Summary 
A black-and-white episode in a made-for-television production of a cycle of Shakespeare's the War of the Roses history plays. Like previous installments, the first part of the Henry VI trilogy of plays is a straight-forward and traditional telling, well-spoken and acted with speed and clarity. More a filmed stage play than a cinematic endeavor, but with multiple cameras and musical scoring. Interesting and dramatic but lacking in visual excitement.
Design
Directed by Michael Hayes. An Age of Kings Episode 9. 0:58. BBC Television. Original air date August 25th, 1960.
Cast
Patrick Garland (Bedford), John Ringham (Gloucester), Noel Johnson (Exeter), Robert Lang (Winchester), Jerome Willis (Dauphin), Anthony Valentine (Alanson), John Warner (Regnier), David Andrew (Orleans), Eileen Atkins (Joan La Pucelle), Michael Graham Cox (Mayor), Jack May (York), Edgar Wreford (Suffolk), Alan Rowe (Somerset), Frank Windsor (Warwick), Tony Garnett (Vernon), Terry Scully (King Henry VI), Mary Morris (Margaret).
Analysis
Michael Hayes begins the first of five parts of the Henry VI trilogy - subtitled The Red Rose and the White - with a close-up image of the English crown dividing two roses, then Bedford speaking at the 1.1 funeral of Henry V. The ninth episode of the BBC's An Age of Kings tears through the entirety of Shakespeare's Henry VI Part I in less than an hour, including only one scene each from Act II (2.4), Act III (3.1) and Act IV (4.1), excising fifteen of nineteen scenes from the heart of the play. Admittedly a lesser Shakespeare drama - and arguably the weakest in the entire canon - this is a disjointed telling of an already confused and sprawling drama concerning a multitude of characters and allegiances.
Bedford eulogizes Henry V - "too famous to live long" - amid ominous drumbeats as nobles stand in a circle, their backs to the helmet and sword upon the coffin. Hayes focuses tightly on the dissension within English leadership, especially between the Duke of Gloucester and the Bishop of Winchester, and in the opening scene their quarreling - "name not religion, for thou lov'st the flesh" - is interrupted not once or twice but three times with dire political announcements: losses continue due to "want of men and money," the French are in full revolt, and Lord Talbot has been defeated. Bedford attempts to rally the nobles - "to my task will I" - and grasps their hands over Henry V's coffin, but when they disperse, the hideous Bishop of Winchester signals Hayes' camera closer for an aside, and when it pulls in for a close-up, he murmurs "the King from Eltham I intend to steal" and stalks off to dramatic music.
Hayes segues to 1.2, with the exultant French in a tower, a noble at each of three windows, deriding the starving English troops - "pale ghosts" - before cutting to the Bastard of Orleans' arrival with the mysterious Joan La Pucelle. Eileen Atkins plays the sainted Joan of Arc as a tiny, blonde-haired and wild-eyed witch, strutting like a man, her chin out in defiance. The performance veers over-the-top to become almost parody, as she hesitates to kneel before mere royalty, immediately sees the deception of the noble pretending to be the King, and gives them all orders as Hayes' camera zooms into a close-up - "there's nothing hid from me" - of her big and blazing demonic eyes. The weak-kneed Dauphin, once he retrieves his crown from the departing Regnier, behaves with fearful wariness of Atkins' strident Joan, agape at her claims until challenging her - "I fear no woman" - to single combat. He draws and attacks, appearing surprised at her successful defenses, then backpedals in horror from her assault - "thou art an Amazon!" - before suddenly becoming more than romantically aroused. In an unsettling image, he embraces Joan from behind, licking his lips, and when she rejects him he still pursues, kissing her hand and bending before her while sliding a hand down her chest. When three advisors rush in, they find the Dauphin on his knees before Joan, and she responds to their query - "fight to the last gasp" - while mounting the stairs toward the throne. The Gauphin follows, clutching at her hand, but Joan yanks free of his grasp.
Hayes continues with 1.3 and the conflict between Gloucester and Winchester at the Tower of London. Gloucester endures a low-angle close-up of a guard in the Tower blowing a raspberry at him before turning to the camera to complain - "that haughty Prelate" - then facing the Bishop ("priest, beware") and insulting him as a "scarlet hypocrite." Their respective followers come to blows in clumsy fight choreography with long staffs, a head-scratcher except that later it is revealed that weapons have been banned in London. The skirmish is halted by the bell-ringing Mayor, who ends the scene marching directly to Hayes' camera, patting himself with a white handkerchief. Hayes then cuts past 1.4 and 1.5 to Joan being carried 1.6 into a chamber on Frenchmen's shoulders, having succeeded in rescuing Orleans from the English. After a clergymen stresses "the joy that God hath given us" rather than acknowledging Joan, Hayes slowly fades as the Dauphin exclaims over "this golden day of victory."
Hayes eschews the entirety of Shakespeare's second act except for a brief 2.4, showing English noblemen milling in the quiet of a garden outside a boisterous meeting hall. Richard Plantaganet plucks a white rose from a briar, matched by Somerset - "let him that is no coward nor no flatterer, pluck a red rose" - as the men choose political sides. When Somerset is overmatched - "I'll find friends to wear my bleeding roses" - he claims Richard's father was executed as a traitor at Southampton by Henry V, and the men quarrel. A somber Warwick delivers a soft-spoken prophecy that concludes the scene in the episode's finest moment, lamenting that they "shall send between the red rose and the white a thousand souls to death and deadly night."
Hayes similarly cuts most of the third act, including only 3.1 with its introduction to a soft-spoken Terry Scully as a deer-in-the-headlights young Henry. He dutifully signs a document as instructed by a looming Gloucester, then watches helplessly as Winchester plucks the document away and shreds it. Gloucester derides the clergyman's "lewd, pestiferous and dissentious pranks" before Scully's Henry rises to quiet them. They witness fighting in the streets, Henry standing lamely on a stone to vainly call for peace. Scully's Henry is nears tears - "o how this discord doth afflict my soul" - but Gloucester and Winchester come to an anxious truce and their men disperse. The scene ends with uneasy politics back in the royal chamber, Henry knighting York, before Exeter steps away and back outside, looking down and away, to recall in soliloquy the prophecy that Henry VI will lose all. Hayes shifts all the way to 4.1, with Winchester crowning Henry King, Gloucester visible in the background. Scully's Henry folds his hands demurely in prayer, and they all rise to intone, "God save King Henry, of that name the Sixth," before Henry appears startled and ends his prayer when the crown is summarily removed. Hayes then excises the remainder of the scene as well as the Talbot scenes and the rest of Act IV. He segues instead into 5.1, with Winchester speaking in soliloquy to the camera, promising to Gloucester he will "make thee stoop and bend thy knee" before a fade to dramatic trumpets.
Hayes continues then with 5.3, Atkins' wild-eyed Joan in panic against a black backdrop as French soldiers flee around her. She drops to her knees, and in an alarmingly tight close-up of her eyes - "help, ye charming spells" - resorts to witchcraft. Hayes superimposes dancing images - "ye familiar spirits" - in her eyes, but they soon fade ("see, they forsake me") and she bows her head. Joan stands as Hayes' camera finally pulls back - "France, thy glory droopeth to dust" - and six spear blades close in on her from all sides. Atkins' Joan panics, screeching shrilly at York as she is bound with rope and forced to her knees. The histrionics contrast to the comic gentleness of Suffolk unveiling Margaret, as Hayes cuts to his professing his love for the French princess. The enamored Suffolk bids her to leave but stops her - "o stay!" - before turning in an aside to the camera - "my heart says no" - then again turning to address her then back to camera, again and again, in the semi-comical confusion of love at first sight: "remember, thou hast a wife." Mary Morris' Margaret turns from him for her own comic aside - "he talks at random" - before they turn in trumpet fanfare to address her father, Regnier. Hayes' camera captures their profiles in close-up as they hold hands and gaze into each other's eyes, and Regnier must separate them: "my daughter shall be...Henry's." When they speak privately, he watches in the background, his image between them, and when he looks away, they share a kiss. In a medium close-up aside, Suffolk admires her - "o, wert thou for thyself" - and as the camera moves yet closer, "thou mayst not wander in that labyrinth."
Hayes returns 5.4 to the unpleasantness of Joan's execution, as she is bound with chains and condemned to be burned at the stake as a witch. Atkins' Joan denies her simple shepherd father as a mere plot "to obscure my noble birth" and he responds with sudden vitriol: "o burn her, burn her, hanging is too good." She spins wildly as the English laugh at her claims of miracles - "no! Misconceived!" - then jeer and boo as she falls to her knees, wild-eyed and disconcertingly creepy. She cries out - "I am with child, ye bloody homicides!" - but masked men muscle her to a platform and chain her to the stake, and her cries become horrific screams in billowing smoke and the reflection of flames. Hayes fades to black on the disturbing scene, then fades back in to show the French King, flanked by advisors, facing a trio of English nobles. The French initially refuse the terms for peace - Alanson: "this proffer is absurd and reasonless" - but ultimately agree ("let your drums be still") as Hayes concludes the scene with a dramatic royal signet on the peace treaty.
The episode - lacking coherence due to heavy editing of the text, and marred by uneven performances - concludes with 5.5, as the milquetoast Henry sits in awe - "your wondrous rare description" - of Suffolk's account of Margaret. Gloucester refuses his blessing and argues with Suffolk as the boy-King folds his hands and bows his head in prayer, appearing slight between them. When Henry chooses Margaret to be his King, Suffolk exults in private, turning to soliloquize to the camera - "I will rule both her, the King, and realm" - and inspect the roses in the garden as the credits roll.