I am not familiar enough with the Wars of the Roses part of the Histories to be much help there, I only really know the Henriad. Might want to talk to @reeve-of-caerwyn , who is another hardcore Yorkist. My suggestion would be… just watch/read the plays and cheer on the House of York?
(I’m a hardcore Orléanist, so this is reallllly not my circus and monkeys).
Yeah I don’t really see why you can’t read the H6 plays as a Yorkist. They aren’t as biased as you think. The first one (1H6) isn’t even about the Wars of the Roses, it’s about the Hundred Year’s War primarily.
But the next two plays are pretty neutral and everyone (on both sides) in them is kind of an asshole, but it’s made out to be a violent time and a time where everyone is just doing the best they can for their families.
In R3 Richard is obviously the bad guy but I don’t see what that has to do with the house of York proper, and E4 is made out to be a good king.
The idea that a hardcore Yorkist wouldn’t enjoy the Henry VIs in general is ultimately rooted in the idea of the history plays as Tudor propaganda. Shakespeare’s primary goal wasn’t, especially in the 1590s, to uphold the legitimacy of the Tudor dynasty; that was done and dusted, and indeed the Tudors were on their way out since Elizabeth was in her sixties and childless. He’s much more interested in larger political issues: what happens when there isn’t a clear succession, how civil strife can tear a country apart, what makes someone a good or bad ruler, what does this whole “legitimacy” thing even mean? These are much more universal issues than which particular set of Plantagenets deserved to wear the crown, and issues that could potentially arise again in the very near future, and Shakespeare’s just using history to examine them. Which is what history, certainly in the ideas of the period, is for – early modern readers looked to history for examples and precedents. The sources he was using had a certain amount of bias (I mean, all history does, to an extent) but he was less interested in advancing particular dynastic claims than in the bigger picture. And indeed, the only side Shakespeare really takes in the history plays is England over France (not without a grain of salt, but ykwim). The conflicts between Richard II and Henry IV, Henry IV and the Percy faction, and indeed Yorkists and Lancastrians are all depicted in various shades of grey; few characters are entirely heroic or villainous. (Richard III himself was already an accepted historical villain by the time Shakespeare was writing, although that version of him has survived to the present day entirely because of Shakespeare. He probably didn’t have much access to an alternate historical tradition.)
This is, of course, because Shakespeare was a humane and nuanced writer, but he was also participating in a deeply anxious tradition in his treatment of the Wars of the Roses. The entire period from Richard II to Richard III was thorny ground for historians of Shakespeare’s day, because the state and the church together sought to promulgate a very particular interpretation of it: that the deposition of Richard II was a sort of dynastic original sin that led to civil strife in the reigns of Henries IV and VI which was then punished eventually by the tyranny of Richard III as a sort of “scourge of God” and then redeemed by the Glorious Coming of the Tudors. And also that any kind of rebellion was itself the worst sin you could commit, worse than the worst ruler ever and basically mirroring the sin of Satan – this idea had taken off in Protestant circles because it emphasized king and not pope as the highest earthly authority. Probably the most famous attempt at the Authorized Tudor Version of the Wars of the Roses (and also an earlyish use of the rose imagery, on its delightfully wacky frontispiece) is Edward Hall’s Union of the Two Noble and Illustre Famelies of Yorke and Lancastre (first published in 1548, shortly after the death of Henry VIII).
Except that there were a couple of teeny little problems. One is that Henry IV is actually a pretty pivotal figure in the Lancastrian claim to the throne; the Tudor claim comes not through Henry himself (whose direct line of descent died out with Henry VI) but through his father, John of Gaunt, via the formerly-bastard Beaufort line. Henry IV had had his half-siblings barred from the line of succession, an act which Henry VII undid, but he’s an important piece of the puzzle all the same on the grounds that he put the line of Gaunt on the throne. So while the Tudor theory of monarchy depends on Richard II’s legitimacy (which was unquestionable), Henry VII’s actual claim to the throne required Henry IV’s legitimacy as well (Henry VIII and following inherited the Yorkist claim from Elizabeth so it was less of an issue). And if they could both be legitimate – if it were possible to earn one’s legitimacy through one’s actions, as the poet Samuel Daniel suggests Henry IV did by winning at Shrewsbury – well, that is good for Henry VII and his descendants on the one hand, as it validates his claim by virtue of being the last man standing, but it also suggests fairly strongly that even if your bloodlines aren’t the closest to the throne, you can become a legitimate ruler if you can get and hold onto the crown. And you wouldn’t want to suggest that. So while the “official” version of the Wars of the Roses looks neat and tidy, it doesn’t really hold up if you look at it closely. (It’s like the Monet of historical interpretation!) And most Elizabethan (and earlier) writers who took it on ran into difficulty on those grounds.
Probably the most concise version of it, though, is the frontispiece from this 1641 history:
That’s Richard II on the left, obviously; the Roman-looking guy on the right is a heavily-idealized Henry VII. In the middle, a big pile of corpses.
@shredsandpatches has basically said it all, but I do want to add that Henry VII is a complete nonentity in Shakespeare’s Richard III. He is The Most Boring.
Also, it’s worth pointing out that Richard III ends on a conditional.
Women have more power and agency in Shakespeare’s comedies than in his tragedies, and usually there are more of them with more speaking time, so I’m pretty sure what Shakespeare’s saying is “men ruin everything” because everyone fucking dies when men are in charge but when women are in charge you get married and live happily ever after
I think you’re reading too far into things, kiddo. Take a break from your women’s studies major and get some fresh air.
Right. Well, I’m a historian, so allow me to elaborate.
One of the most important aspects of the Puritan/Protestant revolution (in the 1590’s in particular) was the foregrounding of marriage as the most appropriate way of life. It often comes as a surprise when people learn this, but Puritans took an absolutely positive view of sexuality within the context of marriage. Clergy were encouraged to lead by example and marry and have children, as opposed to Catholic clergy who prized virginity above all else.Through his comedies, Shakespeare was promoting this new way of life which had never been promoted before. The dogma, thanks to the church, had always been “durr hburr women are evil sex is bad celibacy is your ticket to salvation.” All that changed in Shakespeare’s time, and thanks to him we get a view of the world where marriage, women, and sexuality are in fact the key to salvation.
The difference between the structure of a comedy and a tragedy is that the former is cyclical, and the latter a downward curve. Comedies weren’t stupid fun about the lighter side of life. The definition of a comedy was not a funny play. They were plays that began in turmoil and ended in reconciliation and renewal. They showed the audience the path to salvation, with the comic ending of a happy marriage leaving the promise of societal regeneration intact. Meanwhile, in the tragedies, there is no such promise of regeneration or salvation. The characters destroy themselves. The world in which they live is not sustainable. It leads to a dead end, with no promise of new life.
And so, in comedies, the women are the movers and shakers. They get things done. They move the machinery of the plot along. In tragedies, though women have an important part to play, they are often morally bankrupt as compared to the women of comedies, or if they are morally sound, they are disenfranchised and ignored, and refused the chance to contribute to the society in which they live. Let’s look at some examples.
In Romeo and Juliet, the play ends in tragedy because no-one listens to Juliet. Her father and Paris both insist they know what’s right for her, and they refuse to listen to her pleas for clemency. Juliet begs them – screams, cries, manipulates, tells them outright I cannot marry, just wait a week before you make me marry Paris, just a week, please and they ignore her, and force her into increasingly desperate straits, until at last the two young lovers kill themselves. The message? This violent, hate-filled patriarchal world is unsustainable. The promise of regeneration is cut down with the deaths of these children. Compare to Othello. This is the most horrifying and intimate tragedy of all, with the climax taking place in a bedroom as a husband smothers his young wife. The tragedy here could easily have been averted if Othello had listened to Desdemona and Emilia instead of Iago. The message? This society, built on racism and misogyny and martial, masculine honour, is unsustainable, and cannot regenerate itself. The very horror of it lies in the murder of two wives.
How about Hamlet? Ophelia is a disempowered character, but if Hamlet had listened to her, and not mistreated her, and if her father hadn’t controlled every aspect of her life, then perhaps she wouldn’t have committed suicide. The final scene of carnage is prompted by Laertes and Hamlet furiously grappling over her corpse. When Ophelia dies, any chance of reconciliation dies with her. The world collapses in on itself. This society is unsustainable. King Lear – we all know that this is prompted by Cordelia’s silence, her unwillingness to bend the knee and flatter in the face of tyranny. It is Lear’s disproportionate response to this that sets off the tragedy, and we get a play that is about entropy, aging and the destruction of the social order.
There are exceptions to the rule. I’m sure a lot of you are crying out “but Lady Macbeth!” and it’s a good point. However, in terms of raw power, neither Lady Macbeth nor the witches are as powerful as they appear. The only power they possess is the ability to influence Macbeth; but ultimately it is Macbeth’s own ambition that prompts him to murder Duncan, and it is he who escalates the situation while Lady Macbeth suffers a breakdown. In this case you have women who are allowed to influence the play, but do so for the worse; they fail to be the good moral compasses needed. Goneril, Regan and Gertrude are similarly comparable; they possess a measure of power, but do not use it for good, and again society cannot renew itself.
Now we come to the comedies, where women do have the most control over the plot. The most powerful example is Rosalind in As You Like It. She pulls the strings in every avenue of the plot, and it is thanks to her control that reconciliation is achieved at the end, and all end up happily married. Much Ado About Nothing pivots around a woman’s anger over the abuse of her innocent cousin. If the men were left in charge in this play, no-one would be married at the end, and it would certainly end in tragedy. But Beatrice stands up and rails against men for their cruel conduct towards women and says that famous, spine-tingling line – oh God, that I were a man! I would eat his heart in the marketplace. And Benedick, her suitor, listens to her. He realises that his misogynistic view of the world is wrong and he takes steps to change it. He challenges his male friends for their conduct, parts company with the prince, and by doing this he wins his lady’s hand. The entire happy ending is dependent on the men realising that they must trust, love and respect women. Now it is a society that is worthy of being perpetuated. Regeneration and salvation lies in equality between the sexes and the love husbands and wives cherish for each other. The Merry Wives of Windsor – here we have men learning to trust and respect their wives, Flastaff learning his lesson for trying to seduce married women, and a daughter tricking everyone so she can marry the man she truly loves. A Midsummer Night’s Dream? The turmoil begins because three men are trying to force Hermia to marry someone she does not love, and Helena has been cruelly mistreated. At the end, happiness and harmony comes when the women are allowed to marry the men of their choosing, and it is these marriages that are blessed by the fairies.
What of the romances? In The Tempest, Prospero holds the power, but it is Miranda who is the key to salvation and a happy ending. Without his daughter, it is likely Prospero would have turned into a murderous revenger. The Winter’s Tale sees Leontes destroy himself through his own jealousy. The king becomes a vicious tyrant because he is cruel to his own wife and children, and this breach of faith in suspecting his wife of adultery almost brings ruin to his entire kingdom. Only by obeying the sensible Paulina does Leontes have a chance of achieving redemption, and the pure trust and love that exists between Perdita and Florizel redeems the mistakes of the old generation and leads to a happy ending. Cymbeline? Imogen is wronged, and it is through her love and forgiveness that redemption is achieved at the end. In all of these plays, without the influence of the women there is no happy ending.
The message is clear. Without a woman’s consent and co-operation in living together and bringing up a family, there is turmoil. Equality between the sexes and trust between husbands and wives alone will bring happiness and harmony, not only to the family unit, but to society as a whole. The Taming of the Shrew rears its ugly head as a counter-example, for here a happy ending is dependent on a woman’s absolute subservience and obedience even in the face of abuse. But this is one of Shakespeare’s early plays (and a rip-off of an older comedy called The Taming of a Shrew) and it is interesting to look at how the reception of this play changed as values evolved in this society.
As early as 1611 The Shrew was adapted by the writer John Fletcher in a play called The Woman’s Prize, or The Tamer Tamed. It is both a sequel and an imitation, and it chronicles Petruchio’s search for a second wife after his disastrous marriage with Katherine (whose taming had been temporary) ended with her death. In Fletcher’s version, the men are outfoxed by the women and Petruchio is ‘tamed’ by his new wife. It ends with a rather uplifting epilogue that claims the play aimed:
To teach both sexes due equality
And as they stand bound, to love mutually.
The Taming of the Shrew and The Tamer Tamed were staged back to back in 1633, and it was recorded that although Shakespeare’s Shrew was “liked”, Fletcher’s Tamer Tamed was “very well liked.” You heard it here folks; as early as 1633 audiences found Shakespeare’s message of total female submission uncomfortable, and they preferred John Fletcher’s interpretation and his message of equality between the sexes.
So yes. The message we can take away from Shakespeare is that a world in which women are powerless and cannot or do not contribute positively to society and family is unsustainable. Men, given the power and left to their own devices, will destroy themselves. But if men and women can work together and live in harmony, then the whole community has a chance at salvation, renewal and happiness.
See also the history plays:
Richard II – Nobody listens to the Queen and it all goes to hell in a handbasket.
1 & 2 Henry IV – The only women we encounter are in the Boar’s Head Tavern or in the rebel faction, and Henry IV has a whole lot of problems.
Henry V – All the women know that even thought Henry thinks he’s won, it’s only temporary.
Henry VI, 1-3 – Okay, fine, Margaret’s badassery is partly because she’s murdery, but there’s also Elizabeth, who is smarter than every other person on the damn stage…
Richard III – INCLUDING RICHARD. The women in this play band together and take Richard down. I will die on this hill.
Henry VIII – Katherine of Aragon is a BAMF. Even though she was both Spanish and Catholic, and even though the recently deceased Elizabeth I was the daughter of her rival Anne Boleyn, Shakespeare and Fletcher make her the heroine of the play.
Which is all to say that yes, women’s power within Shakespeare’s plays can indeed be correlated to whether or not everything falls to pieces.
First, a caveat: Although I own the first two Iggulden novels, I didn’t get more than a third through Stormbird because I got incredibly irritated by several narrative choices he made. So I can’t speak to the novels themselves.
The answer to the historical question is also a bit difficult because there are divergences in the chronicle sources based on who the chronicler in question supported. It is true that when the earl of Warwick took King Edward IV into custody (i.e. kidnapped him) in 1469, there was a fair amount of unrest that followed, primarily in areas of the country that favoured Edward, such as the city of London and much of the south. It would definitely be a stretch to claim that Elizabeth Woodville “orchestrated” or “engineered” these revolts against Warwick. What is known is that Warwick was responsible for the execution of her father Sir Richard Woodville and one of her brothers in 1469, so her feelings toward him would not have been favorable, to say the least. So it wouldn’t surprise me if she had been in support of any plan to wrest Edward free of Warwick’s control and to get rid of Warwick altogether. I sincerely doubt she had the power base or the political clout to actually do anything about it without Edward’s support.
Re: Calais, yes, it is true that Warwick’s ship was forbidden from landing in Calais on Edward’s orders. According to Philippe de Commynes (who was actually in Calais at the time, but was writing his account some 30 years later), the captain of Calais did fire cannons upon the ship, but also sent two barrels of wine aboard after hearing that Warwick’s daughter Isabel had gone into labour.
Longer answer: There are multiple references to Edward IV gaining a great deal of weight later in life, mostly because of his binge-drinking and binge-eating. (There’s even a reference to Edward binging and purging in order to eat more.) He most likely died of pneumonia or complications thereof, and he died surprisingly young from what ought to have been a preventable illness. There are also mentions of him having suffered some kind of stroke shortly before his death that may have been a contributing factor.
Was his weight one of those factors? Unknown. If I were guessing, I’d say it had less to do with weight, per se, and more to do with the terrible habits of which the weight was symptomatic. Edward IV was a very large man (6ft2) and, when he was younger, he was a tremendous athlete and warrior. Unfortunately, he essentially became an alcoholic after his return to the throne in 1471, and I would argue that that probably played a greater role in his death than any weight gain.
More generally speaking, weight gain on its own has little correlation with bad health, and it is symptomatic of our fatphobic society that we immediately fall back on that as the reason for overweight people being ill. Someone can be healthy and overweight at the same time–and that was as true in the fifteenth century as it is now. But what Edward IV definitely wasn’t was healthy.
Well, Philippa Gregory is particularly terrible about not only Margaret of Anjou, but about pretty much any woman who is not Elizabeth Woodville or her mother. But Margaret has received a lot of bad press and it’s only been in recent years that even historians have begun to reassess her. Which is all to say, no, she does not deserve most of the negativity heaped upon her.
I highly recommend Helen Maurer’s 2003 biography of Margaret for an excellently researched, well-balanced account, particularly of her early years in England and her role in the beginning of the Wars of the Roses. While not just about Margaret, J.L. Laynesmith’s The Last Medieval Queens is also a wonderful book about fifteenth-century queenship more generally. I myself have written extensively about Margaret’s reputation and how she’s portrayed in literary texts, but if you want to know about historically verifiable facts, I’m not the person you want.
Fiction-wise, probably the most positive version of Margaret I have encountered is in Susan Higginbotham’s Queen of Lost Hopes. I have a few quibbles with this book, but it’s refreshing to see Margaret as a positive protagonist. Sharon Penman’s The Sunne in Splendour features an emphatically villainous Margaret, BUT she does a decent job of humanizing her despite not being on her side. And, while there’s no historical accuracy to be had, I do love, love, LOVE Shakespeare’s version with her epic tragic arc and her glorious speeches.
There are a number of early French novels about Margaret (I mean 18th/19th century) that are entertaining, but completely batshit and not even remotely accurate in any way.
ETA: Whew! This list has been circulating for a few years now, which is awesome. Thanks so much to everyone who has sent along series for me to add. I save every suggestion sent and try to add them in batches so as not to clog up feeds with individual updates. For that reason, I also don’t mark the status of each series, because with this many titles, that changes regularly. But please keep those suggestions coming! (And please, make sure you note what the series is retelling when sending it my way.)
Sidenote: Series are arranged by original author’s last name, then by title of original work, then by web series title, with series about multiple titles clumped at the end.
Ever since The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, literary web series have EXPLODED. What’s not to like? You get a modernized retelling of some of your favorite stories in bite-sized weekly (or semiweekly, in some cases) installments. They’re fantastic! I’ve gotten really frustrated at how many have popped up without me knowing, though. I WANT TO KNOW THEM ALL! I even asked my feed for a master list, but no one could deliver.
So I made one myself. Below is a list of every literature-related retelling web series I could find, organized by author’s last name (if applicable). If I’ve missed any, PLEASE add on to the list and keep it going. Enjoy!
The wonderful master list has been updated once again! Several of these are empty channels (attempts at Persuasion adaptations, I’m looking at you), but there are a couple new additions, so be sure to look over the list if you’re looking for new shows to watch this holiday season (I know I will be doing some bingeing over winter break, so other people probably are too).
I’m of two minds about her, to be completely honest. I say this having read only two of her books–The Traitor’s Wife (Katharine Woodville) and Queen of Lost Hopes (Margaret of Anjou).
On the one hand, I love her POV choices and the fact that she takes risks in her writing. It’s admirable and I’d like to see more historical fiction authors do it.
On the other hand, while I enjoyed both of the above books as I was reading them, I started having reservations as I thought more about them afterward. The Traitor’s Wife was entertaining enough, but there was a lot of rather gleeful ridicule heaped upon anyone who might think Richard III wasn’t an incompetent monster of one sort or another. (I’m very much of the middle-ground school; he was neither evil nor good, but I suppose that just makes me boring.) The Margaret book was better in that regard, but there were some leaps of logic that I couldn’t quite get past.
So, I do recommend them, but with some reservations. If you’re sick of the usual Wars of the Roses narratives, definitely give them a try. If you’re a die-hard Ricardian, avoid at all costs, as they will only make you angry.
I actually hadn’t heard of it at all until this ask, and I’m now quite curious to read it. If I manage to do so (sadly I’m currently short on reading time), I will definitely post a review.
Dr. Kavita Mudan Finn 