HENRY VI, PART 2

chronicle play in five acts by William Shakespeare, first performed in 1589-92 in a two-part play with Henry VI, Part 3 under the combined title The Whole Contention between the two Famous Houses, Lancaster and Yorke. Henry VI, Part 2 was first published in quarto in 1594 and was printed from revised fair copies in the First Folio of 1623. It is the second in a sequence of four history plays (the others being Henry VI, Part 1, Henry VI, Part 3, and Richard III) known collectively as the "first tetralogy," treating the Wars of the Roses between the houses of Lancaster and York. Shakespeare's primary sources for the play were the chronicles of Edward Hall and Raphael Holinshed. In Part 2 the factional fighting at court is increased rather than lessened by the arrival of Margaret of Anjou, and the new queen, together with her lover, the duke of Suffolk, plots against Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, and his ambitious duchess, Eleanor. The power struggle swirls around the saintly, ineffectual King Henry until gradually the dynamic Richard Plantagenet, duke of York, who has pretended to support Margaret while secretly hatching his own plot, emerges as the chief contender for the throne. The middle of the play is taken up with the insurrection led by the deluded Jack Cade.