Henry VI Part 1 Acts IV & V – “I owe him little duty and less love.”

Henry VI Part 1 Acts IV & V – “I owe him little duty and less love.”

Henry gets the pretension of being crowned in Paris but this is undermined by the petty squabbles of his nobles. In fact, it is Somerset's animosity to York that makes Somerset so slow in providing troops and this leads later to the death of the chivalrous Talbot and his son. Shakespeare makes us admire Talbot to the last but he elicits some sympathy for York who tries desperately in the end to save Talbot. This sympathy for York works dramatically plus sets up our sense of some allegiance for his cause in the later Henry plays.

The French seem to have the upper hand in the war again. Talbot dies and the baton of England’s fate is passed into the hands of the unfit courtly politicians. Joan of Arc’s unorthodox methods and guerrilla tactics seem to have won the day. The world has changed and Joan’s attitude to the noble dead as simply bodies that stink and attract flies along with the politics of those who do not understand peace being the ones who broker peace, is decidedly contemporary. France looses its advantage and the politicians jockey for position. With Talbot’s death still wafting in the air, Joan of Arc’s death becomes inevitable. She calls upon the spirits who championed her, to help her, but bitumen and the fire await her offstage.

We do not end the play with a triumphant and powerful Henry VI. A peace is brokered but many English nobles are flabbergasted at how many territories Henry VI has given back to the French. Infighting and petty squabbles still lie within the English camp. Suffolk, who has negotiated the marriage of Henry VI to Margaret daughter of the King of Naples (and Jerusalem), seems to be manipulating Henry while openly declaring his own love for Margaret. The play ends in peace but with love and duty dead with Talbot, something is decidedly rotten in the state of Henry VI’s England.

Shakespeare returns next in in the bloody Titus Andronicus.