A Brief Note on the Historical
Background to Shakespeare’s First and Second History Cycles
[The following note has been prepared by Ian Johnston for students in English 366 at Malaspina University-College, Nanaimo, BC. This document is
in the public domain, released August 1999, last revised on August 22, 1999]
INTRODUCTORY NOTE
This
text explains briefly the main historical narrative of Shakespeare’s two
history cycles and outlines the principal relationships in the royal family
whose dynastic quarrels were the basis of the Wars of the Roses. This account
describes only matters directly relevant to Shakespeare’s version of the story.
His genealogy is, for the most part, quite accurate, but there are some minor
discrepancies and some omissions. And his plays significantly alter the
chronology of events, the ages of the participants, and so on.
THE WARS OF THE ROSES: BRIEF SYNOPSIS
The
Wars of the Roses refers to a long, repetitive, and destructive civil war,
based on a struggle for the English crown by the members of two distinct
factions in the English royal family (called the Plantaganets,
who had ruled for over two hundred years). Strictly speaking, the Wars of the
Roses applies only to the latter half of this
conflict, but it is commonly used to describe the entire internecine fight.
The
war had its origins in a quarrel between Richard II and his cousin, Henry
Bolingbroke, as a result of which Richard II was murdered and Henry became
Henry IV. Richard’s murder brought about civil war, which continued until Henry
IV’s son ascended the throne as Henry V and restored a short interval of
glorious military victory in France and peace at home.
Upon
Henry V’s early death, the wars of succession resumed. Henry’s son, Henry VI,
who led the branch of the family called the Lancastrians (the party of the Red Rose) was challenged by the Yorkist
branch of the family (the party of the White Rose). Success in the war
alternated for a number of years, until the Yorkists
prevailed, and Edward IV came to the throne. Upon the death of Edward, his
brother Richard became King Richard III.
The
Lancastrian cause meanwhile was taken up by a distant relative of the royal
family, Henry Tudor (whose claim was based upon the marriage of his
grandfather, Owen Tudor, to Henry V’s widow). He invaded England and defeated
the Yorkist forces at the Battle of Bosworth Field
(in 1485), thus ending the dynasty of the Plantaganets
and initiating the Tudor royal family (as Henry VII). Henry VII was the father
of Henry VIII and therefore the grandfather of Queen Elizabeth.
Although
the procedure may be seriously misleading, the Battle of Bosworth Field is
often used as a convenient date to mark the start of the Renaissance in
England, inasmuch as it initiates the first distinctly Renaissance royal family
in England, the Tudors, who take over from the famous medieval royal family,
the Plantaganets.
SHAKESPEARE’S HISTORY CYCLES
Shakespeare
wrote two four-play sequences dealing with the full story of the Wars of the
Roses. The First History Cycle, written very early in Shakespeare’s career,
consists of the three parts of Henry VI and Richard III. The
Second History Cycle, written a few years later, consists of Richard II,
Henry IV, Part 1, Henry IV, Part 2, and Henry V. The term
History Cycle may be somewhat misleading, since we have reason to think that
the plays were not originally thought of as a linear sequence, even though we
can treat them that way.
The
First History Cycle thus covers the second half of the story (from the death of
Henry V to the defeat of Richard III). The Second History Cycle deals with the
first half of the story, from the reign of Richard II to the triumph of Henry
V. These two cycles should not be considered a single eight-play sequence
(although the story they tell is more or less continuous), since the Second
History Cycle is clearly the work of a dramatist far more sure of and gifted in
his art than the writer of the First History Cycle.
THE FAMILY TREE
[To understand this explanation you will need a full
family tree in front of you, so that you can locate the various characters. If
you need such a family tree, consult the internet. One should note also that
the basic principle of succession was that the throne passed to the eldest
surviving male heir or, if he was no longer alive, to his eldest surviving male
heir. If there were no male heirs left in that branch of the family, the
succession went to the male survivors of the next branch of the family. The
eldest surviving heir of a female ancestor also had a claim, a factor which is
crucial to the narrative]
1.
The narrative begins with Edward III (not a character in Shakespeare), a
legitimate, powerful, and successful king. Edward had seven sons. The eldest
son, Edward, Prince of Wales (the Black Prince, who does not appear in Shakespeare
but who is referred to) predeceased his father, but he left a son, who became
the legitimate king, Richard II (it is important to note that Richard II
is, without any qualification, the lawful king; no one disputes that in any of
the plays).
2.
Edward III’s second son, William of Hatfield, died without issue. The third
son, Lionel, Duke of Clarence had a daughter Philippa,
who married Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March. This link is important, as it
establishes the Mortimers as having a claim to the
throne, once Richard II is dead (because Edward III’s second son, William, left
no family, the Mortimers are the male descendants of
the next oldest child of Edward III). The Mortimers
are important in Henry IV, Part I, for they challenge the legitimacy of
Henry IV, on the ground that they are the true heirs. And the Mortimer
connection is, as we shall see, the basis of the Yorkist
claim to the throne (a key element in the Henry VI plays).
3.
Edward III’s fourth son, John of Gaunt (who is a character in Richard II)
is the originator of the House of Lancaster. His eldest son, Henry Bolingbroke,
is oppressed by Richard II, rebels, and usurps the throne as Henry IV.
The legitimacy (or illegitimacy) of this act is a major theme of both history
cycles. It is vital to understand that the legal justification for the family
fight (on both sides) concerns the legitimacy of Henry IV’s kingship, for if he
is not a legal king, then the House of Lancaster is not entitled to the throne.
4.
Edward III’s fifth son, Edmund of Langley, Duke of York, is the originator of
the House of York. As we shall see, once this branch of the family united in
marriage with the Mortimers, they established a claim
to the throne through Philippa, daughter of Lionel,
the third son (see Point 2 above).
5.
The Second History Cycle (which tells the first part of the story) starts with
the quarrel between Richard II and Henry Bolingbroke, which results in the
murder of Richard and the crowning of Bolingbroke as Henry IV. That is the
subject matter of the first play in the tetralogy, Richard
II. The two parts of Henry IV continue the story of Henry IV’s
reign, as he faces repeated rebellions by those who do not support the
Lancastrians on the throne (especially the Mortimers,
who believe they have a better claim).
6.
The last play in the tetralogy, Henry V, moves
beyond the strife to celebrate the triumphs of Henry IV’s son, Henry V,
who seems to have put the inter-family fighting temporarily to rest by getting
everyone to combine to invade France. In the course of the play Henry marries
Katherine, the daughter of the King of France. This woman, although a minor
character in the play, is a crucial link in the overall story, because after
Henry V’s death, she marries Owen Tudor. Their grandson, Henry Tudor, is the
invader who overthrows Richard III at the end of the First History Cycle (and
thus ends the Wars of the Roses). Henry Tudor’s claim to the throne is very
marginal, since his grandfather was a commoner, and his grandmother was a royal
widow, with no blood connections to the English Royal Family. His mother
(Margaret Beaufort) was related to the royal family, but through a branch that
was barred from succession because the family was considered illegitimate (the Beauforts). After the death of her first husband (Edmund
Tudor), Margaret Beaufort married Lord Stanley (a character in Richard III,
whose last-minute switch of sides contributes to Richard’s defeat at the end of
the play). Shakespeare (for obvious reason) does not explore Henry Tudor’s
claim to the throne.
7.
The First History Cycle begins with the death of Henry V and the accession to
the throne of his son, Henry VI. Henry’s claim to the throne is disputed
by the Yorkist members of the family, led by Richard Plantaganet, who revive the old dispute about the
legitimacy of the Lancastrian claim to the throne. Much of the first play is
taken up with the ways in which the quarrels among the English lords contribute
to the loss of the French territories won by Henry V.
8.
The most complicated part of this entire narrative is
the claim of Richard Plantaganet to be the legitimate
king rather than Henry VI. Richard’s father was Richard, Earl of Cambridge, son
of Edmund Langley, fifth son of Edward III. This Richard, Earl of Cambridge,
married Anne Mortimer, daughter of Philippa, and
granddaughter of Lionel, third son of Edward III. Richard, Duke of York is the
son of this Anne Mortimer and Richard, Earl of Cambridge. Thus, in the First
History Cycle, the Yorkist claim to the throne runs
as follows: Once Richard II is dead, the throne passes
to the eldest heir or the surviving family of that heir. With Edward, the Black
Prince, and his son, Richard II, dead and William of Hatfield (Edward III’s
second son) dead without issue, the legitimate royal candidates, according to
the Yorkists, are the successors of Lionel, Duke of
Clarence, third son of Edward III (i.e., the Mortimers).
Since the mother of Richard, Duke of York, was a member of the Mortimer family,
therefore his claim to the throne is better than Henry VI’s, who traces his
ancestry back to John of Gaunt, the fourth son of Edward III. Shakespeare puts
the explanation of this claim into the Second Part of Henry VI, 2.2.
9.
In the course of the Wars of the Roses, Henry VI is killed, as is his son,
Edward, Prince of Wales. The narrative of these quarrels and battles is told in
the Third Part of Henry VI. With the death of Henry VI, the Yorkist cause seems triumphant, and the eldest surviving
son of Richard, Duke of York, becomes King Edward IV. The last play in
the First History Cycle, Richard III, begins with the coronation of
Edward as king.
10.
Edward IV has three brothers. One (Edmund, Earl of Rutland) has been killed in
the fighting. The third brother (fourth son of Richard, Duke of York) is
Richard Gloucester, who wants to become king. He arranges the murder of his
elder brother Clarence (also called George) and the murder of the two young
sons of Edward IV (Richard’s nephews, famous as the two princes in the Tower of
London), so as to eliminate any male heir who might prevent his attaining the
throne once Edward IV (who is very ill) dies. Richard is successful in his
schemes and becomes Richard III, the last of the Plantaganet
kings.
11.
Early in the Richard III, Richard (not yet king) woos Anne Neville (the
wife of Edward, Prince of Wales, son of Henry VI). He has thus (in the course
of the plays) killed or participated in killing Anne’s husband, her father, and
her father-in-law. Nevertheless they get married. Shakespeare gives us no clear
reason why Richard wants to marry Anne, since she does not improve his claim to
the throne. They have no children.
12.
The chief opposition to Richard in Shakespeare’s play comes from Henry Tudor
(see Point 5 above). His claim to the throne is very weak, but once he defeats
Richard at the Battle of Bosworth Field (at the end of Richard III) he
marries Elizabeth, the sole surviving child of Edward IV, and thus in
Shakespeare’s dynasty, the last surviving member of the Yorkist
branch of the royal family. Henry claims that with the marriage he will be
uniting the two houses once again (i.e., combining the white rose and the red,
a frequent image of Tudor politics). The weakness of Henry Tudor’s claim,
together with the fact that he is Elizabeth’s grandfather, may be the reason
that Richard III makes no mention of the legality of royal power, a
major concern of most of the other history plays in these two cycles.
If
you find this narrative confusing, you might like to consider that such
confusion may very well be a really important point
Shakespeare is exploring in these history cycles, namely, that attempts to
usurp legitimate authority through violence and murder may create political
anarchy in which the very notion of legitimate rule becomes absurd, as everyone
makes up competing narratives with no sure guide as to where one should place
one’s allegiance. The result is political confusion.
A BRIEF HISTORICAL NOTE
As
you may know, there is much debate about whether or not the historical Richard,
Duke of York (Richard III) was as evil as Shakespeare portrays him. A number of
sober historical assessments have seriously challenged this vision (as has a
really delightful detective novel, The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey). And there is a society in English called the White
Boar Society (named after Richard’s insignia) which is dedicated to preserving
the good reputation of Richard III.
In
depicting Richard the way he does, Shakespeare is following the tradition
established by Tudor historians of demonizing Richard. Their motives for doing
so are not difficult to see. The Tudors’ claim to the throne through blood
connections with the Plantaganets was extremely
slight. One way of papering over any potential embarrassment on that question
was to celebrate the arrival of Henry Tudor (Henry VII) as England’s divine
deliverance from the diabolical evil of Richard. The worse Richard could be
made to appear, the better Henry VII (Elizabeth’s grandfather) would seem. This
rewriting of history has come to be called the Tudor Myth.
Questions
of royal legitimacy were potentially dangerous in Shakespeare’s time, because
Queen Elizabeth’s claim to the throne was repeatedly challenged, on the ground
that the marriage of her mother and father (Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII) was
illegitimate and that she was therefore a bastard. Also, any dramatic depiction
of the usurpation of the monarch by a powerful noble could be dangerous.
Indeed, one performance of Richard II on the eve of the Essex rebellion
led to a serious investigation of Shakespeare’s company and some censoring of
scenes from that play.