Tim Mooney Rep's video: Shakespeare Storms the Capitol HenryVI-2 ShakespearesHistories ShakespeareExplainer

Warning: PG (language) Tim Mooney ties Shakespeare's Henry VI, Part 2 to the latest headlines, outlining how an incapable, impotent national leader creates a power vacuum which draws power hungry hangers-on that entangle themselves in sharp-elbowed attacks. These ongoing tangles effectively freeze the national progress with indecision as wages plummet, the aristocracy grows bloated, and justice is dispensed unevenly, leading to a massive invasion of the capitol! Tim takes us through how Shakespeare tells what feels, to us, like a very modern story, as the Duke of Suffolk actually "marries" Queen Margaret on the King Henry's behalf, and seems to suggest repeatedly that the two are having an affair. This play shows us glimmers of what would eventually manifest themselves in some of Shakespeare's most popular plays. It evokes Hamlet as we realize that "something is rotten in the state of England." Much like Macbeth, we find prophecies of the witch in Act I actually come true in Act 5, and Much of the misery of Henry VI, Part Two may be blamed on Margaret, Henry's queen, who not only arrives without a dowry, but with the price tag of the regions of Anjou and Maine in exchange (all while enjoying almost-certain dalliances with Suffolk). In truth, England was losing France already, and Margaret was a convenient object of blame for the loss. Meanwhile, Henry would not father a child (assuming the child was his) for another eight years, and other royals in the line of succession were eager to step in: The Duke of York held a multi-generational claim to the crown, as he might trace his lineage back to the THIRD son of Edward III (while Henry's great-grandfather, John of Gaunt, was Edward's FOURTH son). Meanwhile, Somerset (York's great enemy) traced his ancestry (also) back to John of Gaunt by way of his eventual third wife. This often-unspoken rivalry is the source of the eventual "War of the Roses". When Henry's uncle, Gloucester, is murdered (probably by Suffolk), Henry exiles Suffolk (obviously, by now), Margaret's lover, where he finds himself captured and killed by pirates. Ultimately, it is the massive self-interest of the many parties that surround the king, that throw the kingdom into chaos, climaxing into a peasant revolt led by Jack Cade (masquerading as the secret descendent of Edward III's THIRD son), which leads to what may be the play's most profound observation: "Fear frames disorder and disorder wounds where it should guard." All of this explodes amid speeches of great, thunderous "gaslighting," with echoes of Romeo & Juliet, Hamlet and Macbeth... not quite as brilliant as any of those plays, but with definite glimmers of the brilliance that would come from Shakespeare's pen, all while reminding us of our own recent disasters of "peasant rebellion." We also get glimmers of one of Shakespeare's greatest villains, Richard (III), who shows a villainy well above his three-year old capacity.