🎭 York lies; he might have sent and had the horse; I owe him little duty, and less love;
And take foul scorn to fawn on him by sending.
— Duke of Somerset, Henry VI-1
Somerset is talking about sending his army to France to save his countryman Lord Talbot. But he is in bad terms with Duke of York. Both of them blame the other for not sending the army.
Both of them left Talbot being killed in France, only because they didn’t want to fight together. It is like;
…there were three brothers. Two of them argued over little thing , and never reconciled. One day, their big brother was held hostage by their common enemy. To save him, the younger brothers needed to hold hands. But they refused, out of their poor pride, just blaming each other, and the big brother left killed.
Red rose represents Somerset (House of Lancaster) , and white rose York (House of York). The play reveals the moment when the War of the Roses started. It was the English civil war which lasted for about 30 years, and the nation went really exhausted. Shakespeare was very interested in those days, wondering why people fight over for such a long time, when the starting point was a trivial thing. In fact, in his days, the power balance between the two houses were still fragile.
In his Romeo and Juliet, the Prologue starts as “Two households, both alike in dignity, … from ancient grudge break new mutiny, where civil blood makes civil hands unclean”, which, seems to me, he was actually talking about his country, not Verona.
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