Women's roles in the Elizabethan history plays

Abstract

If, as many scholars believe, an early version of 2 Henry VI was the first history play Shakespeare wrote, then he began his dramatised version of the Tudor chronicles with Margaret's arrival at the English court. Although modern readers are unlikely to think of Margaret when recalling the memorable characters Shakespeare created, she is actually the subject of the earliest surviving reference to a Shakespearean character and to Shakespeare's work as a playwright. In 1592 Robert Greene complained about 'an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his “tiger's heart wrapped in a player's hide”, supposes that he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you: and being an absolute Johannes fac totum , is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country'. Even without the epithet 'Shake-scene', the identity of the upstart crow was probably clear to Greene's original readers, because 'his tiger's heart wrapped in a player's hide' echoes the charge 'O tiger's heart wrapped in a woman's hide' (1.4.137) that York had levelled against Margaret in Shakespeare's 3 Henry VI . Greene's allusion, along with other evidence, has led James Forse to conclude that Shakespeare himself may have performed Margaret's part, but whether he did or not, it is clear that Margaret was a prominent and memorable character for Shakespeare's original audiences. She is the only character who appears in all four plays of the first 'tetralogy', and she plays a major role in shaping the course of the historical action in both Part 2 and Part 3 of Henry VI .