the French wanted to trade for. Instead of agreeing to the trade, Talbot, in his own words, "craved death rather than I would be so vile-esteem'd." Happily the French came up with an alternate, the Lord Ponton de Santrailles, whom Talbot deemed an acceptable warrior-for-warrior swap. This is not a major plot point, but tells you all you need to know about Lord Talbot. He is uber-chivalrous; the epitome of the haughty, noble knight type that everybody but Cervantes seemed to admire back in Shakespeare's day. (Click here to learn about an interesting Cervantes parallel in the "no, but who really wrote Shakespeare's stuff?" debate. Talk about swiss-cheese analysis. But that Francis Bacon sure was a prolific SOB.)

Anyway, we are supposed to like and admire Talbot and consider him the hero of the play. If Shakespeare wrote this for today's audience, Lord Talbot would be a self-deprecating Everyman knight, which tells you a bit about the evolution of the popular conception of the 'hero' from the Elizabethan age to today. (Feel free to expand on this brilliant insight for your English Lit PhD dissertation; all I require is the standard mention in the dedication.) Talbot's more-honourable-than-thou schtick will be a nice foil to Joan's holier-than-thou, is she or isn't she, saint-or-Satan routine in Plot #1, Subplot A.

Talbot and the Earl of Salisbury shoot the breeze for awhile, with Talbot giving an account of his treatment as a prisoner at the hands of the French. His description is clearly meant to horrify the audience and turn our hearts against those nefarious Gauls. Sadly, these trials seem more like acts of mercy or light-hearted jokes compared to the horrors of prisoner abuse currently shaking the world.

Eventually, Talbot finishes yaking, and Salisbury tells him they can plan their attack on the French by peeking out a special nook in the tower which affords a view of everybody's positions. Salisbury and a lesser knight take a look first. Bang!

The French, who have caught on to the peeking-nook thing, shoot and mortally wound Salisbury and the lesser knight. I'm not sure how these things are measured, technically, but they seem to take about forever and a soliloquy to kick the bucket. The soliloquy is Talbot's; it consists of poking at Salisbury to see if he's dead yet and the Shakespearean equivalent of the "Okay. Now it's personal." speech that every good action hero gives in movies these days. Crazy old Will; what a trend-setter! Suffice it to say that Talbot is extremely put out and vows vengeance on the French in a big, bad-ass knight sort of way.

Enter a messenger. Uh-oh! As we learned in scene i, messengers bring only bad news. This one is true to form, and tells Talbot about the Dauphin allying with la Pucelle, "a holy prophetess," to raise the siege. At this news, Salisbury, who is apparently not quite dead yet, groans, and Talbot shouts a more eloquent version of "Bring 'em on!":

Hear, hear how dying Salisbury doth groan!
It irks his heart he cannot be reveng'd. -
Frenchmen, I'll be a Salisbury to you: -
Pucelle or puzzle, dolphin or dogfish,
Your hearts I'll stamp out with my horse's heels,
And make a quagmire of you mingled brains. - [Bardblogger's note: ewww.]

I include the above excerpt because it gives a brief glimpse into Shakespeare's clever word-play-to-be. He's not quite there yet in this play. But I'll save the analysis for a later entry. Right now I'm having enough trouble getting through Act I!
End of Act I, scene iv.

Act I, scene v. Also known as the last scene in act I, also known as the point at which I call it quits for this entry.

In brief, the French attack the English, and the English soldiers flee at the sight of Joan, driven off by her holy or hellish powers, as you choose. Naturally, this mystical stuff doesn't work on Talbot himself. Joan bests him at swords and retires with taunts. Talbot concludes she is a witch, since God doesn't make lady sword-fighters (at least, not good ones). The English run away and proud Talbot is Extremely Put Out, wishing he'd died with Salisbury rather than be driven out by the lady-led French. He longs for death instead of the shame and all that guff.

Next the French march triumphantly through Orleans and ring bells and call for feasts, et cetera, et cetera. Charles graciously announces the whole thing is Joan's doing, and immediately begins saying how amazingly Joan will be revered as soon as she is dead. Why, what a odd thing to mention at a time like this! Could this be a portent of things to come? Stay tuned (or consult any encyclopedia) to find out!!