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| Talbot and son |
[Image source:
http://theshakespeareblog.com/2013/08/the-end-of-chivalry-john-talbot-the-terror-of-the-french/ . From a performance at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.]
“In what history did your grace find that incident?” said Burnet to the Duke of Marlborough, on hearing him quote some anecdote concerning the wars of York and Lancaster which was new to the Bishop. “In Shakspeare’s plays,” answered the Victor of Blenheim, — “the only history of those times I ever read.”
(From Sir Walter Scott's review-essay of Boaden's
Life of Kemble and Michael Kelly's
Reminiscences)
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This post records my delighted immersion in the online PDF of Paul J Vincent's wonderfully readable 2005 PhD thesis about
1 Henry VI.
"The Genesis of the First Part of Henry VI" (University of Auckland). [It's also rather wittily subtitled "when harey met Shakespeare" -- you'll see why.]
This was a great opportunity for me to get up to speed on what scholars have managed to establish about the origin of this problematic play. Vincent builds on the foundation of Gary Taylor's argument in "Shakespeare and Others" (which itself rehabilitates Gaw and Dover Wilson), but Vincent's conclusions have some significant differences from Taylor's. [Brian Vickers, as I've read, largely agrees with Vincent's analysis.]
So, what are these conclusions?
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1H6 was written as a prequel to the already extant 2H6 and 3H6, but not by Shakespeare. It was the "harey the vj" performed by Lord Strange's Men seventeen times between 3/3/1592 and 31/1/1593 [see end of post for details. A very successful venture, judging from Philip Henslowe's diary.]
The subject of Talbot was chosen as a compliment to Lord Strange. Talbot was an ancestor of Lord Strange. [This is likely enough, but it's gracelessly executed. Sir William Lucy tells us, in IV.7, that one of Talbot's titles is Lord Strange of Blackmere (Lucy is quoting the inscription on Talbot's tomb in Rouen), but the play's authors follow it with La Pucelle's sneer at the rigmarole of Talbot's excessive titles, so let's hope Lord Strange was fairly thick-skinned.]
These original authors were Thomas Nashe (Act I) and "Y" (Acts 2 - 5). Thus Nashe, commenting admiringly on the stage Talbot in Pierce Pennilesse (published 1592 and also dedicated to Lord Strange), was praising his own co-composition. We don't know the identity of Y, but apparently it was not one of the named dramatists with whom comparative textual analysis can be attempted, i.e. Nashe, Peele, Greene, or Marlowe -- or Shakespeare. [It would be interesting, I think, to see a stylistic comparison of Y with the anonymous author of Edward III.]
Around 1594 Shakespeare's company acquired the play, and Shakespeare then made some powerful though apparently incomplete revisions. Shakespeare added the new Temple Garden scene (II.4), probably intending it to replace the Tower scene (II.5), and he replaced the scenes of Talbot's downfall (IV.2 - beginning of IV.7)... though, once more, Y's IV.6 is accidentally preserved in F. Part of the motive of these revisions was apparently to make 1H6 a more powerful statement of the principal theme of 2H6 and 3H6: the disastrous consequences of civil discord. Perhaps the Lord Chamberlain's Men planned to perform all the plays in chronological sequence.
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Vincent's conclusions differ from Gary Taylor's in two important respects. Taylor had assigned the Folio text to four authors: Z (Nashe -- Act I); Y (Acts III and V); X (Shakespeare -- II.4 and IV.2-5, start of IV.7); and W (the rest of Acts II and IV). Vincent shows that the evidence for distinguishing W from Y is insufficient: W is an unnecessary complication. He also argues that Shakespeare's contributions were all revisions and were not present in the original play. Thus he reduces the number of original authors from four to two: Z (Nashe) and Y.
[It's interesting that Vincent's analysis finds no trace of Marlowe in 1H6 -- I mean, in the light of OUP's 2016 announcement that they will credit all three Henry VI plays to Shakespeare and Marlowe. I've no business to comment on this theory, but the aggressive and transgressive spirit of Marlowe, evinced in all his other plays, is most conspicuously absent from Henry VI... ]
Vincent's authorship analysis (based on textual analysis, including matching the Literature Online database) seems -- so far as I can tell without re-doing the work, but it looks convincingly thorough -- more firmly established than his theory of provenance. The latter, however, does make sense of the longstanding problem of "hary the vj" belonging to a company that Shakespeare isn't known to have worked for.. Henslowe's diary of the Lord Strange/Rose era records no performances of any Shakespeare plays -- unless "harey the vj" is one... But if "harey the vj" wasn't originally written by Shakespeare, then everything falls into place. [Cairncross suggested, however, that in 1590-91, when in his view Shakespeare wrote the entire tetralogy, he was working for the hypothetical amalgamated Admiral's/Strange company. This would have been at the Theatre, and before Henslowe's diary begins (19/2/1592). This is complicated and highly disputable, judging from what I've read in Schoone-Jongen.]
Of course this poses a new question: how would Shakespeare's company acquire one of their former rival's most successful plays? Was it in early 1594, when the short-lived Earl of Sussex's men appear to have inherited plays both from Lord Strange's men (e.g. The Jew of Malta) and from Pembroke's company (Titus Andronicus)? That joint legacy might then have ended up in the hands of the Lord Chamberlain's Men (formed in late 1594).
If 1H6 is "harey the vj" and was new in March 1592, this tends to be an external argument for it being written later than 2H6. Vincent's thesis also gives a lot of detail about the traditional internal arguments for thinking 1H6 was written after 2H6. For instance, that 2H6 doesn't mention Talbot, shows little awareness of the rose symbolism (but what about I.1.254?), shows the dissension of the nobles as having not yet begun, and has different conceptions of the characters of Humphrey of Gloucester and Margaret.
But some of these issues remain issues even when we accept Vincent's thesis. If 1H6 was always consciously intended to prelude the already extant 2H6 (as clearly shown by V.3 and V.5, and even by the misleading title "harey the vj": Henry is a minor character in the drama) why didn't its authors make Humphrey and Margaret more consistent with the play that already existed? Because they didn't have access to the text, and couldn't remember it in enough detail? Because they didn't see the "inconsistency" as an issue?
Vincent seems to go down the road of thinking that V.3 and V.5 were a bit of an afterthought; a revision or eleventh-hour rethink. But according to his own authorship tests these scenes are by Y, the original author of Acts 2-5, not by Shakespeare. He concludes, rather ambiguously, that although the Suffolk/Margaret scenes were not part of the original conception they were nevertheless part of the original composition. In other words Nashe and Y were originally thinking of a Talbot play, then belatedly decided to introduce Suffolk and Margaret.
I'm not persuaded that this ending was quite as unplanned as Vincent implies. V.1 had already introduced the topic of Henry marrying; evidently this was meant to lead on to something.
(Incidentally I'm also not persuaded that Henry's lovestruck behaviour in V.5 shows a troubling inconsistency with his character earlier in the play. It's almost axiomatic in drama of this period that people who disclaim any interest in love then proceed to fall violently in love -- think of Proteus in 2GV. It's not subtle or clever, but a jobbing playwright like Y would see the inclusion of this hackneyed motif as a plus.)
We can only go so far with this discussion before we have to address the question of the provenance of 2H6 and 3H6. Unfortunately they lie outside the scope of his thesis, but Vincent says enough to show that he doesn't think they are pure Shakespeare compositions. (Unlike Richard III, apparently.)
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Let me say now, if I haven't done already, that I'm firmly converted to the substance of Vincent's thesis. (With due acknowledgment to his predecessors: Gary Taylor -- who definitively toppled the twentieth-century consensus of single-authorship; Dover Wilson -- whose personal impression of three authors, though without any rigorous analysis, turned out to be spot-on -- and who was the first to notice the relevance of Essex's abortive Rouen campaign in 1591; and before them Allison Gaw, Fleay, Malone, etc.)
I am not sure if it's worth recording these hesitations about certain details:
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Act IV Scene 6 as an accidental retention
1. Act IV Scene 6 is assigned to Y. According to Vincent it was meant to be replaced by Shakespeare's IV.5 and is a fortuitous survival of the Y substratum. He makes the same argument for II.5 (the tower scene), which he thinks was meant to be replaced by Shakespeare's II.4 (the rose-plucking scene). Though it's a credible kind of mistake given the sometimes haphazard nature of Elizabethan play practice, I believe we should be cautious about positing accidental retention: it's a mite too convenient to the modern literary archaeologist. (Of course it has also been discerned in the texts of other plays, e.g. Love's Labour's Lost.)
IV.6 certainly has a number of inferior features compared to e.g. IV.5. However the theory that IV.5 was meant to replace IV.6 doesn't take account of the developing story. To summarize:
IV.5 begins with introducing "young John Talbot", who has evidently just arrived to join his father in what looks like a deathtrap. The two compete in heroism, each urging the other to flee. One of the more powerful arguments urged by Young Talbot is that he has never seen real fighting before. Consequently for him to fly before a blow has been struck would stain his reputation. The scene ends with both Talbots staying and sallying into battle.
IV.6 begins with their return from this foray. The elder Talbot has rescued the younger one, who was "hemmed about". But importantly, the younger Talbot had "warmed [his] father's heart"; he has struck fire from the Dauphin's crest, and inspired his father's "leaden age" into various similar feats against the other French leaders. So Young Talbot is no longer a maiden soldier. When they now resume their debate, the situation is therefore different from in IV.5. Young Talbot no longer uses the argument that as a fleeing novice his reputation would be stained. He now uses the argument that, having tried battle and found it not so awful -- "The sword of Orleans hath not made me smart" -- he's all the more determined to stay and face whatever comes. Of course IV.7 will show us what that leads to.
In short, IV.5 and IV.6 are a complementary pair, but not in the sense that one can replace the other. Both are needed to produce the artificial yet surprisingly moving impact of the sequence as a whole.
What to make, then, of the inferior features in IV.6? It's not for an amateur to say, but I'd suggest that while the revising Shakespeare obliterated most traces of Y from the rest of the Bordeaux sequence, he made few or no alterations to this particular scene. (Perhaps it was the best of Y's scenes: Shakespeare would have based that judgment on dramatic effectiveness, not on quality of expression.) It appears to show that the remarkable switch to rhyming couplets for this sequence of scenes originated with Y, not with Shakespeare.
Act II Scene 5 as an accidental retention
Let's take a look at the other place where Vincent, following Gaw, posits accidental retention. According to this view Act II Scene 5 (the Tower Scene, authored by Y) should have been omitted, replaced by Shakespeare's Act II Scene 4 (the Rose-plucking scene).
The conclusion amounts to two separate though interlinked theses : first, that the extant II.4 (which has the fingerprints of 1594 Shakespeare all over it) did not replace an earlier Rose-plucking scene; second, that II.5 adds little to the play as it stands.
In regard to the first thesis, Allison Gaw's strong argument is that II.5 has all the marks of introducing the character of Richard Plantagenet for the first time, i.e. emphasis on his name and on spelling out how he fits into the story.
Strong, but not conclusive. I wonder if Y's other scenes did depend on a rose-plucking scene.
In III.1, Richard and Somerset never address each other directly, only giving vent to their opinions in asides; it is true that we have already been told about their quarrel (in II.5), but don't these muffled explosions gain greatly in dramatic power if the audience has also witnessed their open hostility (i.e. as in II.4 or an earlier version of II.4)?
II.4 aside, the first mention of the roses occurs in IV.1. But in IV.1, aren't these badges introduced a bit casually? Would their symbolic import, and the huge significance of Henry pinning a red rose on his chest, make the same impact without a previous rose-plucking scene, along the lines of II.4?
In regard to the second thesis, is it true that II.5 now has nothing to contribute to the play? Surely it does, because it and it alone lays out the historical background to Richard's claims. This kind of material was apparently important to early audiences, like the interminable speech in Henry V about the English monarch's claims to France, or indeed the very undramatic scene in 2H6 (II.2) where Richard of York's claims are again set forth.
It might just be an effect of familiarity with the text that's come down to us, but it seems to me that the sequence II.4, II.5, III.1 works really well as a delineation of social breakdown. In II.4, we see the fact of the hostility expressed in open terms (and, incidentally, the shredding of democracy when it fails to produce the desired outcome). In II.5, we see one of the conflictual faiths being solemnly transmitted from one generation to the next, gaining all the time in existential significance. In III.1 we see the known hostility being temporarily restrained by other social considerations, but really undiminished in force and ready to break out whenever the opportunity arises. In purely theatrical terms, II.5 provides a welcome break between the two scenes of dissension; a scene of consensus and respect, but one where the peacefulness awakens only dread, because it's the solemn seeding of future violence.
Shakespeare's Henry VI Part One
Vincent compiles and supplements a battery of authorship tests that show, with impressive consistency, the authorship of individual scenes. Only one of them (IV.7) switches midway. It starts with Talbot's lament and death:
Talbot. Where is my other life? My own is gone.
O where's young Talbot? Where is valiant John?
Triumphant death, smeared with captivity,
Young Talbot's valour makes me smile at thee.
When he perceived me shrink and on my knee,
His bloody sword he brandished over me,
And like a hungry lion did commence
Rough deeds of rage and stern impatience,
But when my angry guardant stood alone,
Tend'ring my ruin and assailed of none,
Dizzy-eyed fury and great rage of heart
Suddenly made him from my side to start
Into the clust'ring battle of the French,
And in that sea of blood my boy did drench
His over-mounting spirit and there died,
My Icarus, my blossom, in his pride.
(IV.7.1-16)
That can only be Shakespeare, but when the French contingent troop onto the stage we're clearly back in Y's hands (from line 33). [Incidentally, except in Shakespeare's hands I find Talbot and what he stands for repellent. As I read I keep forgetting which side I'm supposed to be on.]
So Shakespeare's claim to 1 Henry 6 is founded on the scenes he wrote or rewrote in full: II.4, IV.2-5, IV.7a.
But Shakespeare's shadow already lay across harey the vj. Nashe and Y had already taken some care to connect their work with the pre-existing 2H6 and 3H6. When the Lord Chamberlain's Men acquired Lord Strange's play, part of their makeover involved strengthening those connections. "Shakespeare's tetralogy" was acquiring an outer bulwark.
It's feasible, even likely, that Shakespeare's work as a reviser extended further than the scenes where we can detect it. He and his company might have cut some passages of the original text, or they might have re-sequenced passages, without us being able to tell. They might have changed words and phrases in the other scenes, even added the odd line here or there; these hypothetical small tamperings wouldn't be detectable by statistical authorship tests.
In short, though 1 Henry VI is undoubtedly the least Shakespearean play in the First Folio, it may be more Shakespearean than we can ever know.
Henry VI Part One: A Multiple-Author Play
1 Henry VI is a play that's always absorbing and often deeply impressive. And somehow my admiration for all three authors ends up enhanced; so are my feelings about the practice of multiple authorship itself.
Nashe's Act I is a great start. Its formalities are great theatre, its rhetoric and imagery ripe. Yes, it has more than a few hyperbolic pratfalls. But it also has poetry such as this, before the walls of Orleans:
Pucelle. Assigned am I to be the English scourge,
This night the siege assuredly I'll raise;
Expect Saint Martin's summer, halcyon's days,
Since I have enterèd into these wars.
Glory is like a circle in the water,
Which never ceaseth to enlarge itself
Till by broad spreading it disperse to nought.
With Henry's death the English circle ends;
Dispersèd are the glories it included.
Now am I like that proud insulting ship
Which Caesar and his fortune bare at once.
(from I.2.129-139)
Nashe's conception of Joan La Pucelle as a Marlovian scourge of God contributes critically to the play's discomforts.
But Y, author of the original Acts II-V, has remarkable successes too. Y was a powerful and sometimes subtle dramatist, though in plain verse. His best scenes, e.g. III.1, IV.1, and V.5 are characterized by a commitment to a national history: this is the audience's own history, Coleridge's "history of the people to whom it is addressed".
[Suffolk.]
. . . But with as humble lowliness of mind
She is content to be at your command;
Command, I mean, of virtuous chaste intents,
To love and honour Henry as her lord.
King. And otherwise will Henry ne'er presume.
Therefore, my Lord Protector, give consent
That Margaret may be England's royal queen.
Gloucester. So should I give consent to flatter sin.
You know, my lord, your highness is betrothed
Unto another lady of esteem.
How shall we then dispense with that contract,
And not deface your honor with reproach?
Suffolk. As doth a ruler with unlawful oaths,
Or one that, at a triumph having vowed
To try his strength, forsaketh yet the lists
By reason of his adversary's odds.
A poor earl's daughter is unequal odds,
And therefore may be broke without offense.
(V.5.18-35)
A large number of the plays of Shakespeare's time were multi-authored: at least a quarter, maybe even a third. But when we've said all we can in praise of the essentially communal nature of the dramatic art and in dispraise of the authoritarian figure of Sole Author, a lot of us tend to see the multiple authorship of this period as just a practical consequence of insatiable demand for playscripts and to see multi-authored plays as generally inferior.
The multi-authored plays in Shakespeare's Works are either his least-celebrated plays -- Titus, Timon, Henry VIII -- or are scarcely multi-authored at all (e.g. Macbeth).
Let's face it, multiple authorship doesn't tend to produce Julius Caesar or A Midsummer Night's Dream. . .
Even Dr Faustus and The Changeling are great plays in spite of rather than because of being multi authored. (It's only fair to say that Richard Dutton, Oxford editor of Women Beware Women and Other Plays (1999), strongly disputes this common view of The Changeling.)
Well, 1H6 is minor Shakespeare too, but it does give me a feeling for how multiple authorship can be a positive quality, it can widen a play's vistas, the variety of authorial approaches producing a many-faceted drama. Perhaps when I understand more about the multiple authorship of 2H6 and 3H6 I'll see them as exemplifying these virtues too. Perhaps multiple authorship works particularly well with chronicle plays, where the team are kept on course by a common goal and a common guide (e.g. Hall, Holinshed). It's a bit reminiscent of that earlier large-scale communal enterprise, the mystery cycles' rendering of Christian history.
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A few other thoughts.
In IV.1, Gloucester (Humphrey) is a voice of peace regarding the York/Somerset enmity. It's true that earlier in the play he was a wrangler himself -- though, as Tillyard says, always more principled than his opponent Winchester. But surely his portrayal in IV.1 fits reasonably well with that of
2H6, and seriously undercuts the argument about his inconsistent portrayals in the two plays. [Cairncross went so far as to claim that Humphrey's behaviour at the beginning of
2H6 couldn't be understood without the background in
1H6.]
So maybe that answers the question about the prequel matching the (already extant) sequel. And David Nicol (see below) makes the interesting suggestion that Margaret in
1H6 is
meant to seem a bit different (and yet not wholly different) from Margaret in
2H6.. the audience would have got an extra thrill from Margaret's true character being almost concealed.
But of course these perceptions also undercut some of the arguments for
1H6 having been composed after
2H6. If what we are looking at is not character inconsistency but character development, then that could also fit with the plays being planned and written in their natural sequence.
I should mention another argument that appears in Vincent's thesis. On the basis of
Tamburlaine, he argues that "First Part" plays were bound to be complete in themselves; they needed to stand up on their own. Part II of
Tamburlaine was a commercially-motivated afterthought. So the fact that
1H6's ending so patently points forward to
2H6 is clear evidence for it being, in fact, a prequel to a successful play that already existed.
That may well be true in this case, but the general argument has a weighty consequence. Because the endings of
2H6 and
3H6 are both highly inconclusive. These plays self-consciously do not stand on their own (the ending of
2H6, in particular, has "To Be Continued" written all over it). So is anyone prepared to argue that the sequence of composition must have been
R3,
3H6,
2H6,
1H6?
In truth, I don't see why what was certainly true of
Tamburlaine should be the only way that things could be done in those highly experimental days. The audience of (say)
2H6 might have gone home thoroughly satisfied with today's entertainment yet eagerly looking forward to coming back for the next instalment: an early attempt at the franchise concept.
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The 1592-1594 closures of the London playhouses.
This information is dredged from David Nicol's astonishing (and still unfolding) blog of Henslowe's diary.
http://hensloweasablog.blogspot.com
This cluster of closures began on 23/6/1592, in response to a riot in Southwark. Initially the closure was meant to end at Michaelmas (29/9/1592), but in the meantime the plague had become strong, so the closure was extended to 29/12/1592.
This time the playhouses did re-open (the plague tended to slacken off in winter), but only for about a month. On 28/1/1593 another closure was ordered. The last Rose performance was
The Jew of Malta on 1/2/1593. The day before, they had played "harey the vj".
The London theatres stayed closed for nearly a year. Apparently both Pembroke's and Lord Strange's companies collapsed during this recess.
On 26/12/1593 performances began again; the Earl of Sussex's Men now used the Rose. Among other plays they performed
Titus Andronicus three times before the next closure (ordered 3/2/1594, last performance on 6/2/1594).
Performances at the Rose began again on 1/4/1594, but only until 9/4/1594. There was then another hiatus (reasons unknown) until 14-16/5/1594, and then another until, on 5/6/1594, regular performances finally resumed for an extended period.
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Performances of "harey the vj" by Lord Strange's Men:
3/3/1592
7/3/1592
11/3/1592
16/3/1592
28/3/1592
5/4/1592
13/4/1592
21/4/1592
4/5/1592
9/5/1592
16/5/1592
22/5/1592
29/5/1592
12/6/1592
19/6/1592
---
16/1/1593
31/1/1593
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Reflections on the arguments for 1H6 being later than 2H6.
These are basically of four kinds.
1. External evidence that the date of 1H6 is later than the date of 2H6. (Bearing in mind, however, that plays don't always have a single period of composition, owing to ongoing revision etc.)
2. Internal stylistic evidence that 2H6 is earlier than 1H6. Largely a theoretical category here. Obviously works best when the same author wrote both plays, which many think is only partially true in this case. [For what it's worth the Shakespearean scenes in 1H6 do seem to me to evince a more developed style.]
3. Internal evidence from 2H6, tending to show that 1H6 was not already in existence. An example would be that Richard Duke of York isn't called "Plantagenet", as he repeatedly is in 3H6 and 1H6.
4. Internal evidence from 1H6, tending to show that 2H6 was already in existence.
But 3 and 4 are much more problematic than may appear.
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Inconsistency
Consider, for example, this matter of inconsistency between different plays:
It needs to be emphasized that inconsistency, as such, is not evidence for priority. It only becomes evidence for priority when accompanied by an explanation of how the inconsistency originated.
That's the principle, but in the present case inconsistency tends to favour 2H6 preceding 1H6, because those who favour 1H6 preceding 2H6 also tend to favour common authorship (normally Shakespeare's) and a planned sequence of plays delivered over a short period.
But "inconsistency" is highly assailable.
Firstly, what one person sees as inconsistency can be seen by another as consistent, or simply as development. After all, the action typically changes its participants: they behave in one way at one time, then events take place and they behave differently.
Secondly, even if the inconsistency is granted it may not demand any special explanation. Dramatists of Shakespeare's time weren't averse to a bit of inconsistency. Their art was intuitive and opportunistic. There are even inconsistencies between such closely-knit plays as 1H4 and 2H4 , for instance in the personality of Falstaff. Sometimes an author ignores or contradicts the strict implications of earlier action because it makes for better drama. It's common and indeed characteristic for the dramatists to show what's essentially the same action or situation more than once: it's another aspect of their technique of development by variation. Audiences don't usually notice these things. They've forgotten that e.g. Isabella implied that she was going on her own to see Angelo, but then shows up with Lucio (Measure for Measure Act II Scene 2). And they accept that between scenes a character who has made a difficult decision may become doubtful and then have to make it all over again.
Thirdly, even if the need for some explanation is granted, it doesn't follow that the suggested explanation is the only one that accounts for the facts, even if it's the only one being offered to us.
Here's an example. In the opening scene of 2H6 a bitterly disappointed Gloucester recalls how the privy council laboured to hang on to what Suffolk has just given away:
Or hath mine uncle Beaufort and myself,
With all the learnèd council of the realm,
Studied so long, sat in the council house
Early and late, debating to and fro
How France and Frenchmen might be kept in awe,
And had his Highness in his infancy
Crownèd in Paris in despite of foes?
(2 Henry 6, I.1.88-94)
There are lots of differences between this picture and what's portrayed in 1H6, but let's just focus on the "infancy". Shakespeare normally uses "infant" and "infancy" to refer to babyhood or early childhood, as we still do today; to "mewling and puking in his nurse's arms". So here the Henry "Crownèd in Paris" is pictured as even younger than he actually was: in fact, Henry had just passed his tenth birthday. (The final chorus of Henry V (V.2.386) does the same.)
But that's rather odd, if Shakespeare had just come from composing 1H6, which elects to give Henry a speaking part. When Henry appears in III.1 and then IV.1 (the coronation scene), he has plenty to say. There's indeed much emphasis on his tender years and his "pretty" speeches, but when all's said he comes over as rather older than his historical age of ten. In Shakespeare's theatre, there was a practical lower-age limit for a speaking part: think of Arthur in King John or the boy princes in Richard III; they are youths, not infants. If Shakespeare needed to show a really young child, he used a doll (Marina, Perdita).
So here's an inconsistency argument. Nevertheless, it's an assailable one.
Elsewhere Shakespeare on a couple of occasions is evidently referring to the legal meaning of infancy, referring to a state of not being of age: i.e. younger than 21 (see e.g. 1H4 I.3.265).
Contrary to what I wrote above, Mamillius in The Winter's Tale definitely stretches the practical lower age limit for a speaking part (though he's much more childlike and less voluble than the Henry of the coronation scene). If he's still unbreeched, as Leontes implies (I.2.188), then he can only be about seven.
Most significantly, Pandulph in King John actually terms Arthur (who does have a speaking part) an "infant" (III.4.136).
So what about the inconsistency now, does it still call for explanation, is it even there at all? To my eyes it is, but I have to acknowledge that this may be confirmation bias.
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These same thoughts apply to consistency. For example, Talbot died in 1453, that is, eight years after Henry VI married Margaret. 1H6 and 2H6 are consistent in reversing the order of those events. Does this tell us anything about the sequence in which the two plays were written? -- Not really.
Or consider the matter of dependence. 2H6 is, we want to show, independent of 1H6 ; but this is difficult, because every chronicle play to a certain extent depends on a larger national history which is outside the play in question. The author(s) of 2H6 and 3H6 were very dutifully seeking, not so much to make their own artworks, as to present portions of the national history. Hence chronicle plays are by their very nature prone to begin and end in the middle of things. The audience is assumed to have some awareness of historical context: that is, of prior history and of future history. The chronicle play therefore displays a certain dependence on the history beyond its own limits, whether that history had been embodied in previous plays or not. On the other hand no chronicle play can afford to assume that everyone in the audience has seen any other specific play. Therefore there is always a certain amount of re-presentation, where this is necessary. And there is a process of selection, whereby past historical events are only referred to if they directly forward the present action; that could account for the lack of reference to Talbot in 2H6, just as it accounts for the lack of reference to Cardinal Beaufort and Jack Cade in 3H6. Thus every chronicle play displays a certain independence. It's therefore difficult to demonstrate that 2H6 either does or doesn't depend on 1H6, because in a way it does and in a way it doesn't and neither of these observations really proves anything because that's just the nature of chronicle plays.
Labels: Thomas Nashe, William Shakespeare
