Henry VI Part 2

William Shakespeare was born sometime shortly before April 26, 1564 (the recorded date of his baptism) in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, to glovemaker and local politician John Shakespeare and Mary Shakespeare (née Arden), whose wealthy farmer father Robert Arden was descended from landowning gentry. As a boy, William Shakespeare likely attended King Edward IV School, a grammar school in Stratford-upon-Avon that would have taught Latin and classical literature. In late 1582, at age 18, he married a 26-year-old farmer’s daughter, Anne Hathaway. About six months later, Anne delivered a daughter, Susanna. In 1585, the Shakespeares had twins, Hamnet and Judith. Sometime between 1585 and 1592, Shakespeare began working in London as a playwright and an actor, moving between the city and his family in Stratford-upon-Avon. In 1596, while Shakespeare was away from home, his 11-year-old son Hamnet died. Over Shakespeare’s career, he is believed to have authored or co-authored almost 40 plays, including comedies, tragedies, histories, romances, and “problem plays” of uncertain genre. Scholars believe that he may also have contributed scenes or passages to plays largely written by others. In addition to his plays, Shakespeare wrote poetry, publishing both long narrative poems such as Venus and Adonis (1593) and The Rape of Lucrece (1594) and a collection of 154 sonnets (1609). The last play Shakespeare is known to have written, a collaboration with younger playwright John Fletcher titled The Two Noble Kinsmen, was staged around 1613–1614. Shakespeare died of unknown causes on April 23, 1616.

Shakespeare’s Henry VI Part 2 dramatizes the outbreak of the Wars of the Roses (1455–1487), an English civil war between the House of Lancaster (descendants of King Edward III’s son John of Gaunt) and the House of York (descendants of King Edward III’s son Edmund of Langley, the first Duke of York). The conflict is called “the Wars of the Roses” because the House of Lancaster’s badge was a red rose, while the House of York’s badge was a white rose. King Henry VI—from the House of Lancaster—was crowned king of England as an eight-month-old baby in 1422. During King Henry VI’s childhood, England was ruled by two of his uncles, the Duke of Bedford (whose title was Regent) and the Duke of Gloucester (whose title was Lord Protector). In this period, England was fighting France in the Hundred Years’ War (1337–1453). As young King Henry VI wanted to end the war, he consented to marry French princess Margaret of Anjou and surrender the England-controlled French territory of Maine as part of the 1444 Treaty of Tours. Widespread dissatisfaction with the treaty and the marriage to Margaret paved the way for Richard, third Duke of York—from the House of York—to contest King Henry VI’s claim to the throne. Richard, Third Duke of York was descended from King Edward III’s fifth son on his father’s side and from King Edward III’s third son on his mother’s side. Since King Henry VI was descended from King Edward III’s fourth son, the Duke of York claimed he had a greater right to the throne through his mother’s side of the family.

William Shakespeare is believed to have drawn on several histories to inform his early history play Henry VI Part 2, which dramatizes the outbreak of a 15th-century English civil war known as the Wars of the Roses. These histories include Edward Hall’s The Union of the Two Noble and Illustre Families of Lancastre and Yorke, which describes English royal history from 1399 to 1547, and Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland, Second Edition, a three-volume narrative of English history co-authored by half a dozen historians. Henry VI Part 2 is the second of four Shakespeare plays about the Wars of the Roses. The others—Henry VI Part 1, Henry VI Part 3, and Richard III—were written, in or out of chronological order, between 1591 and 1594. Around the same time, Shakespeare’s contemporary Christopher Marlowe wrote his own history play about English royals, Edward II. Shakespeare and Marlowe are believed to have influenced each other’s work, though Marlowe died under mysterious circumstances in 1593, relatively early in Shakespeare’s career. A very different and more contemporary literary work inspired by the Wars of the Roses, which Shakespeare’s history plays may have influenced, is George R. R. Martin’s fantasy novel series A Song of Ice and Fire.