Previous
Act 2, Scene 3
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Henry VI Part 2, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Ambition
Nobles vs. Commoners
Religion and Politics
Patriotism
Magic
Summary
Analysis
Gloucester and his servants wait for the Duchess to pass by during her public penance. She approaches on bare feet, wearing a white sheet with paper pinned to it and carrying a candle, and asks whether Gloucester is here to see her humiliation. When he urges her to be stoic, she complains that the “rabble” should taunt a person of her rank and that her husband won’t help her. She then warns him that Suffolk, Margaret, York, and Cardinal Beaufort are all plotting to entrap him. Gloucester brushes off her warning, claiming that he cannot be entrapped if he does nothing wrong. He says he can’t help her and again counsels stoicism.
Gloucester comes to see the Duchess and offer her advice even though her ambition led to his political downfall, which suggests that he loves her and is pained by their separation. Nevertheless, he won’t try to help her, which conversely suggests that his loyalty to Henry overrides his love of his wife. The Duchess seems especially upset that “rabble”—that is, commoners—are witnessing and enjoying her downfall, a complaint that highlights the contempt the play’s aristocrats feel for their supposed social inferiors. Finally, while the play does not represent Gloucester as naïve to the same degree as pious Henry, his claim to the Duchess that he cannot be entrapped so long as he’s innocent does seem naïve. It may imply that innocent, straightforward people like Gloucester are disadvantaged in political conflict, much as devout Christians like Henry are, because they don’t engage in nor understand the devious tactics their enemies use.
Active
Themes
A herald arrives, summoning Gloucester to Parliament the next month. Gloucester asks the men in charge of the Duchess’s penance and exile not to treat her worse than her punishment demands; then he exits. The Duchess declares that she now wants to die, though once she feared dying and aspired to “this world’s eternity.” When one man tells her she can remove her white sheet of penance, she refuses, saying her “shame” will remain no matter what she wears.
