 Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Table of Contents Act II, Scene IV Summary Richard Plantagenet and the Earl of Somerset argue about some matter in the Temple-garden in the presence of several other noblemen. Plantagenet appeals to those who think him in the right to pluck a red rose. Warwick, Vernon and a lawyer side with Plantagenet while Suffolk give his support to Somerset. A bitter argument breaks out between the two men and Somerset insults Plantagenet’s father’s name. Suffolk and Somerset leave swearing enmity. Warwick assures Plantagenet that in the next Parliamentary meeting his family name will be cleared by creating him the Duke of York. Plantagenet thanks the men present for their support and invites them for dinner. Notes This is a key scene for the plot development of the play. In it, the dissensions, within the English nobility, which are later to grow into the war of the Roses are manifested and assume concrete shape. This occurs with the birth of the two factions: York, Warwick and Vernon aligned against Somerset and Suffolk. This internal dissension is to have long-range effect on the fate of the English in their fight against the French. This subplot involving Somerset, York and the quarrel of the roses shows the shift of natural nobility to trivial ends. The sense of honor that these factious noble men refer to contrasts sharply with Talbot’s. He is fully identified with the cause for which he fights whereas York and Somerset are divided by "nice sharp quillets of low," too slight even to be mentioned and immediately forgotten by both sides. The crowning irony in the play is that this essentially trivial sense of honor should prove a greater threat to Talbot’s ideals and indeed his very existence, than all the base stratagems devised by the French. The scene gets its unity and impact from the metaphor of the garden, seen in growth and decay, that runs all through it. The garden, with its good husbandry, its cankered blossoms and the plants that ripen, wither and die becomes a symbol of the commonwealth of man. Where the gardener is thrifty, his blossoms are not blasted, nor are his ordered estate overrun by pests and weeds, but where he is neglectful, destruction and decay "choke the herbs for want of husbandry." In this scene, this theme is stated for the first time. As yet it is not developed very far, but this is a scene of infinite suggestion "Grow, Crop, wither, flourish, ripen," all words of the garden are here used with multiple significance as the roses are plucked and the quarrel becomes more furious. York would prove the justice of his cause "were growing time once ripened to my will," and he identifies his fortune with the growth or withering of a flower. "And by my soul, this pale and angry rose.... Height of my degree." Other words are used in a double sense. "Color" occurs often in the scene in its ordinary uncomplicated meaning, but it occurs too in its subsidiary sense of "reason, pretext or semblance." And the "red" of the roses at once links itself with the blushing cheek and with the blood that will stain the earth and so choke its natural fertility. Thus returning to the original image of the garden. Table of Contents | |
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