Henry VI.1 is Good and also actually Important

Som-Mai and I on Monday saw the Backroom Shakespeare Project, a group here in Chicago that gathers talented actors for a one-performance-only no-rehearsals production of Shakespeare plays for free in bars around the city. I’d seen them once before pre-pandemic (I think it was Richard III) and it’s a hootin’ hollerin’ good time, and the genuine closest experience I’ve had to some of the more artistically rambunctious and deeply nerdy parts of my college Shakespeare group years.

We saw Henry VI.1 (as part of a thing this month where they’re going to do all three parts of Henry VI over the course of the month.) VI.1 is often considered the weakest and least consequential of the Henries. It is overwhelmingly the least performed of the three, and in productions that condense the three plays into one or two, it’s often the one that is most brutally cut down. In fact, some productions will just keep the one inarguably necessary scene of York and Somerset picking the red and white roses in the garden and otherwise move on directly to VI.21.

I am not going to argue that from a literal plot perspective VI.1 is as important as the other two, especially if you’re trying to pair with Richard III and see the Richard arc, or the York -> Richard arc, as the primary thrust of the tetralogy. I will also not argue against the fact that linguistically…… it’s not Billy’s best. That does not make it bad, and does not mean there are not great lines2, but it is very clearly an early and likely co-written work. The bangers are closer to rarities than constants, the meter is stiffer, etc.

But on watching this version at the Briny Swine Oyster Bar on Monday, I have now become a fierce partisan defending VI.1’s place in the First Tetralogy and in the broader Henriad. Perhaps primed by something similar Paul Cantor said about Henry V, and certainly not a novel observation on my part, but this production really hammered home that Henry VI.1 is fundamentally about the death of chivalry3. I’ll have to reread the play to see how much was just this cut vs the actual text, but in the cut we watched…. the main characters of the play are Lord Talbot and Joan? With York either the next tier down or the third leg of the stool4?

And it is really effective, if perhaps ham-handed and overbearing at times (see Sir William Lucy’s upbraiding of York and Somerset, Young Talbot’s death, York’s cruelty to Joan, Suffolk’s cartoonish evil wooing Margaret) at transitioning from a world where Talbot and Joan are antagonists, each fighting for their country, to one where they are in fact the last vestiges (I guess alongside Lucy) of the old chivalric order that are destroyed by the world that York, Somerset, Gloucester, Burgundy, Winchester, Suffolk, and (more through failure than malice) even Henry are creating. I don’t fully subscribe to the whole “there are only six plots” thing or whatever, but in that framing you start out watching a “man vs man5” story, but it turns out you were actually in a “man vs society6” story all along. Despite being mortal enemies, Talbot and Joan are much more similar to each other than they are to the nobles they serve (worse obviously on the English side than the French, but at least in this production they leaned into the fact that Charles is selling out Joan and her quest by accepting a negotiated peace.)

You do not need this in order for the latter plays to work. But oh boy do I think it helps! You already get a sense of decay in the comparison between York and his failsons in parts 2 and 3, but I think that becomes even more damning when you get to see how much York himself pales in comparison to Talbot and Joan!

Other than the relative weakness of the language on average, the biggest knock on the play that I fully acknowledge is it does give you a lot of double beats, both across the tetralogy as a whole, and even within part 1. Double beats can work really well when the second repetition recontextualizes things, whether by using the repeated beat to recontextualize the stuff surrounding it (see how the differences between Macbeth’s first and second meetings with the Witches contextualize Macbeth’s descent into paranoia and sociopathy) or by unlocking new retroactive context on the first beat (Lady Macbeth’s repetition in the out damn’d spot monologue of lines from around the Duncan murder recontextualize those early exhortations to courage or to sleep as failed attempts to control the insanity of the situation and/or her own guilt.)

Unfortunately, the fighting between Gloucester and Winchester is just sort of a double beat on the fight with York and Somerset; the closest benefits you get are logistical (it gives the excuse for York, at the time Plantagenet, to try and mediate between Gloucester/Winchester which tees up Warwick for advocating he be reinstated as Duke of York) or just a sense of “literally everyone is fighting.” But especially in a condensed version, I see why Gloucester/Winchester is almost always cut.78

You also get a form of a double beat between the Talbot/Young Talbot death in France and the “Father that killed his son/son that killed his father” moment from VI.3. I suppose, as I’m writing this, maybe that also helps sell the senselessness of civil war and decline of order in that you go from Father and Son fighting and dying together to Father and Son fighting and dying against each other. But idk, we’ll see I guess when BRSP gets to part 3.

Also the big downside of it being a play about the death of chivalry is…. most of the characters are quite unlikeable! Henry is fairly feckless, the nobles are ranging from corrupt to fully evil, and even Talbot and Joan, while the closest to good guys the play gets….. are intense. Huge Lawful Good energy, in a way that can be offputting. This specific production leaned comedic in a lot of its portrayals (in part leaning into the inherent comedy of “We’re all putting on a play that we didn’t rehearse for free and for fun in a bar with no budget”) and I think that worked really well! Winchester played straight might be a challenge, but Winchester in a silly pope hat being a bit cartoonish is a fun time at the bar.

In comparison, many of these characters improve greatly in the latter plays. York and Henry I think become much more engaging and complex characters starting in 2, we don’t get (Richard) Gloucester, Edward, or Clarence yet, it’s literally a different Earl of Warick from 1 to 2, and I basically don’t even consider the version of Margaret we see here to be the same (phenomenal, maybe best in the tetralogy) character as she is in the later plays.

So anyway, not saying VI.1 is a perfect play. Not even saying it’s the best of the Henry VI’s; haven’t re-read them in a while, and only just saw VI.1, but I think it’s probably my least favorite! But there’s a difference between least favorite or worst and inessential. I think it provides a lot to the overall project of the Henriad (whether 8-play, 4-play, 3-play, or even 1-play!) if you’re willing to take what it can give you!

(And BRSP was a blast! Go see them if you’re in Chicago!)