Much Ado About Hawking

I’ve been stuck on Henry VI, Part II. I’ve not been stuck on reading. I actually finished reading the play (and its successor) a few months ago. I’ve been stuck writing about it. What to say? It’s a middle play that was written first. As noted in my short essay on Part I, that play was written last — critics believe — to round out the cycle. It was written to play on the audience’s knowledge of things to come.

The problem is, not much develops in any normal, literary sense in Part II. Part III has the big pay off: the killing of King Henry, the rise of the York line, Richard III’s seizure of power. Part II, on the other hand, contents itself with murmurs and intimations of bad stuff to come.

HAWKS AND DOVES
So, what does happen in Henry VI, Part II? Birds. There’s an abundance (a weird, deliberate-feeling abundance) of animal imagery in the play, but on re-reading, I found it was the bird images that most stood out. This is a play about machinations to seize power, and if there is a single picture that captures of the feeling of the play, it that of birds of prey circling victims from 300 feet up. The “hawks and falcons” are the York clan and also Queen Margaret and Somerset. And the prey is King Henry. Before Richard Duke of York (the father of Richard III) or Edward can seize power, they (and, with different objectives) Queen Margaret pick apart he King’s helpless “flock.”

In Act I, Queen Margaret chooses her first target: the wife of Gloucester, the Lord Protector’s spouse. Margaret is (rightly) troubled by the Duchess of Gloucester’s ambitions. Suffolk announces:

Madam, myself have limed a bush for her,
And placed a choir of such enticing birds
That she will light to listen in their lays,
And never mount to trouble you again (I.3, 91-4).

“Liming” a bush was the Elizabethan method of putting lime onto branches and twigs to catch birds, it turns out.

But the tactics of trapping the Gloucesters are more subtle than simple hunting them straight. At the start of Act II, while the royal retinue actually indulges in a bit of recreational falconry, the Iago-like Suffolk seizes the symbol-rich moment to intimate to the King that Gloucester is the hawk who seeks the crown:

My Lord Protector’s hawks do tower so well;
They know their master loves to be aloft,
And bears his thoughts above his falcon’s pitch (II.1, 10-2).

The Penguin edition reminds readers that the heraldic badge of the Gloucesters was hawk with a maiden head, so Suffolk is preying on a ready analogy. But, as audience members know from watching Gloucester’s angry confrontations with his over-eager wife, he actually is more of a dove than a hawk. The Duchess, a hawk herself, recognizes the predatory traps (as she herself is about to be exiled), warning her husband:

…be thou mild and blush not at my shame,
Nor stir at nothing till the ax of death
Hang over thee, as sure it shortly will.
For Suffolk, he that can do all in all
With her [Queen Margaret] that hateth thee and hates us all,
And York, and impious Beaufort that false priest,
Have all limed bushes to betray thy wings,
And fly though how thou canst, they’ll tangle thee.
But fear not thou until thy foot be snared,
Nor never seek prevention of thy foes. (II.4, 49-58).

Gloucester, the naïve bird that he is, believes his blameless, bird-of-the-field heart will keep him safe. He’s wrong. He’s smothered in his bead (one must presume a feather bed) to kick off Act III, scene 2.

The King shows he is no bird-brain. Or, rather he shows–being convinced that Suffolk is the cause of Gloucester’s death–that he can be the falconer who recalls the raptor:

What, doth my Lord of Suffolk comfort me?
Came he right now to sing a raven’s note
Whose dismal tune bereft my vital powers;
And thinks he that the chirping of a wren,
By crying comfort from a hollow breast
Can chase away the first-conceived sound?
Hide not thy poison with such sugared words (III.2, 39-45).

Suffolk is banished, pushed out of the royal nest — which all comes a bit late for Gloucester, who remains dead for the rest of the play.

Why such flocks of bird imagery in a history play? The images of falconry and liming, I believe, offered Shakespeare a ready set of analogies for the this play of slowly unfolding strategies and circling power-seekers. But they also add music to a play that otherwise lacks some of the fuel (content-wise) of Part III or some of the earlier plays. Without the blood of Titus or the wit of Taming of the Shrew or the scheming of Richard III (in Part III), Shakespeare added poetry, delicately weaving avian themes into a courtly history.

THE TWO TOWERS
I can’t leave aside Henry VI, Part II without talking about the Tower. As a silly American, I had always associated the phrase, “The Tower of London” with imprisonment, torture, and beheading. But on a trip to London this past summer, I was embarrassed to learn its real history as the seat of the English monarchy for centuries. Turns out Kings of England liked to keep their enemies close to home. So, the Tower was both a prison and a palace.

In the Henry VI plays, as the hawks begin to circle the pious king, the Tower does start to feel like a cage, even for the king. I had a visceral sense of the palace-is-my-prison dichotomy while touring the Tower myself. The resident beefeaters recounted the Cade rebellion even as I was reading the play depicting it. While the rebellion seems a dumbshow as depicted in the play (most famous, perhaps, for the Butcher’s line: “The first think we do let’s kill all the lawyers” (IV.2, 81)), seeing how close the rebels actually came to taking the Tower (London Bridge is just one Starbucks away!) makes it seem as though it were a much more serious affair.

In the end, though, the rebellion is put down. With my 21st-century eye on the play, I feel like that’s the part I’d cut if I were making the Henry VI movie. It’s an interesting diversion that goes nowhere.

The real matter at the end of the play is the Richards. In Act V, Richard III, “crookback Richard,” makes his first appearance. Richard Duke of York kills Clifford. And the War of the Roses truly commences. Henry, Margaret, and Young Clifford are forced to flee.

York has won the battle but not yet the war. On to Part III.