And fifth, the apparent restoration of order, in the wake of national turmoil, may be an illusion. Eager to “spend the time/With stately triumphs, mirthful comic shows” (5.7.42–43), Edward is a more moderate figure than York, his father, far less consumed with fantasies of absolute power. To return the country to a semblance of normal, legitimate rule, he hopes to bring about a collective forgetting of the nightmare from which everyone has barely awakened. In this spirit of amnesia, he characterizes the bloodshed that his party has caused a “sour annoy.” And he cheerfully declares that the
...more
