“Say that I slew them not?” Nuremberg Trials and Shakespeare’s play



Robert Jackson in Nuremberg Trials

In order to fully appreciate what Justice Robert Jackson (also a U.S. Supreme Court Justice) said in Nuremberg Trials, one needs to know a bit history of Richard III and Shakespeare’s play with the same title.

In his demand of a guilty verdict, Jackson said toward the end of his speech:

It is against such a background that these defendants now ask this Tribunal to say that they are not guilty of planning, executing, or conspiring to commit this long list of crimes and wrongs. They stand before the record of this trial as bloodstained Gloucester stood by the body of his slain King. He begged of the widow, as they beg of you: “Say I slew them not.” And the Queen replied, “Then say they were not slain. But dead they are ....” If you were to say of these men that they are not guilty, it would be as true to say that there has been no war, there are no slain, there has been no crime.

Jackson was referring to a scene from Richard III, in which Duke of Gloucester (before he became Richard III) persuades Lady Anne (whose father-in-law, Henry VI, was killed by Richard III; Anne’s husband, Edward, was also killed during the Battle of Tewksburg, so “He begged of the widow”, who is Lady Anne) to marry him.

Richard of Gloucester: Say that I slew them not?
Lady Anne: Then say that they were not slain, But dead they are...
                 Richard III:  Act 1 Scene 2

NurembergTrials

It is of interest to see that Justice Jackson likened Duke of Gloucester (future Richard III) to the Nazi criminals.  “bloodstained Gloucester stood by the body of his slain King”.  I have tirelessly tried to defend for Richard III who is the most unfairly maligned England king in history.

The Act I Scene 2 is a very weird scene of love pursuit; many memorable, rhetoric lines:

Richard: Fairer than tongue can name thee.
Anne: Fouler than heart can think thee.

(When Richard says Anne’s beauty is beyond any word, Anne retorted that Richard is wicked beyond belief.)

When Anne looks scornfully at Richard, Richard says,

Teach not thy lip such scorn, for it were made
For kissing, lady, not for such contempt.

The following link is a YouTube of the Act I Scene 2 of Richard III, about 25 minutes long.  The soliloquy of Richard III that concludes this scene shows how Richard III’s fate in history is doomed by the Bard.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzRBwiTJIg0

“Make me a willow cabin at your gate” and the trip we didn’t make

More than three years ago when a two box sets of DVD of Jean Arthur was released, WSJ had an article of “The legend of Jean Arthur” who was less well known than the stars she starred opposite, the likes of Gary Cooper, James Stewart, Cary Grant.

She died at age of 90 in 1991.  Her last film was “Shane” in 1953.  I found it interesting in a short letter-to-the-editor to WSJ (see photo below).  “Exquisite” is the only way to describe when one hears a good actor/actress reciting the famous lines of Shakespeare plays.

Many years ago I was blown away hearing a soliloquy of King Claudius (Disney’s Lion King was modeled after him) played by, I recall, Kenneth Branagh.  Such a beautiful and powerful thing! I was then determined to read the Bard.

Bernard Shaw said of Laurence Olivier’s playing Shakespeare’s, “He picked words off the playscript page, flung them passionately into the dark and secured them in the minds of theatergoers.”

After attending Richard III in theater, Lincoln wrote to the actor discussing how the opening line should be uttered, “Now is the winter of our discontent.”

When we decided to take a side trip to Paris for 2 ½ days on our trip to London, we scrapped from the list many sites we initially intended to visit: Blenheim Palace, Windsor Castle, Oxford University and Stratford Upon Avon.

I even planned to sit inside the “Willow Cabin” locates in the gate for the Visitors of Stratford Upon Avon reciting “Make me a willow cabin at your gate”.  Of course, I won’t be lucky enough to have a duet with Jean Arthur.

Willow Cabin” in the gate for the Visitors of Stratford Upon Avon

How can you not be moved by reading Lincoln?

There are numerous touching stories of Lincoln’s reading Shakespeare in Carl Sandburg’s Lincoln; here is another one (Carl Sandburg's Lincoln, Book II, p 314).

Lincoln's son, Willie

“On a Fortress Monroe trip, not long after the boy Willie had died [Willie died about one year after Lincolns moved into White House], he took up a volume of Shakespeare and read aloud to General Wool's aide several passages from Hamlet and Macbeth; then after reading from the third act of King John, he closed the book and repeated from memory the lament of Constance for her boy— ”
Constance:
And father cardinal, I have heard you say

That we shall see and know our friends in heaven.

If that be true, I shall see my boy again.

                   King John Act 3 Scene 4

Lincoln mourned the death of her son just like Constance did her son’s (Arthur); Shakespeare made Constance a character best known as the mother lamenting the loss of her son,

O Lord! my boy, my Arthur, my fair son!

My life, my joy, my food, my all the world!

My widow-comfort, and my sorrows’ cure!

(Constance’s husband is the second son of Henry II, who had died, thus “My widow-comfort”; King John is the third son.  If you see The Lion in Winter or read T.S. Eliot’s The murder in the cathedral, you should know a bit about Henry II)

Macbeth and Henry VI and Lincoln

There are four productions of Shakespeare’s Macbeth going on in NYC.  No wonder we read articles of “How much Macbeth is too much for New York City?” and “The year of Macbeth overload” in the Wall Street Journal.  The photo is Kenneth Branagh playing Macbeth.

Kenneth Branagh playing Macbeth: photo credit (WSJ)

Lincoln would go to see all of them as Macbeth was his favorite.  After visiting Grant at City Point, Virginia, Lincoln sailed up the Potomac back to Washington on April 9, 1865. He read aloud from Shakespeare’s to entertain his entourage, concentrating on Macbeth, expounding several lines on the murder of Duncan.

Lincoln told an audience in Philadelphia in June 1864, saying this war “has carried mourning to almost every home, until it can almost be said ‘heavens are hung in black’”.

Lincoln slightly misquoted Henry VI ; Part I opens with the funeral of Henry V.  Or Lincoln might not misquote; he just said it with modern translation version

Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to night!
Comets, importing change of times and states,
Brandish your crystal tresses in the sky,
And with them scourge the bad revolting stars
That have consented unto Henry's death!
King Henry the Fifth, too famous to live long!
England ne'er lost a king of so much worth.

       1 King Henry VI, Act I, Sc. I

Vines in our garden and in Shakespeare’s play/poem

Shakespeare must be an avid or seasoned gardener; he mentions hundreds of flowers or veggies in his plays/poems.

In his speech when Elizabeth I’s was born, Thomas Cranmer (the Archbishop of Canterbury during Henry VIII’s reign), mentions “Under his own vine, what he plants;”  The speech  talks about weighty stuff, as this is the birth of a future queen, about governing a country; this is about “治國平天下”

In her days every man shall eat in safety,
Under his own vine, what he plants; and sing
The merry songs of peace to all his neighbours:

We also read the ‘vine’ in his poem of The Rape of Lucrece,

“What win I, if I gain the thing I seek?
A dream, a breath, a froth of fleeting joy.
Who buys a minute's mirth to wail a week?
Or sells eternity to get a toy?
For one sweet grape who will the vine destroy?
Or what fond beggar, but to touch the crown,
Would with the sceptre straight be strucken down?”

And these are the vines in our garden.

 

 

 

 



How did Shakespeare celebrate the royal birth?

In the frenzy of royal birth and among all the news the one I like best is the royal crier proclaiming the birth of the royal baby outside St. Mary’s Hospital, accompanied by all the pomp and circumstance of  “this sceptered Isle” that boasts Shakespeare.

It would have been much better had the Archbishop of Canterbury visited just like Thomas Cranmer (the Archbishop of Canterbury during Henry VIII’s reign) did when Queen Elizabeth I (the daughter of Henry VIII and Ann Boleyn) was born.

We read this in Act V Scene 5 of Henry VIII,

CRANMER

[Kneeling] And to your royal grace, and the good queen,
My noble partners, and myself, thus pray:
All comfort, joy, in this most gracious lady,
Heaven ever laid up to make parents happy,
May hourly fall upon ye!

KING HENRY VIII kisses the child
With this kiss take my blessing: God protect thee!
Into whose hand I give thy life.

CRANMER
Let me speak, sir,
For heaven now bids me; and the words I utter
Let none think flattery, for they'll find 'em truth.
This royal infant--heaven still move about her!--
Though in her cradle, yet now promises
Upon this land a thousand thousand blessings,
Which time shall bring to ripeness: she shall be--
But few now living can behold that goodness--
A pattern to all princes living with her,
And all that shall succeed: Saba was never
More covetous of wisdom and fair virtue
Than this pure soul shall be: all princely graces,
That mould up such a mighty piece as this is,
With all the virtues that attend the good,
Shall still be doubled on her: truth shall nurse her,
Holy and heavenly thoughts still counsel her:
She shall be loved and fear'd: her own shall bless her;
Her foes shake like a field of beaten corn,
And hang their heads with sorrow: good grows with her:
In her days every man shall eat in safety,
Under his own vine, what he plants; and sing
The merry songs of peace to all his neighbours:
God shall be truly known; and those about her
From her shall read the perfect ways of honour,
And by those claim their greatness, not by blood.
Nor shall this peace sleep with her: but as when
The bird of wonder dies, the maiden phoenix,
Her ashes new create another heir,
As great in admiration as herself;
So shall she leave her blessedness to one,
When heaven shall call her from this cloud of darkness,
Who from the sacred ashes of her honour
Shall star-like rise, as great in fame as she was,
And so stand fix'd: peace, plenty, love, truth, terror,
That were the servants to this chosen infant,
Shall then be his, and like a vine grow to him:
Wherever the bright sun of heaven shall shine,
His honour and the greatness of his name
Shall be, and make new nations: he shall flourish,
And, like a mountain cedar, reach his branches
To all the plains about him: our children's children
Shall see this, and bless heaven.

KING HENRY VIII
Thou speakest wonders

Delphiniums: Our long purple but not Shakespeare’s

These delphiniums came back on their own and they usually do better than those cultivated.  We did plant them last year.  I call them “long purple”.

Shakespeare also used ‘long purple” in Act IV Scene 7 of Hamlet, when Gertrude (the Queen) told Laertes that his sister had drowned and how that happened.  Long purple is one of the flowers make up the ‘fantastic garlands’ she wears.

Queen
There is a willow grows aslant the brook
That shows his hoary leaves in the glassy stream.
There with fantastic garlands did she come
Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples,
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,
But our cold [chaste] maids do dead men’s fingers call them.
. . . . . . . . .

So Shakespeare was not talking about the delphiniums, but Orchis mascula (an orchid), which has a grosser/obscene name of “dead men’s fingers”.

With that many flowers/veggies mentioned in his plays, the Bard must have been a gardener or at least he had a garden.

Snapdragon: All orators are dumb when beauty pleadeth

These heavenly snapdragons are in the “I ♥ KATY” section.  I run out of words in describing their ethereal beauty, just like Shakespeare wrote in one of his narrative poems, Tarquin, not that I am an orator.

All orators are dumb when beauty pleadeth;

Beauty itself doth of itself persuade
The eyes of men without an orator;

 

6/29/2013

 

The big picture (overview) of the British Civil War

For about 70 years (1399-1471) the British kings (Henry IV, V and VI) came from the House of Lancaster, descendants of John of Gaunt (first Duke of Lancaster), this is why John of Gaunt is such an important figure. {refer to the vertical elliptical circle in the center of the ‘map’}

Edward IV was the first king of Yorkist; he beat Lancastrians at the battle of Tewkesbury in 1471.  The reign from the House of York ended in 1485 when Richard III (Edward IV’s brother) was killed by Henry VII’s army (from the House of Lancaster) at the battle of Bosworth.  {refer to the horizontal elliptical circle at the bottom of the ‘map’}

Henry VII married Elizabeth of York (Edward IV’s daughter) in 1486, unifying both Houses, thus achieving the true and lasting reconciliation.

The following is the last scene of Henry VI (Part 3) Act V Scene 7, after Edward IV defeated the Lancastrian army.

corns from our garden

King Edward IV 
Once more we sit in England’s royal throne,
Re-purchased with the blood of enemies.
What valiant foemen, like to autumn’s corn,
Have we mowed down, in tops of all their pride!
Three Dukes of Somerset, threefold renowned
For hardy and undoubted champions;
Two Cliffords, as the father and the son,
And two Northumberlands; two braver men
Never spurred their coursers at the trumpet’s sound;
With them, the two brave bears, Warwick and Montague
That in their chains fettered the kingly lion
And made the forest tremble when they roared.
Thus have we swept suspicion from our seat
And made our footstool of security.

corns from our garden

(The following is my loose translation into everyday’s English)  Edward IV gave an account of the nobles aligned with the House of Lancaster during the course of wars.

Once more we sit in England’s royal throne,

Buy (pay) it again with enemy’s blood.

The brave enemy is like our autumn’s harvest (of corn or grain)

We cut them down in their prime!

The ever more famous Dukes of Somerset of three generations

For sure were hardy and true warriors;

Two Cliffords, they are father and son,

And two Northumberlands; two braver men

They fought on their swift horses upon hearing the war trumpet;

Warwick and Montague, the two brave bears (Warwick’s badge is a bear chained with lions)

Chained with the kingly lion

The forest trembled when they roared.

Thus we have removed the apprehension of our crown

To make the seat of the crown more secure.

Was Richard III an evil monster or a victim of Thomas More’s and Shakespeare’s pens?

Richard III

No king in medieval England was as demonic as King Richard III (1483-1485); and that was a savage age.  The list of whom he killed and murdered is as long as your arm.  Our knowledge of this infamous king of “this sceptred Isle”, the one we know, mostly comes from Thomas More’s biography of King Richard III and Shakespeare’s play with the same title.

Thomas More was Henry VIII’ councilor.  As we know, Henry VIII’s father, Henry VII, was the founder of Tudor dynasty, which was created when he defeated and killed Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth.  As someone said history was written by the victors (some attributed this saying to Churchill, but I think he said “History will be kind to me for I intend to write it,” and he did.) Thomas More’s Richard III was a classic example, a respectable person though he might be.

photo credit: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Royal Britain

Both Thomas More and Shakespeare blamed Richard III to the most heinous royal murder in all ages. Richard III murdered his two nephews (the sons of Edward VI—Richard’s brother), aged 12 and 9 in the Tower of London in 1483.

Thomas wrote the biography 70 years after Richard III was killed and the Bard wrote his play about 110 years later.  It was said that Shakespeare’s great grandfather fought in the Battle of Bosworth and on Henry VII’s camp (?)  It is no secrete that Shakespeare had a romantic admiration of all the Tudor heroes, thus treating Richard III as a villain.

The Bard used roses to describe how innocent the two young princes were after they’re murdered; in Richard III (Act IV Scene 3) we read,

photo credit: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Royal Britain

Their lips were four red Roses on a stalk,
Which in their summer beauty kissed each other.

Churchill is a well known historian; I quote the following from his “A Story of the English Speaking Peoples”,

“Thomas More late in the next reign wrote his celebrated history.  His book was based of course on information given him under the new and strongly established regime.  His object seems to have been less to compose a factual narrative than a moralistic drama.  In it Richard [III] is evil incarnate, and Henry Tudor [Henry VII], the deliverer of the kingdom, all sweetness and light.  The opposite view would have been treason.  Not only is every possible crime attributed by More to Richard, and some impossible ones, but he is presented as a physical monster, crook-backed and withered of arm.  No one in his lifetime seemed to have remarked these deformities, but they are now very familiar to us through Shakespeare’s play.  Needless to say, as soon as the Tudor dynasty was laid to rest defenders of Richard fell to work, and they have been increasingly busy ever since.”

I made this “map” so I can follow the story when I study Shakespeare’s history plays.

“Son of York”: The best pun in literature

Being a history buff, it is only natural that I would be interested in Shakespeare’s history plays.  With the garden season winding down, I may begin to write about it; I know how to alienate the readers from this blog.

The opening lines of Richard III (“Now is the winter of our discontent / Made glorious summer by this son of York”) are as famous as that of The Tale of Two Cities (“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,”) I also like “Call me Ishmael” that begins Moby-Dick.

Richard:
Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this son of York;
And all the clouds that lowered upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
            Richard III  Act I  Scene 1

Shakespeare opened the play with a powerful and lengthy (40 some lines) soliloquy of Richard (Duke of Gloucester, at which time his elsder brother, Edward IV, was the king).  It gives us a hint of who he is and what he will be.

I made a ‘map’ (I will be your GPS) which covers more than two thirds of Shakespeare’s history plays.  The Wars of Roses (1455-1485) were fought between the Houses of Lancaster and York, both are the descendants of Edward III.  For about 60 years Lancastrian clans have been Kings (Henry IV, V and VI—the Bard gave us Henry IV—Part 1 & 2, Henry V, and Henry VI—Part 1, 2 & 3) and that is Richard’s “winter of discontent” as Yorkists (Edward IV and Richard III) finally took over the crown, thus “made glorious summer by this son of York”.  The gloomy winter’s discontent turned into glorious and sunny summer's contendedness, now that his brother is the king (Edward IV).

“this son of York” is the pun of “this sun of York”.  The Wars of Roses were fought by several generations—by the sons of Duke of Lancaster and Duke of York.  And less known is that “sun” is also the emblem of Edward IV’s crown.  The radiance of the glorious ‘sun’ dispelled the gloomy clouds overcasting the House of York.

A carpet of marigolds

Was Shakespeare the first one using “carpet” to describe a sea of flowers?  The following is from Act 4 Scene 1 in Pericles, Prince of Tyre, in which Marina (the daughter of Pericles) laments her deceased nurse (nurse in Shakespeare’s days meant nanny) when he wrote,

The purple violets, and marigolds,

Shall, as a carpet [see photo below], hang upon thy grave,

8/27/12

MARINA

No, I will rob Tellus of her weed,

To strew thy green with flowers: the yellows, blues,

The purple violets, and marigolds,

Shall as a carpet hang upon thy grave,

While summer-days do last. Ay me! poor maid,

Born in a tempest, when my mother died,

This world to me is like a lasting storm,

Whirring me from my friends.

Right before Marina enters the stage, Dionyza was urging Leonine (the hired murderer) to kill Marina,

DIONYZA

Thy oath remember; thou hast sworn to do't:

'Tis but a blow, which never shall be known.

Thou canst not do a thing in the world so soon,

To yield thee so much profit. Let not conscience,

Which is but cold, inflaming love i' thy bosom,

Inflame too nicely; nor let pity, which

Even women have cast off, melt thee, but be

A soldier to thy purpose

LEONINE

I will do't; but yet she is a goodly creature.

DIONYZA

The fitter, then, the gods should have her. Here

she comes weeping for her only mistress' death.

Thou art resolved?

These lines show Dionyza is as wicked, if not as famous, as Lady Macbeth, when she urges her husband to kill King Duncan, impugning his manliness, inciting him to “screw up his courage”.  Shakespeare knew how to make his wicked women heartless.

8/22/12

Shakespeare had something to say for all occasions including the Olympic Open Ceremony

Shakespeare was at the opening ceremony of 2012 Olympic Summer Game.  Using his words in The Tempest, the British boasts the beauty of their Isles country.

The way Caliban (Prospero’s servant, a native to the island in which the story took place) describes the beauty of the island in Act 3 Scene 2 fits well the noisy (boisterous) and festive British Isles at this time. (pay particular attention to the first two lines).

Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,

Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.

Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments

Will hum about mine ears; and sometime voices

That, if I then had waked after long sleep,

Will make me sleep again; and then in dreaming,

The clouds methought would open, and show riches

Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked.

I cried to dream again.

The lines were uttered by Kenneth Branagh, the noted Northern Ireland Shakespearean actor.

Caesar, Lincoln and Shakespeare

Today (March 15) in 44 B.C., Roman dictator  Julius Caesar was assassinated by a group of noble conspirators led by Marcus Brutus and Caius Cassius.

When John Wilkes Booth shot Lincoln and yelled sic semper tyrannis (Latin for “Thus always to tyrants”), some attributed it to what Marcus Brutus uttered when he stabbed Caesar, given the fact that Booth was a Shakespearean actor; he and his brother (Edwin Booth, an even more famous Shakespearean actor in his days) acted in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar in 1864 (see photo)—the year before Lincoln’s assassination.  In Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, we read “Liberty! Freedom! Tyranny is dead!” uttered by Cinna (another conspirator) the moment when Caesar was dead.

Caesar was assassinated in Act 3 Scene 1 and there are two famous speeches at Caesar’s funeral by Brutus and Antony in Scene 2.  “Not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more” is basically Brutus’s defense.  One will fall in love with Shakespeare if one reads Antony’s lengthy speech (soliloquy).

Marcus Brutus also had another soliloquy in his orchard before he assassinated Caesar.

I always think Shakespeare must have put a lot of thought and time in his numerous soliloquies.  But then again it might not be so, as Alfred Whitehead said of the Bard, “I don’t believe Shakespeare ever had to grope for a word.  Can you imagine him chewing the end of his quill pen until he could think of the right one?  There is such exuberance in him that I believe once he had clearly imagined a scene, the words came of themselves, in a rush.”

Furious Love: Antony and Cleopatra

This post is about Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra.  Since I do not have their photo, I’ll use that of Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor.  It is not entirely irrelevant as they were larger than life; they lived a life as if they were Antony and Cleopatra, anyway.  A movie will be made based on their love/lust story of Furious Love.

While flipping through the pages of Caroline Kennedy’s She Walks in Beauty, I came across this scene in Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra—my all time favorite.  I immediately checked it out from library.  If Kennedy selects this to tell us what beauty is, I most likely will like her other selections and I am not disappointed.

The grandeur and beauty of the scene told by Enobarbus (a Antony lieutenant) is unmatched by that in the modern movie Cleopatra.

ENOBARBUS

I will tell you.

The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne,

Burned on the water. The poop was beaten gold,

Purple the sails, and so perfumèd that

The winds were lovesick with them. The oars were silver,

Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made

The water which they beat to follow faster,

As amorous of their strokes. For her own person,

It beggared all description: she did lie

In her pavilion—cloth-of-gold, of tissue—

O’erpicturing that Venus where we see

The fancy outwork nature. On each side her

Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids,

With divers-colored fans, whose wind did seem

To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool,

And what they undid did.

(I’ll loosely translate it so you can enjoy it as much as I do)

I will tell you.  Her barge looked like a golden throne upon the river/waves, burning bright as the sun shone upon it.  The rear upper deck was strikingly golden.  The sails were dyed purple, and there were perfumed so heavily that the air seemed dizzy with love.  The oars were made of silver, and the oarsmen rowed rhythmically in tune with the flute music. As the oars beat the water, faster and faster, the waves seemed to speed up as if excited by lust.  As for Cleopatra herself; she is beyond words.  As she reclined under a canopy that was woven from gold thread.  She was more beautiful than any artist’s imaginative work of goddess Venus.  Pretty, Cupid-like boys stood on her sides, smiling and cooling her with multicolored fans, which seemed to fan the flame in her cheeks while as they cool them, undoing what they did.

ENOBARBUS

Upon her landing, Antony sent to her,

Invited her to supper. She replied

It should be better he became her guest,

Which she entreated. Our courteous Antony,

Whom ne’er the word of “No” woman heard speak,

Being barbered ten times o’er, goes to the feast,

And for his ordinary pays his heart

For what his eyes eat only.

(The modern translation)

Upon her landing at the port, Antony sent an invitation for her to come to supper.  She replied by saying that it would be better for him to be his guest instead.   Our courteous Antony, who has never said “no” to any woman, after spending plenty of time being groomed by the barber, went to the feast.  For that simple meal, he paid with his heart—even though it was only his eyes that were satisfied.  

(“For what his eyes eat only”, if the Bard knew Chinese, he would have used a Chinese idiom, 秀色可餐.)

AGRIPPA

Royal wench!

She made great Caesar lay his sword to bed.

He plowed her, and she cropped.

(modern translation)

Royal seductress!

She lured Julius Caesar lay down his sword, into her bed, and she bore him a child.

(“He plowed her, and she cropped” is matched by a Chinese idiom, 藍田種玉)

Shakespeare is to blame for the name of the War of the Roses

Our Rose Garden was virtually taken over by the brilliant zinnias for a while; they are trying to make a come back, realizing the zinnias have passed their prime and some began to wither (see photo below)

Today (August 22) in 1485, England King Richard III was killed in the Battle of Bosworth Field, effectively ending the War of the Roses.

Rose, the queen of flowers, either “O, rose of May!” (Hamlet, Act 4 Scene 5) or the last one in summer, inspires poets to produce beautiful verses and lyrics throughout the ages.  Shakespeare is no exception; he mentioned the rose at least 70 times in his plays and sonnets.

How could such an exquisitely beautiful rose, emblematic of being fair and lovely be linked with a war? Shakespeare is the one to blame. The 30-year War of Roses was actually the Civil War of England fought between the two branches of the same family 1455-1485:  House of York and House of Lancaster.  It ended with the Battle of Bosworth, in which Shakespeare’s great grandfather might have fought, as John Shakespeare (the Bard’s father) claimed; of note, Bosworth was only 30 miles away from Stratford-upon-Avon—the Bard’s hometown.

There are always certain more memorable scenes in each of Shakespeare’s plays, such as King Lear wandering in the storm; the love scene at [Juliet] Capulet’s orchard, or the Temple Garden in Part 1 Henry VI, in which Shakespeare gave the name of the War of Roses.

In Part 1 Henry VI Act 2 Scene 4, the contending factions gather at the Temple Garden, plucking red or white roses to choose sides.  The king maker, Earl of Warwick, dominates this conflict, and fittingly has the last lines of this famous scene.

Will I upon thy party wear this rose.

And here I prophesy: this brawl to-day,

Grown to this faction in the Temple Garden,

Shall send between the red rose and the white

A thousand souls to death and deadly night.

You wonder why we do not have white roses in our garden; ours is a peaceful garden.