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ENGLISH
HISTORY PLAYS
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The first collected edition of Shakespeare's plays, known asthe First Folio, divided the plays into three categories
Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies.At the end of the sixteenth century, plays about English
history had been extremely popular on the London stage.
The history play seems to be the vehicle by which the
young Shakespeare first made his mark as a playwright.Three plays dealing with the reign of King Henry VI areamong Shakespeare's earliest surviving works, and they are
also the subject of the first references we have to
Shakespeare as a London playwright.
In Greene's Groatsworth of Wit, published in 1592, the
university-trained playwright Robert Greene complained
about `an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers'.
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The `upstart crow' was probably William Shakespearebecause, Greene continued, 'with his Tiger's heart wrapped in a
Player's hide, [he] supposes that he is as well able to bombast out ablank verse as the best of you: and being an absolute Johannes fac
totum, is in his own conceit the only shake-scene in a country'.The identity of Greene's target is indicated, not only by the
epithet `shake-scene', but also by `his Tiger's heart wrappedin a Player's hide', which echoes a line`O tiger's heartwrapped in a woman's hide' (1.4.138)from Shakespeare's
Henry VI Part Three.
This play, which was probably written for the 1590-1theatrical season, was first published in 1595 in a version
entitled The True Tragedy of Richard Duke of York and the Good
King Henry the Sixth.
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Greene must have assumed the play would be well-known
among his readers; otherwise the insult could not have foundits mark. And the play must have been successful: otherwise
it would not have provoked Greene's animosity.
Additional, more favourable, notice of Shakespeare's early
success as a writer of English histories appeared in another1592 publication, Thomas Nashe's Pierce Penniless hisSupplication to the Devil, which claimed that 'ten thousand
spectators at least had wept at the theatrical representation
of John Talbot's death. Nashe was probably referring to thefirst part ofHenry VI.
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The uses of historyIt is not surprising that the young Shakespeare turned to
English history for his subject matter. The plays he wrotewere commercial products, designed to draw the largest
possible audiences to the playhouse, and his dramatizations
of English history were designed to appeal to the same
interests that had already attracted a wide readership forbooks on that subject.One of the first books printed by William Caxton after he
established the first printing press in England was The
Chronicles of England (1480), and by 1530, the book hadbeen published thirteen times. John Stow's Summary of
English Chronicles, published in I565, had nineteen editions
by 1618.
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William Warner'sAlbion's England, published in 1586, wentthrough seven editions during the next twenty years.
Fabyan's Chronicles, whichtraced English history from thetime of the Roman conquest to the end of the Wars of the
Roses in the fifteenth century, had seven editions in fifty
years.
Many other historical works enjoyed comparablepopularity among a large and diverse readership.A number of reasons have been suggested for this
widespread interest in English history.
For one thing, the study of history was highly esteemedby humanist scholars. Sir Thomas Elyot, for instance, made
it the centre of his educational programme:
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'there is no study or science ... of equal commodity and
pleasure for a noble man. It includes 'all things that isnecessary to be put in memory'.
The need for a specifically English history was also
recognized by the Tudor monarchs, who used it to legitimate
their rather dubious claimto the throne.The Tudors were a new dynasty whose founder Henry VII,had acquired his crown, not by inheritance, but by defeating
his predecessor, Richard III in battle.
Henry VII turned to various historical figures to authorizehis monarchy.
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He claimed descent from the Trojan Brut, the legendaryfounder of Britain; he incorporated the red dragon of the
ancient Welsh king Cadwallader (the last Welsh king to claimlordship over all of Britain) in the royal arms; and he named
his first son after the legendary British King Arthur.
Henry VII also sponsored the work of the Italian historian,
Polydore Vergil, whose Anglica Historica traced Henry'sancestry to Cadwallader and suggested that his ascent tothe throne was divinely ordained.
Edward Halls 1548 chronicle went even further in
constructing a story of ancient descent and providentialpurpose that reached its validating conclusion in the Tudor
dynasty.
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Hall's chronicle was entitled The Union of the Two Noble andIllustrious Families of Lancaster and York Being Long in Continual
Dissension for the Crown of this Noble Realm, with all the Acts Done inBoth the Times of the Princes, Both of the One Lineage and of the Other,Beginning at the Time of King Henry the Fourth, the First Author of thisDivision and so Successively Proceeding to the Reign of the High andPrudent Prince King Henry the Eighth, the Indubitable Flower and Very
Heir of Both the Said Lineages.In Hall's account, Henry IV's deposition of Richard II sowed the seedsfor the Wars of the Roses, a prolonged dynastic struggle that wasresolved only when the blood of Lancaster and York was finally united
in the marriage of Henry VII to Elizabeth of York and in the person oftheir second son Henry VIII.But humanist scholarship and royal sponsorship alone could notaccount for the widespread interest in history in Tudor England.
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The writing of English history not only helped to legitimate Tudorsovereignty and to define an emergent nation-state; it also served tovalidate the status and identity of individual subjects.Having a history was equivalent to having a place in the statushierarchy. As Hall remarked in the prefatory letter to his chronicle,'What diversity is between a noble prince and a poor beggar if aftertheir death there be left of them no remembrance or token?'
Moreover, the use of history to ratify personal claims to a place inan increasingly unstable social hierarchy was not confined to nobleprinces.The hereditary nobility could look for the names of their ancestors in
the Tudor chronicles, but ambitious men born without hereditary titles(William Shakespeare's father among them) provided a thrivingbusiness for the College of Heralds, who were empowered to createcoats of arms that authorized new money in genealogical fictions ofprivileged ancestry.
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NOSTALGIA FOR A LOST PAST
The historical past was also an object of sentimental veneration.
Living in a time of rapid and often bewildering social, political, andeconomic change, Shakespeare's contemporaries looked to history,the study of change itself, to rationalize their changing world and todiscover foundational narratives that could legitimate innovative
cultural structures.As a result, England's medieval past was often idealized as a time ofstable values and national glory.The nostalgic appeal of this imagined medieval world gave rise to avariety of cultural productions, ranging from the deliberate archaismsin the poetry of Edmund Spenser to the elaborate reconstructions ofmedieval tournaments staged each year in celebration of QueenElizabeth's Accession Day.
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The historical past also constituted one of the chiefattractions of the English history play. Defending plays
based on 'our English Chronicles', Thomas Nashe stated:Nay, what if I prove plays to be no extreme, but a rare exercise of virtue?First, for the subject of them, (for the most part) it is borrowed out of ourEnglish chronicles, wherein our forefathers' valiant acts (that have lainlong buried in rusty brass and worm-eaten books) are revived, and they
themselves raised from the grave of oblivion, and brought to plead theiraged honors in open presence; than which, what can be a sharper reproofto these degenerate effeminate days of ours?
In Shakespeare's history plays, this nostalgic longing for a
better past is expressed in various ways, large and small. Iteven seems to inform the structural links that bind the plays
together into a connected story.
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In the First Folio, the plays were printed in the order inwhich the kings for which they are named reigned, starting
with King John and ending with Henry VIII.The eight intervening plays tell a connected historical
story, beginning with the deposition and murder of Richard IIproceeding through the troubled reign of Henry IV to the
triumphs of Henry V, the disastrous reign of his son Henry VIand the bloodbath of Richard III and ending with theaccession of the first Tudor monarch Henry VII.
However, this is not the order in which the plays were first
produced.The plays designated in the First Folio as the three parts of
Henry VIare linked together in a sequence that ends with
Richard III.
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Because these four plays were composed earlier than theother history plays and because they can be read as a
connected sequence, scholars often refer to them as the firsttetralogy.
The four plays that deal with the reigns of Richard II,Henry IV and Henry V are known as the second tetralogy,
because they were composed later; although they can beread as a connected sequence, the historical events theydescribed actually preceded those depicted in the earlier
plays.
Although the reasons for this order of composition areunknown, the final Chorus ofHenry Vdefines it as a story of
loss.
Predicting Henry's premature death and the disastrous
reign of his son, the Chorus ends by reminding the audience
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that the subsequent history has been already shown on theirstage:
Henry the Sixth, in infant bands crowned kingOf France and England, did this king succeed,Whose state so many had the managingThat they lost France and made his England bleed,Which oft our stage hath shownand, for their sake,
In your fair minds let this acceptance take.
The reference here to the Henry VI plays bends the linear
progress of the history Shakespeare took from the Tudor
Chronicles into a theatrical cycle, beginning and ending withHenry's death; for just as Henry Vends by predicting Henry's
impending death, the first part of Henry VI begins with his
funerals .
f
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The circle is joined at the point that represents the moment of loss
the death of the most heroic of Shakespeare's English kings.The opening Chorus ofHenry Vhad already described the playhouseas a wooden O, inadequate to contain the magnitude of Henry's
achievements.Like the image of the empty 'wooden O', the final Chorus of the playalso marks an absencethe heroic past that the name of Henry Vdenotes.
SHAKESPEARES EARLY HISTORY PLAYS
The three plays depicting the reign of Henry's son, Henry VI, portraythe destruction. of his father's legacy.Human exemplars of the heroic, chivalric, civic, patriotic, and ethicalvirtues associated with the reign of Henry V (such as John Talbot andthe dead king's venerable brothers, Bedford and Gloucester) are clearlymarked as representatives of an older, better world, and as they die,
the virtues they exemplify seem to die along with them.
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The Henry VI plays have often been faulted by critics for their loose,episodic structure;
There is, however, a persistent theme of degeneration in all threeplays as the England they depict sinks increasingly into chaos andbarbarity.Yorkists and Lancastrians compete with each other in treachery and
atrocity, authority is effaced, power becomes an end in itself, and thecrown becomes a prize of war, tossed from one head to another at thewhim of brute force and blind fortune.Thomas Nashe had celebrated the history play as offering a 'reproofto these degenerate, effeminate days of ours' by reviving on stage themartial valour of England's medieval 'forefathers', but the Henry VIplays depict the reign of 'an effeminate prince' (Henry VI Part One, 1.135), where the best warriors are often women.
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The idealized medieval England that was an object ofsentimental veneration in Shakespeare's time is notably
absent in these plays, but the disordered realm they depict isframed by two emblems of royal perfection, English
triumph, peace, and prosperityHenry V at the beginning
and Henry VII at the end.
Although we see his funeral at the beginning of Henry VIPart One, Henry V never appears on stage in any of theseearly plays, and Henry VII appears only at the end ofRichard
III and only as Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, not as the ideal
king that he will become. Both, therefore, serve to mark the absence of the
idealized England that is always already lost in all these
early plays.
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SHAKESPEARE'S LATER HISTORY PLAYS
In the second tetralogy, Shakespeare moves back in time to
trace the succession of kings from Richard II to Henry V, but
even here the idealized England of nostalgic longingcontinues to elude dramatic representation.
Richard II, the opening play in that sequence, depicts the
deposition and murder of the last of the medieval kings whocould trace their succession back to William the Conqueror.
A secular analogue to the Biblical Fall, Richard's deposition
is staged as the end of the idealized feudal world thatconstituted the object of sixteenth-century nostalgia.
The opening scene, set in Richard's court, is replete with
ceremonial gestures and elaborately rhymed speeches that
give it the air of a medieval tableau.
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Even the play's opening line'Old John of Gaunt, time-honoured Lancaster'exploits this nostalgia, reminding the
audience that they are about to enter the world of Chaucer'spatron, John of Gaunt (1340-99), who was indeed 'time-
honoured' by the time the play was produced.And before the first act ended, the audience was treated to
all the formal preliminaries to a medieval trial by combat,complete with trumpets, two heralds, a Marshal, and armedcombatants.
The trial by combat was founded on the belief that God
would give victory to the party who was in the right. Thekings maintained control over the practice, and it came to be
reserved for cases affecting royal interests, such as serious
criminal cases or disputes over land.
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The spectacle must have had enormous appeal forShakespeare's original audiences, many of whom would have
also flocked to see Queen Elizabeth's Accession Day tiltswhich were open to the general public.
Tilt a medieval sport in which two mounted knights with
lances charged together and attempted to unhorse one
another.In Richard II, the nostalgic appeal of the spectacle wouldhave been reinforced by the fact that it was a trial by combat,
a ritual that evoked an imagined medieval world where
divine providence legitimated earthly justice. Shakespeare loads enormous emphasis on the trial by
combat, deferring it and emphasizing its importance in the
represented action.
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The opening scene depicts Richard's attempt to resolve thequarrel between Bolingbroke and Mowbray about who was
responsible for the murder of Richard's uncle, the Duke ofGloucester.
Richard is eager to lay the dispute to rest, since the
responsibility was ultimately his, but he cannot persuade the
disputants to give it up, so the scene ends with his order thatthey meet in a formal trial by combat where divine justice willdetermine who is telling the truth.
Next comes an invented scene between John of Gaunt and
the Duchess of Gloucester, aged holdovers from an earlierworld where power and legitimacy were united.
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The Duchess pleads with Gaunt to avenge her husband'smurder, but Gaunt argues that there is no way a good subject
can avenge the crime without opposing the will of God, sinceRichard, the culprit, is God's anointed king.
Faced with this irresolvable dilemma, Gaunt and the
Duchess finally agree to await the trial by combat. `God's is
the quarrel', Gaunt argues (1.2.37), and only God can resolveit.The trial itself, however, never takes place. Richard himself
aborts the proceedings, cheating the playgoers of the
spectacle they have been led to anticipate from the end ofthe opening scene.
Here, as in much of the play, Richard is depicted as the
destroyer of the idealized medieval England he inherited,
d th bj t f t l i d i i h d f th b k
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and the object of nostalgic desire is pushed even further back
into the past, into the time of Richard's glorious predecessorswho are recalled to mark the extent of Richard's
shortcomings.The most powerful and explicit expression of that nostalgic
ideal comes in the famous set speech delivered by John of
Gaunt just before he dies in the opening scene of Act Two,
which invokes the glory of this lost England to mark thepresent degradation he attributes to the misrule of theyouthful King Richard II.
Gaunt calls his idealized England 'This other Eden',
associating it with the archetypal focus of nostalgia, theperfect original home that is always already lost.
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However, he describes England not as a garden but as a'fortress', the sea that surrounds it as 'a moat defensive to a
house'in short, as an idealized medieval landscape. Equallyidealized, its rulers are described as medieval crusader-kings,
Renowned for their deeds as far from homeFor Christian service and true chivalry
As is the sepulchre, in stubborn JewryOf the world's ransom, blessed Mary's son.
(2.1.53-6)
After Gaunt dies, his aged brother, the Duke of York, nowthe last surviving son of Edward III, explicitly details the
contrast between Richard and his royal ancestors whom he
glorifies as heroic warriors abroad and ideal rulers at home:
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In war was never lion raged more fierce,In peace was never gentle lamb more mild....... when he frowned it was against the French,
And not against his friends. His noble handDid win what he did spend, and spent not thatWhich his triumphant father's hand had won.His hands were guilty of no kindred blood,
But bloody with the enemies of his kin.(2.1.174-84)
Replicating and reduplicating the nostalgia that drew the
audience to the playhouse, the historical figures representedon stage repeatedly look back to an even more distant pastas a lost time when things were better.
Li ing kings can ne er li e p to the ideals represented b
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Living kings can never live up to the ideals represented by
their dead predecessors. Even Richard II, although he nevermanages to emulate his heroic forefathers' example,
imagines at the end of the play, after he has been deposedand shortly before he is murdered, that he too will be
transmuted by death into a focus for nostalgic recollection.
'Think I am dead', he tells his queen:
In winter's tedious nights, sit by the fireWith good old folks, and let them tell thee talesOf woeful ages long ago betid;And ere thou bid goodnight, to quit their griefsTell thou the lamentable fall of me,And send the hearers weeping to their beds (5.1.40-5)
Despite the evidence throughout the play of Richard'sinadequacies as a ruler, his death will transform his
deposition and murder into a melancholy tale of a lost and
lamented past.
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Here, as in all of Shakespeare's history plays, the focus fornostalgia is the reign of a dead monarchical figure. Those
kings, like the Edenic England they ruled, are always alreadylost in Shakespeare's history plays.
In King John, Richard the Lionheart never appears on
stage, but his death and divided legacy initiate the
contention between his son John and his grandson Arthur fora throne which no longer has a clear and undisputedoccupant.
In Richard II, both Richard's grandfather, Edward III, and
his heroic father, Edward the Black Prince, are dead beforethe action begins, but both are invoked as ideal figures from
the past to mark the nature and extent of present
degradation.
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In Henry VIII, the only one of the history plays writtenduring the reign of James I, the absent object of
nostalgic desire is Queen Elizabeth I. Represented as Henry's most important achievement
('Never before / This happy child did I get anything'
(5.4.64-5), Elizabeth appears in the play only in the final
scene and only as a new-born infant.
Cranmer's prophecy depicts her reign as an ideal time, but
it also extends beyond her death, reminding Shakespeare's
Jacobean audience that she was as inaccessible to them asshe had been to the Henrician characters represented on
stage ('few now living can behold that goodness' (5.4.21).
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The reign of Henry VII occupies a similar position inRichmond's speech at the end ofRichard IIItheobject of the
characters' hopes for the future but also of the audience'snostalgia for a halcyon (golden/flourishing) time that lies just
beyond the bounds of dramatic representation.
The most persistent focus for nostalgic idealization in
Shakespeare's history plays is the figure of Henry V. Hisimage hovers just beyond the frame of both tetralogies.Henry is the lost heroic presence that the entire historical
project seems designed to recover.
The Henry VI plays depict the losing struggle to preservehis legacies of French conquest and national unity. The figure
of Henry V hovers behind the entire second tetralogy as well.
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Always elusive, he is first mentioned in Richard II when hisnewly crowned father demands, 'Can no man tell of my
unthrifty son? / 'Tis full three months since I did see himlast' (5.3.1-2), but the audience does not see him either
until the Henry IVplays, and even there he plays a series of
roles designed, as he tells the audience from the
beginning, to conceal his true nature. `I know you all', he says in a soliloquy early in Henry IV Part
One, 'and will a while uphold / The unyoked humour of
your idleness' (1.2.173-4).
Within the play, the 'you' refers to the disreputable crewof lowlife characters with whom the Prince consorts in the
Eastcheap tavern;
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but it also refers to the playgoers themselves, the idlecrowd who have come to the playhouse to be entertained.
Prominent among those entertainments, as advertised onthe title page of the play's first published edition, were
'the humorous conceits ofSir John Falstaff'.
The Prince we see in the first Part ofHenry IVspends more
time with Falstaff than with his father, adopting a varietyof disreputable but entertaining disguises, including thoseof a robber and a serving-man in a tavern.
He plays a prominent part in the fictional comic subplot
peopled by a cast of anachronistically modern characters,which repeatedly interrupts and parodies the historical
action.
At the end of Part One Hal appears to appropriate
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At the end of Part One Hal appears to appropriate
Hotspur's chivalric honour, paying tribute to his rival'shonours, killing him in single combat, and then
completing Hotspur's dying speech to speak in his 'behalf'(5.4).
Here, as in his opening soliloquy, the Prince recalls the
heroic figure denoted by the name of Henry V, but in Part
Two, the first time we see him, he is again consorting withhis low companions, acknowledging that 'these humbleconsiderations make me out of love with my greatness'
(2.2.11-12).
His apotheosis is again deferred until the end of the play,where he announces that he has 'turned away my former
self' along with his lowlife companions in dissolute
pleasure (5.5.56-7).
Just as the first tetralogy looks back to Henry V as an
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Just as the first tetralogy looks back to Henry V as an
emblem of lost glory that shows up the inadequacy of hisson's failed reign, the second looks forward to his glorious
accession, the anticipated reward that will compensatefor his father's crimes and justify his own riotous
behaviour as Prince Hal.
But when Shakespeare finally turns in the last play in the
second tetralogy to the glorious reign of this once andfuture king, all that longingly remembered and eagerlyanticipated glory evaporates in ambiguity, as the heroic
words of the Chorus are repeatedly contradicted by the
events enacted on stage and challenged by the irreverentvoices of vulgar theatrical clowns. Even in the play that
bears his name, Henry V is never fully present.
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The progress of the two tetralogies is a progress back intime to a dead hero and a lost heroic age that evaporate
in ambiguity as soon as they are reached.