Kings according to Shakespeare

The antipodean nations of the Commonwealth—Australia and New Zealand—traditionally observe the British monarch’s birthday in June, despite the fact that neither the current king nor his mother were born anywhere near the month. Nevertheless, it does give me an excuse to talk about Shakespeare again! Lucky you.

Shakespeare’s plays are full of kings, from the firmly historical to the completely fantastic. He wrote his history plays to tell the stories of a selection of Plantagenet kings (plus one Tudor), which is what I’ll take you through today. The kings of legend and fantasy, while fascinating, can wait for another post.

Most of these play form a coherent sort of historical narrative about the kings spanning from Richard II to Richard III:

• The play Richard II is about the growing tyranny of the titular king, who had one hell of an ego, and his downfall at the hands of his unfairly disinherited cousin, Henry Bolingbroke. This Richard is portrayed as a bit of a tragic, noble figure, but the play also makes it very clear that he brought all of this upon himself, so we can’t be too sorry for him.
• In Henry IV parts 1 and 2, Bolingbroke has now become king, and these two plays show his struggles to maintain authority over his subjects, who (not entirely incorrectly) see him as a usurper. He is also having similar trouble managing his son Hal, who insists on partying as hard as possible while he’s a prince so that he gets it out of his system by the time he takes the throne himself.
• Henry V picks up about where Henry IV Part 2 leaves off: Prince Hal has now become King Harry, and is ready to take things seriously. And by “things”, I mean conquering France, which it turns out he’s rather good at. Unfortunately, Henry V had a very short reign before dying out in the field, so only one play for him.
• When Henry V died, he left behind a 9-month-old son (shockingly also named Henry) to succeed him. This is not a great situation for a kingdom to be in, and the years that Henry VI reigned were… eventful. Thus, he gets a whopping three parts to his plays. In the first part, Henry’s powerful uncles are fighting to direct the young king, and end up losing the French lands that Henry V had won. Henry VI Part 2 brings a new player to the political board: Henry’s queen Margaret of Anjou. Tensions rise amongst the nobility as Margaret and the Duke of York emerge as key contenders to controlling the throne. And in part 3, those tensions boil over into an all-out civil war between the Yorks and the Lancasters (the king’s party), which ultimately results in King Henry being overthrown by York’s sons, the eldest of whom seizes the throne as Edward IV.
• After all that excitement, we get a bit of a break over the course of Edward IV’s reign. In Richard III, Shakespeare picks up the story at the very end of Edward’s life. When he dies, the throne theoretically passes to his young son, Edward V, but Richard acts quickly to dispose of the young king and his brother in order to seize the kingship for himself. Richard III is one of Shakespeare’s most unequivocally evil villains; this is likely due in large part to the fact that Henry Tudor, who kills Richard at the end of the play and becomes the next king, was the current queen’s grandfather and a master of spin.

There are also three standalone history plays that don’t fit into the Richard-to-Richard series:

• King John is about the power struggle between John and his nephew Arthur, who is the son of John’s older brother and therefore has a very strong claim to the throne. In truth, the more compelling power struggle is between the rivals’ mothers, Eleanor of Acquitaine and Constance, Duchess of Brittany.
• The only play not included in my copy of Shakespeare’s complete works, Edward III is a collaborative work between Shakespeare and one of his contemporaries which has only been attributed to the Bard in recent decades. It dramatises the beginning of the Hundred Years’ War, with a slight detour to deal with some trouble in Scotland.
• Shakespeare’s history play covering the most recent events is Henry VIII, who you might remember as the father of Shakespeare supporter Elizabeth I. The play focuses on Henry’s battle for a divorce from his first wife, Katherine of Aragon, and stops at the birth of Elizabeth (just as well, since things get awfully messy for Elizabeth’s mother in the years following).

Shakespeare’s history plays are not exactly the most accurate depictions of England’s kings, but they are vivid and exciting stories with a lot to say about what kingship means.