Introduction
The War of the Roses, speaks of the period between 1455 to 1485 when two powerful dynasties in Britain fought to gain the throne of England. The two houses were the House of Lancaster with King Henry VI as the head and The House of York with King Richard as the head. Shakespeare attempted to enact the roles and events of the war in his plays, Henry VI and Richard III (Shakespeare, 1598). This paper analysis the plays and discusses how the dramatist attempted to portray the events.
Discussion and Analysis
Johnston (1999) points out that while the plays generally followed the actual history, Shakespeare modified the role of a certain character, made some of them younger so that all of them could fit in the same period, and also made some slight changes to the events and their results. The author asserts that since these were works of fiction, designed to entertain rather than educate, the people of England accepted the plays for what they were.
Johnston argues that King Edward with whom the war started was the king and had seven sons, the eldest of whom was the Black Prince. These two characters are mentioned in passing but they do not appear in the play. When the Black Prince dies, his eldest son Richard II is th legitimate ruler and the dramatist does not argue this fact. Richard II dies without leaving a son and so the throne would go to the next legitimate ruler.
Edward III’s third son the Duke of Clarence, Lionel saw that his daughter Phillippa was married to the Earl of March, Edmund Mortimer and so the Mortimer clan would be the legitimate heirs and this is important later in Henry VI play. The fourth son of Edward III called John of Gaunt starts the House of Lancaster he grabs the throne claiming the right of inheritance. The main theme in the drama is to establish or discredit the legitimacy of the claim of the House of Lancaster to the throne. In the meanwhile, the fifth son of King Edward III, the Duke of York, Edmund of Langley is married to the Mortimer clan and they want to establish that they are the true heirs.
In the play, Richard II, Henry Bolingbroke, and Richard II fight bitterly and Richard II is murdered and Henry Bolingbroke assumes power as King Henry IV. Shakespeare has introduced several characters that play a key role in the play but history, they had hardly any mention. After Henry IV dies, his son Henry V assumes the throne and is succeeded by his son Henry VI and this ascension is disputed but the house of York that is headed by Richard Plantaganet.
Johnston (1999) has pointed out that Shakespeare and other writers of the time were bent on proving that Richard Plantaganet and his successors Richard III had no legitimacy to the throne and takes extreme deviations when depicting Richard III as an evil king. Johnston contends that the pro-Tudor view of the majority of the people who regarded the Plantaganet’s as illegitimate rulers made them distort history in depicting all their actions as barbarous and evil. This is borne out in the way Richard III and his successors are shown in the dramas.
Henry Tudor had the weakest but the most legitimate claim for the throne since he defeated Richard III as explained in the play Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth. Henry then marries Elizabeth, the only remaining child of King Edward IV. To Shakespeare, this was the legitimate excuse to amplify the Tudor myth and the author persisted in exemplifying the house of Tudor as saviors of England, and this is seen in the play Richard III.
Conclusion
The paper has discussed the plays Henry VI and Richard III and shown how Shakespeare was biased in his support of the Tudors and how he attempted to manipulate the characters in his play to make viewers accept his version of history.
References
Johnston Ian. 1999. A Brief Note on the Historical Background to Shakespeare’s First and Second History Cycles. Web.
Shakespeare William. 1598. William Shakespeare: Henry IV, Part II, Archived 1999, The University of Oregon. Web.