Shakespeare's Margaret in Honduras

She is a wealth of insight into Shakespeare’s understanding of, and influence on, ideas of gender and sexuality, and she speaks by far the most lines of any of his female characters. Yet today, most audiences have never heard of Margaret of Anjou. The 14-year-old French princess married to an English king was soon thrust into command during the Wars of the Roses. She was resurrected on the Elizabethan stage 150 years later in four of Shakespeare’s earliest plays, Henry VI, Parts 1, 2, and 3 and Richard III—and in every era since, actors, directors, and producers have highlighted or diminished her role depending on the sensibilities of the time.

Charles O’Malley and Scott W. Stern track the evolution of Margaret’s portrayal, along with the ever changing history of the theater itself, in Shakespeare’s Margaret: The Dramatic Life of a Warrior Queen. In the excerpt below, they look at the long tradition of community performances of Henry VI, part 3 and Richard III on the Honduran island of Roatán.

For as long as anyone could remember, the residents of Roatán—a long, narrow island about forty miles off the coast of Honduras—had been obsessed with Shakespeare. Just two Shakespeare plays, actually: Henry VI, Part 3 and Richard III. Every year, for many decades, the residents had performed those two plays before rapt throngs of neighbors. The actors, as well as almost everyone in their audiences, were Black—Indigenous islanders and the descendants of slaves. Something about the two plays, depicting centuries-old wars, spoke deeply to the people of Roatán, for they not only revived these plays year after year for much of the twentieth century; they even peppered their everyday speech with Shakespearean dialogue.

Both of these plays were among those Shakespearean works now classified as “histories” (as opposed to comedies or tragedies). They dramatized real events from English history and put real figures onto the stage. They were also some of the first plays the young Shakespeare wrote, as he was still honing his craft. Henry VI, Part 3 and Richard III are bloody works—long, violent, and, somewhat unusually within the Shakespearean oeuvre, featuring several compelling female roles. In Henry, the play is dominated by Margaret of Anjou, the Queen of England during the Wars of the Roses and a woman who commands armies, dismisses her husband (the King) as too weak to tolerate, and even plunges a sword into a foe onstage. In Richard, a defeated Margaret returns to curse Richard, her great foe and one of her successors atop England’s throne. She is joined by three other female characters who, with Margaret, speak almost a quarter of the play’s 3,718 lines and together articulate the play’s clearest critique of England’s leadership and its past. England knew no long-ruling queens regnant until Shakespeare’s own Queen Elizabeth I; the medieval period saw only kings command power. As the country looked ahead toward the conclusion of the (very popular) queen’s reign, Shakespeare created multiple women—on various sides of a century-old armed conflict—to question the administration of power.

Late in 1950, a writer named Louise Wright George traveled to La Ceiba, a port city situated at the base of the Pico Bonito mountains, just across the water from Roatán. One day, her maid, Adela, told her about the native Shakespearean tradition, launching George on a quest to learn more about the Roatán repertory. George would record what she saw and heard in exquisite detail, from the performers’ names and backstories to the costumes they lovingly maintained. She would also inject her recollections with casually racist language and sentiments. Since at least the early 1910s, Hondurans told her, the “colored populace” had been staging Henry VI, Part 3 and Richard III, often combining the two into one long performance. Some of the performers were from La Ceiba, though the more dedicated Shakespeareans resided on Roatán. Most worked on banana plantations and in lumber camps, seizing rare moments of leisure for rehearsal and recital. They had no director, no printed programs, and apparently shared copies of the plays.

Early in 1951, George attended a performance in an “old, condemned, wooden Methodist Church” in the English-speaking neighborhood of La Ceiba. There was no set and few props; sheets stood in for curtains, bedspreads for backdrops; and a six-piece orchestra introduced the actors. As these performances had for decades, the show began with the entire cast trouping through into the audience, each carrying a wooden sword.

A Roatán native named Alva Bennett played Margaret, wearing a white satin dress, trimmed with lace, which she maintained at significant personal expense. To pay her bills, Bennett worked as a cook for a lumberman. Atop her head was a paper crown, and—like everyone else—she clutched a sword. If George’s recollections are to be believed, the Hondurans performed abbreviated versions of both plays. As many directors had for centuries, they cut Margaret from Richard III. Nonetheless, many of her most spectacular scenes remained in Henry VI, Part 3, and Alva Bennett got to divorce King Henry, stab the Duke of York, and insult a deeply unnerved Richard.

To Louise Wright George, the dedication of poor, Black laborers to two of Shakespeare’s history plays was a curiosity, an anomaly, and—above all—a source of bemusement. What, one may ask seven decades later, did Shakespeare—and these two history plays in particular—mean to the Hondurans themselves? For the first half of the twentieth century, Honduras was a kleptocracy, with American-controlled fruit companies exploiting the nation and many of its residents forced to endure backbreaking work for the benefit of rich, white capitalists who gave orders from afar. Yet resistance permeated the plantations; attempted coups and underground communist organizing roiled the country. Just as George arrived, a rural labor movement was gaining in power and influence; not long after she left, a general strike upended the northern part of the country, including La Ceiba. The Hondurans could well have identified with two plays depicting political turmoil, martial strife, and cruel, charismatic rulers deservedly brought low.

And what did Margaret mean to Alva Bennett? Was she oppressor, collaborator, or empowered icon? She could have been any of these. Or she could have just been part to play, a vehicle for artistic expression, an escape from the drudgery. She was, undeniably, a legitimate excuse to wield a sword.

About the Authors

Charles O’Malley holds a doctorate in dramaturgy and dramatic criticism from the Yale School of Drama and has worked at theaters across the United States. He is the editor of Toward a Just Pedagogy of Performance.

Scott W. Stern is a scholar and critic. He is the author of The Trials of Nina McCall, a New York Times Editors’ Choice selection, and There Is a Deep Brooding in Arkansas, which the Times called “powerful new history.”