Is this the cautionary tale for our historical moment? If I was correct that Richard II is about the importance of norms, then Henry VI shows in gruesome detail the lasting implications of their collapse. Takeaways below:

• I like to think that the play makes clear something that a history book could never properly convey, namely that the Wars of the Roses weren’t just partisan struggles for power and land but also conflicts over language. What was at stake was not just whether or not certain parties committed treason but rather the very idea of treason itself and, by extension, the idea of loyalty.
  
  GPT 5.1 did an amazing job (with a lot of coaching) of counting every time a character was accused of treason or called traitor, and I’ve included the data in Excel here because no AI should ever have to do that again.
  
  There are 57 accusations of treason across all three parts of the play. The charge becomes so common it’s practically meaningless, robbed of its gravity by sheer repetition. In Part II, Act V, Scene I contains an exchange between Clifford and York that basically amounts to:
  
  “You’re a traitor!”
  
  “I know you are, but what am I?”
  
  
  
  
  
• Part III contains a brief exchange that describes the key conflict in so many Shakespeare plays, not just the histories:
  
  “York: I took an oath he [Henry VI] should quietly reign.
  
  Edward: But for a kingdom any oath may be broken:
  I would break a thousand oaths to reign one year.”
  
  – Act I, Scene II, 15-17
  
  That is to say, that there is a price for every thing–that nothing can be sacred if the stakes are sufficiently high. Shakespeare would later give this idea its most beautiful expression via the highly-underrated Emilia in Othello:
  
  “Desdemona: Beshrew me, if I would do such a wrong
  For the whole world.
  
  Emilia: Why, the wrong is but a wrong i’ the world;
  and having the world for your labour, ’tis a wrong in
  your own world, and you might quickly make it right.”
  
  – Act IV, Scene III, 78-82
  
  
  This is the Shakespearean psychological super-mashup of “all’s fair in love and war” and “the ends justify the means” into the most disinhibiting intoxicant known to man. The one thing most Shakespearean heroes and villains alike have in common is a creative ability to always dream up a cause big enough to justify even their most craven desires. They are always, it seems, in the right–even when at odds with one another.
  
  In Henry VI, all characters are drunk from this same punchbowl. What else could follow but bloodshed?
  
  
  
  
• The violence of the plays highlights the importance of human decency. Queen Margaret is quick to decry the then-King Edward, Gloucester, and Clarence as “butchers” when they murder her son, but we remember how cruelly she mocked Edward’s father after brutally murdering his son, Edmund.
  
  Rather than cancelling each other out, the murders on either side of the ledger point to the obvious conclusion that none of this had to happen. There are other ways to fight and other ways to win.
  
  
  
  
• Shakespeare maintains his classic ambivalence toward crowds. The uprising of Jack Cade(by the way, the best character of all three parts) is sympathetic to the plight of common citizens and contains some biting satire of the nobility, including some self-directed scoffs at readers and writers. But the crowd abandons Cade at the first sight of real trouble, and their killing of the undeniably sympathetic (if a bit bombastic) Lord Say makes us distrust the crowd, as in Coriolanus.
  

Conclusion

Overall, I think the play works well out of historical context, with enough intrigue to the plot to keep most casual readers interested. However, it’s not one of Shakespeare’s best works by a long shot. Its highest purpose, I think, is deepening the pathos of Richard II, Henry IV Parts 1 and 2, and Henry V (my posts on each linked for reference).

For the record, I am 75% done with the Helen Castor book on Richard II and Henry IV and highly encourage anyone else reading it to give the Shakespeare plays a chance.

**This post is Part 11 of an ongoing series in which I’ll be reading various Shakespeare plays, along with the Harold Bloom commentary from his book Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, and providing my thoughts/reactions.**