Henry VI Rehearsal #1

On my first day as dramaturg, my main duties were to answer questions about pronunciation, and a few important historical details. The day started out with a read through, where I quickly realized that all the actors had a great grasp of the material, which is not surprising as most of them have played parts in both of the other Henry VI plays. At the read-through, I pointed out the correct pronunciation of "inexorable" to one actor and the word "stigmatic" to another. I also noticed that the actors playing Englishmen pronounced King Louis XI's name as Louis, while the French characters pronounced it "Loueee." The actors siezed upon this discrepancy and made a bit out of it, similar to the joke on the name of the French prince the "Dauphin" or "Do-phan" in Henry the Fifth.

After the read through, the actors started staging the play, beginning at 1.i, (which continued for the next week). One of the first questions I was asked was by Miriam Donald, playing Prince Edward, who wanted to know how old her character was. I pointed out that by the 1471, Henry and Margaret had been married for 15 years, so Edward could not be any older than that. I was later asked by Allison Glenzer about the meaning of a line in 1.i. She was playing the Duke of Exeter, who changes sides at the beginning of the play. Her all important line is in response to the Earl of Warwick, who asks Exeter if the former king Richard II was unjustly deposed. I pointed out that in Ms. Glenzer's line "No, for he could not so resign the crown," the emphasis is on the word "could," meaning Exeter believes that a monarch is incapable of giving up the crown. This helped her present the argument better. Later, she asked me about a bit of historical information. Exeter changes sides to the Duke of York in 1.i, but changes back to King Henry offstage. She wanted to know why, and why Exeter is not onstage during the parle between Edward and Henry in Act II. I did some research and realized that after joining the Yorkists, Exeter felt cheated by King Edward and rose in a revolt against him and the Earl Of Warwick. Warwick crushed the revolt and put Exeter in the tower.

After doing this research I wondered why Shakespeare did not include this story in the play. It does not appear in any other edition of Henry the Sixth, so Shakespeare must have intentionally left it out. My theory is that Shakespeare saw that Exeter's story was too much like the Earl of Warwick's, and decided to focus more on him. It is ironic that the man who captured Exeter and fought against him for Edward, would later betray the Yorkists in much the same way.