In "King Henry VI" & "Richard III": Queen Margaret of Anjou (1430-1482), wife of Henry VI.

This is a modern mezzotint of the medieval portrait of Queen Margaret, dated A.D. 1446, at Queen's College, Cambridge, which she founded. She was an intelligent, dynamic and beautiful woman, but led a tragic life. As Shakespeare shows in Henry VI this Frenchwoman was one of the most brilliant leaders in 15th century England, offsetting the failures of her incompetent husband, though ultimately losing power disastrously to the Yorkists. Shakespeare was so fascinated by her that she appears in all four plays of his first tetralogy (Henry VI-Richard III) and her total of lines in that series gives her more than he wrote for any other female role (approximately 849 lines). Furness Image Collection. See also Gallery 7, Page 4.