Seven Ages

History · c. 1591

Shakespeare’s Henry VI, Part 2

The strongest of the three Henry VI plays as a piece of drama.

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By the Seven Ages editors2 min read

The saintly, useless king watches his court tear itself apart: Gloucester falls, Suffolk and Margaret scheme, and in the play’s startling second half Jack Cade’s popular rebellion burns through London with carnivalesque menace.

The Cade scenes — including the most misquoted line in Shakespeare about killing all the lawyers — are an astonishingly early study of populism and mob logic. York’s patient plotting sets the fuse for everything that follows.

Henry VI, Part 2 on screen

1The Hollow Crown: Henry VI, Part 1 (2016)

TV film · dir. Dominic Cooke

Condenses Parts 1 and 2 of the trilogy

Reading Henry VI, Part 2 this year?

Mark it in your record when you finish — one seat, kept for decades.

Track Henry VI, Part 2