HENRY VI, PART 3

chronicle play in five acts by William Shakespeare, first performed in 1589-92 in a two-part chronicle with Henry VI, Part 2 under the combined title The Whole Contention between the two Famous Houses, Lancaster and Yorke. Part 3 was first published in quarto in 1595 and was printed from revised fair copies in the First Folio of 1623. It is the third in a sequence of four history plays (the others being Henry VI, Part 1, Henry VI, Part 2, 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 historical events were the chronicles of Edward Hall and Raphael Holinshed. Part 3 begins with the duke of Suffolk dead and the duke of York being named Henry VI's heir. Thereafter, Queen Margaret focuses on gaining the throne for her disinherited son, Edward, prince of Wales. She elicits the aid of Lord Clifford and ultimately defeats York in battle, stabbing him to death while he curses her as "she-wolf of France" and "more inhuman, more inexorable, /O, ten times more, than tigers of Hyrcania." As Henry drifts wistfully through the action, lamenting his fate, York's sons take power. The Lancastrians briefly regain the ascendancy after Edward IV ignores a proposed marriage to the French princess that has been arranged by Richard Neville, earl of Warwick, and King Lewis XI of France and instead marries the widowed Elizabeth, Lady Grey. Margaret's triumph is short-lived, however, and the Lancastrians are defeated at the Battle of Tewkesbury. As a whole, the three parts of Henry VI create an arc of escalating dissension and violence-from the petty jealousies at court and the glorious war with France in Part 1 to the class warfare of Jack Cade's insurrection in Part 2 to the bloody stabbings of the duke of York, King Henry, and the prince of Wales in Part 3-paving the way for anarchy and, ultimately, reconciliation in Richard III.