Questions about Shakespearean history
Short answers, pulled from the story.
What are the Shakespearean history plays and how are they categorised?
The Shakespearean history plays are a group of works by William Shakespeare dramatising the reigns of English kings across four centuries, along with Roman plays based on Plutarch. The First Folio of 1623 organised Shakespeare's works into comedies, histories, and tragedies; in practice, scholars also count the Roman plays Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, and Coriolanus, and the tragedies King Lear and Macbeth, as part of the wider Shakespearean history tradition.
What is the Henriad in Shakespeare's history plays?
The Henriad is a continuous sequence of eight plays built around Prince Hal, the future King Henry V of England. It comprises two tetralogies: the first, written in the early 1590s, covers Henry VI Parts I, II, and III and Richard III; the second, completed by 1599, covers Richard II, Henry IV Parts I and II, and Henry V.
What historical sources did Shakespeare use for his history plays?
Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotlande, and Irelande, published in 1577 and 1587, was the principal source for the English history plays and for Macbeth and King Lear. Thomas North's 1579 English translation of Plutarch's Parallel Lives provided the source material for the Roman history plays Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, and Coriolanus.
Were Shakespeare's history plays Tudor propaganda?
Many scholars argue that the English history plays served as political propaganda supporting the House of Tudor, whose dynasty ruled England from 1485 to 1603 under the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. The Tragedy of Richard the Third attacks the last Yorkist king while praising his Tudor successor, and The Famous History of the Life of King Henry the Eighth closes with a celebration of the birth of Elizabeth. The academic H. A. Kelly, writing in 1970, found a more nuanced picture: Shakespeare distributed the myths of Lancaster, York, and Tudor across different characters rather than endorsing any single political view.
Why did chronicle plays decline in the early seventeenth century?
Several factors contributed to the decline of chronicle plays after roughly 1606, including audience satiety from overproduction, growing awareness that the genre distorted history, the competing vogue for Italian and Spanish plots, the rise of satirical city comedy, and the movement of leading dramatists toward more sophisticated court-centred tastes. The decline in national homogeneity after the Stuarts came to power, and ultimately the closing of the English theatres in 1642, ended the genre's long run.
What television adaptations have been made of Shakespeare's history plays?
The history plays have been filmed for television five times as cycles. Notable productions include the 1960 BBC serial An Age of Kings, which featured Sean Connery as Hotspur and Judi Dench as Princess Catherine; the 1965 BBC serial The Wars of the Roses with Ian Holm as Richard III and Peggy Ashcroft as Margaret; and the 2012 BBC2 series The Hollow Crown, with Ben Whishaw as Richard II, Tom Hiddleston as Henry V, and Jeremy Irons as Henry IV.