Part 2: The family feud continues! This week’s play begins with the marriage of mindful Margaret to the blushing groom Henry. Of course, this leads to an awkward family Thanksgiving table fight about all kinds of elephants in the room. Suffolk is getting shit for running up his per diem, Margaret (literally) bitch-slaps Eleanor for being a snob, the Cardinal and the rest resent that there’s no coin in this deal, and Gloucester can’t even. York is so pissed that he resolves then and there to conquer the throne himself, the Cardinal and Suffolk pay a flunky to set up a sting operation so they can catch Eleanor at witchcraft just to make Margaret happy, and York and Somerset quarrel about who should be regent in France. It’s amazing. And that’s just Act I. So much shit goes down in this play.
Then it’s time to go hawking! The quarreling ramps up and Uncle Gloucester and Cardinal Beaufort agree to duel until a commoner shows up, swearing up and down that he’s been cured of blindness. In a moment of oddly misplaced comic relief, Gloucester nitpicks the commoner until it’s obvious that he was faking the “miracle of St. Albans,” disappointing poor Henry, who just wants some positivity in his world for once. When word reaches them that Eleanor was caught conjuring spirits, Gloucester laments, and you can easily imagine Margaret internally smiling. Meanwhile, York invites his buddies Salisbury and Warwick over to his mancave for dinner and York proceeds to show off what he found on Ancestry.com. York is in a deposing mood.
Henry sentences Eleanor to exile on the Isle of Man, then fires Gloucester. Margaret and Suffolk high-five, and everyone watches a drunk get into a duel about whether or not he believes York should be King. Gloucester hangs his head as his wife does her penance and watches her get hauled off into the wilderness. Parliament convenes and because Gloucester is late, everyone piles onto him and overpowers Henry’s pleas that Gloucester is innocent of high treason. Henry runs away crying to his room. His court shrugs and susses out what to do in France by themselves. York soliloquizes that he is resolved to become King, and that he’s enlisted Jack Cade to help him stir up the shit while York is dicking around in Ireland.
Suffolk hires some hit-men to off Gloucester, but when his dead body is discovered by Warwick, Suffolk plays dumb. When Henry finds out, he faints. While fanning her husband’s face, Margaret insists that Suffolk has done nothing, but Henry accuses Suffolk anyway (because he’s not THAT dumb). Warwick steps in to do some CSI: St. Edmunds and analyzes the body for evidence, concluding that Gloucester was MURTHERED. This pisses off the commoners, who start a riot over the beloved Gloucester’s death. The mob wants Suffolk’s head, but Henry just banishes him. And here, the farewell scene between Suffolk and Margaret takes a romantic turn, utilizing language heretofore unlike the previous scenes. It’s tender and full of flowery imagery, proving just how deeply in love these secret paramours are. It’s really quite touching.
After the Cardinal dies in a fit of repentance—obviously, his conscience gets to him and he admits Gloucester’s innocence despite their mutual hatred—Henry shrugs it off. “Hey, we’re all sinners here, ya know.” Then off the coast of Kent, Suffolk gets captured by pirates and gets his head lopped off. Back on the mainland, Jack Cade has started his rebellion. He spends most of the ten fricken scenes of this act schlepping around London, making everyone’s blood boil. He knights himself, claims he is royalty, gives a stump speech about a utopia without lawyers and outlawing small beer, then decapitates a few Lords. Once Buckingham and Clifford show up, however, offering pardons to all the rebels if they STFU, they all cheer and Cade scurries away to chew on weeds in Alexander Iden’s garden and gets quickly dispatched. Elsewhere, Margaret finds Suffolk’s head and may or may not have rolled it all over her body as if he were kissing her naked skin. Henry witnesses this and is way less awkward about it than one would think.
Phew, still not done yet. York proclaims himself King and brings his army in, but renegs a little when he finds out that Somerset is arrested. Iden gets a knighthood out of bringing Henry Cade’s head, but then the Queen shows up with Somerset and they try to arrest York. Edward and Richard show up with their own armies, and Clifford brings his, and Salisbury and Warwick bring theirs, and then it’s time for a rumble. York kills Clifford, Clifford’s son vows to kill York’s sons, Richard kills Somerset, and the King and Queen flee to London, with the Yorkists hot on their heels. Thus begins Richard’s long career of MURTHER. What’s noteworthy is how skilled Richard is with weaponry despite his withered limbs. He is present for as many battles as he can find, fighting for his family until he ultimately decides to just start stabbing/poisoning people on his own.
This play was an improvement from the first one. It feels more fleshed out (so much flesh!) but no less action-packed. The language is juicier. The characters are more human. It’s a crowd-pleaser. I low-key love the scenes where Margaret bares her teeth and shows her disdain for her husband’s lack of balls. It’s nice to see a high-ranking woman have agency, or as much as her sex and gender allow her in this patriarchal world. Too bad about Suffolk, though. I know Margaret is only going to get more badass.
So, I may have spoken too soon about the BBC’s second series of The Hollow Crown. It hinges on one *seemingly* minor change that wouldn’t otherwise matter with the adaptation of any other original source material: combining two characters into one. In this case, Suffolk and Somerset. Jesus, does this irk me. It’s difficult enough following the arcs behind the myriad characters in this history play, knowing that Shakespeare himself purposely tweaked and added anachronisms for narrative expediency, but then further adjusting Shakespeare for clarity of televisual storytelling can just confuse the shit out of anyone who is making a studious effort to Tetris everything together in their mind. In addition, the Suffolk-Somerset chimera was completely unnecessary, as they still have two different actors playing them. Why give one guy’s actions to another if not to eliminate one and tighten up the casting? The film school student in me hates this. I suppose they banked on the fact that Benedict Cumberbatch is so goddamn classy about chewing the scenery that no one would notice. He’s really incredibly fascinating to watch. The pedant in me just melts away whenever he’s onscreen. *swoon*
Next week, things will go full-on Shakespeare mode and more heads will be untimely ripped from their necks as these warring branches of the same damn family determine who survives the Thunderdome.
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