The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare's History Plays

2002 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
History Plays

Time and the Problem of Royal Succession in Shakespeare's History Plays

2016 ◽  
Vol 78 (4) ◽  
pp. 609-624
Author(s):  
John D. Cox
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Human Action ◽  
The Other ◽  
History Plays ◽  
Political Arena ◽  
Medieval Drama ◽  
Political Concern ◽  
Ability To Act ◽  
History Play ◽  
Spiritual State

AbstractShakespeare's most innovative genre was the history play, because it has no precedent in either classical or medieval tradition. In contrast to the focused teleology of Christian medieval drama, Shakespeare's history plays manifest an implicit idea of history that was secular, political, and open-ended. They emphasize human action in a political arena, where the criterion for success is the ability to act in time, without regard to one's spiritual state. Time determines royal succession, which is the focus of all Shakespeare's history plays, as it was the focus of political concern in England in the 1590s, when the plays were written. His emphasis on time and royal succession distinguishes his implied political theory from the moralism and authoritarianism of official Tudor state doctrine on one hand and from the pragmatism of Machiavelli on the other.

The History Plays and Their Background

1978 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 91
Author(s):  
Alexander Leggatt ◽  
Peter Saccio ◽  
David L. Frey ◽  
Herbert Lindenberger
Keyword(s):  
History Plays

Reviews: History and the Media, Writing Biography: Historians and Their Craft, Selected Writings: Volume 4, 1938–1940, Benjamin Now: Critical Encounters with ‘The Arcades Project’, Illustrating the Past in Early Modern England: The Representation of History in Printed Books, Shakespeare's Culture in Modern Performance, Shakespeare's Early History Plays: From Chronicle to Stage, Secret Shakespeare, Theatre and Religion: Lancastrian Shakespeare, Language and Politics in the Sixteenth-Century History Play, the Bible in English: Its History and Influence, John Selden: Measures of the Holy Commonwealth in Seventeenth-Century England, William Blake and the Impossible History of the 1790s, William Blake's Comic Vision, Rural Englands: Labouring Lives in the Nineteenth Century, Victorian Shakespeare, 2 Vols, Vol. 1, Theatre, Drama and Performance; Vol. 2, Literature and Culture, Consumerism and American Girls' Literature, 1860–1940, Twentieth-Century Writing and the British Working Class, Psychoanalysis, Psychiatry and Modernist Literature, Postcolonial Animal Tale from Kipling to Coetzee, Shakespeare and the American NationCannadineDavid (ed.), History and the Media , Palgrave Macmillan, 2004, pp. vii + 175, £19.99.AmbrosiusLloyd E. (ed.), Writing Biography: Historians and their craft , University of Nebraska Press, 2004, pp. xiii + 166, £34.50.BenjaminWalter, Selected Writings: Volume 4, 1938–1940 , trans. JephcottEdmund, ed. EilandHoward and JenningsMichael W., Harvard University Press, 2003, pp. vi + 477, £26.50McLaughlinKevin and RosenPhilip (eds), Benjamin Now: Critical Encounters with ‘The Arcades Project‘ , Duke University Press, 2003, pp. 219, £10.50.KnappJames A., Illustrating the Past in Early Modern England: The Representation of History in Printed Books , Ashgate Publishing, 2003, pp. xvi + 274, £35.JonesMaria, Shakespeare's Culture in Modern Performance , Palgrave Macmillan, 2003, pp. xii + 213, £45.Goy-BlanquetDominque, Shakespeare's Early History Plays: From Chronicle to Stage , Oxford University Press, 2003, pp. viii + 312, £63.WilsonRichard, Secret Shakespeare , Manchester University Press, 2004, pp. viii + 26, £15.99 pbDuttonRichard, FindlayAlison and WilsonRichard (eds), Theatre and Religion: Lancastrian Shakespeare , Manchester University Press, 2003, pp. xii + 267, £16.99 pb.CavanaghDermot, Language and Politics in the Sixteenth-Century History Play , Early Modern Literature in History, Palgrave, 2003, pp. x + 197, £45.DaniellDavid, The Bible in English: Its History and Influence , Yale University Press, 2003, pp. xx + 900. £29.95.BarbourReid, John Selden: Measures of the Holy Commonwealth in Seventeenth-Century England , University of Toronto Press, 2003, pp. x + 417, £42.MakdisiSaree, William Blake and the Impossible History of the 1790s , University of Chicago Press, 2003, pp. xviii + 394, $22 pbRawlinsonNick, William Blake's Comic Vision , Palgrave Macmillan, 2003, pp. xiv + 292, £42.50.ReayBarry, Rural Englands: Labouring Lives in the Nineteenth Century , Palgrave Macmillan, 2004, 25 illustrations, 7 figs., pp. x + 274, £16.99 pb.MarshallGail and PooleAdrian (eds), Victorian Shakespeare , 2 vols, Vol. 1, Theatre, Drama and Performance; Vol. 2, Literature and Culture , Palgrave Macmillan, 2003, pp. xv + 213 and pp. xiv + 228, £90.StoneleyPeter, Consumerism and American Girls' Literature, 1860–1940 , Cambridge University Press, 2003, pp. x +167, £40.KirkJohn, Twentieth-Century Writing and the British Working Class , University of Wales Press, 2003, pp. 224, £35.ValentineKylie, Psychoanalysis, Psychiatry and Modernist Literature , Palgrave Macmillan, 2003, pp. 224, £45.NymanJopi, Postcolonial Animal Tale from Kipling to Coetzee , New Delhi, Atlantic Publishers and Distributor, 2003, pp. vi + 176, Rupees 375.00SturgessKim C., Shakespeare and the American Nation , Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp. x + 234, £45.

2005 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 74-96
Author(s):  
R.C. Richardson ◽  
David Watson ◽  
Gary Farnell ◽  
John N. King ◽  
M. J. Jardine ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
William Blake ◽  
History Plays ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Printed Books ◽  
Arcades Project ◽  
The Media ◽  
John Selden ◽  
And Performance ◽  
History Play

Shakespeare's History Plays.

1960 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 220 ◽  
Author(s):  
Petr Den ◽  
Zdenek Stribrny
Keyword(s):  
History Plays

scholarly journals "Ten Oorlog": Shakespeares 'history plays' als 'groot verhaal'

Documenta ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 101-110
Author(s):  
Jozef De Vos
Keyword(s):  
History Plays

Tyranny and Usurpation

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Doyeeta Majumder
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
The Political ◽  
History Plays ◽  
Elizabethan Drama ◽  
Political Drama ◽  
English Stage ◽  
The One ◽  
Tragic Drama ◽  
Law Making

This book examines the fraught relationship between the sixteenth-century formulations of the theories of sovereign violence, tyranny and usurpation and the manifestations of these ideas on the contemporary English stage. It will attempt to trace an evolution of the poetics of English and Scottish political drama through the early, middle, and late decades of the sixteenth-century in conjunction with developments in the political thought of the century, linking theatre and politics through the representations of the problematic figure of the usurper or, in Machiavellian terms, the ‘New Prince’. While the early Tudor morality plays are concerned with the legitimate monarch who becomes a tyrant, the later historical and tragic drama of the century foregrounds the figure of the illegitimate monarch who is a tyrant by default. On the one hand the sudden proliferation of usurpation plots in Elizabethan drama and the transition from the legitimate tyrant to the usurper tyrant is linked to the dramaturgical shift from the allegorical morality play tradition to later history plays and tragedies, and on the other it is reflective of a poetic turn in political thought which impelled political writers to conceive of the state and sovereignty as a product of human ‘poiesis’, independent of transcendental legitimization. The poetics of political drama and the emergence of the idea of ‘poiesis’ in the political context merge in the figure of the nuove principe: the prince without dynastic claims who creates his sovereignty by dint of his own ‘virtu’ and through an act of law-making violence.

Sovereign Outlaws: Shakespeare’s Second Tetralogy

2020 ◽  
pp. 55-79
Author(s):  
Conor McCarthy
Keyword(s):  
History Plays ◽  
Richard Ii ◽  
Henry V ◽  
Sovereign Immunity ◽  
Legal Questions ◽  
The Law ◽  
Second Tetralogy

This chapter asks whether the sovereign can (and perhaps must) act outside the law in a reading of the second tetralogy of Shakespeare’s history plays. The discussion opens with an examination of the notion of sovereign immunity, contrasted with a competing line of discourse against tyranny. It then argues that questions around the king’s status relative to the law constitute an important set of issues within Shakespeare’s Richard II,where both individuals (Richard and Bolingbroke) and events (Richard’s deposition) may be read as existing outside of the law in various senses. The chapter proceeds to consider the remaining plays in the tetralogy, arguing that Henry V, a sort of quasi-outlaw before gaining the throne, finds as king that he must act outside the law to defend the interests of his state. The discussion surveys a range of legal questions in Henry V, from his claim to the throne of France to his threats before Harfleur and his killing of prisoners at Agincourt. The chapter concludes with a brief glance at espionage in Elizabethan England, and the Elizabethan state’s recourse to methods of invisible power.

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