In theFirst Folio (1623), the plays ofWilliam Shakespeare were in three categories: (i)comedies, (ii) histories, and (iii)tragedies. Besides the history plays of hisRenaissance playwright contemporaries, the histories of Shakespeare define the theatrical genre ofhistory plays.[1] The historical plays also are biographies of theEnglish kings of the previous four centuries, and include the playsKing John,Edward III, andHenry VIII, and a continual sequence of eight plays known as theHenriad, for the protagonistPrince Hal, the future KingHenry V of England.
TheChronology of Shakespeare's plays indicates that the first tetralogy was written in the early 1590s, and discusses the politics of theWars of the Roses; the four plays areHenry VI, parts I,II, andIII, andThe Tragedy of Richard the Third. The second tetralogy was completed in 1599, and comprises the history playsRichard II,Henry IV, parts I andII, andHenry V.
Moreover, the First Folio includes the classifications of theLate romances and of theProblem plays that feature historical characters among thedramatis personæ, thus, in English literature, the term “Shakespearean history play” includes the Roman playsJulius Caesar,Antony and Cleopatra, andCoriolanus; and the tragediesKing Lear andMacbeth.
The book ofBritish history,Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotlande, and Irelande (1577, 1587), byRaphael Holinshed, is the principal documentary source for the historical backgrounds and political drama in Shakespeare's English history plays and in the tragedies ofMacbeth and ofKing Lear. The history source for the Roman history plays is theThomas North English translation (1579) ofParallel Lives (Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans Compared Together), byPlutarch.
The playwright William Shakespeare lived during the régime of QueenElizabeth I of England (r. 1588–1603), who was the lastdynastic monarch of theHouse of Tudor (r. 1485–1603), thus, the history plays of Shakespeare can be considered politicalpropaganda that warns against the wrack-and-ruin ofcivil war and celebrates the founders of the House of Tudor. In particular,The Tragedy of Richard the Third (1594) derogates the last man of the rivalHouse of York, KingRichard III (r. 1483–1485), as “that bottled spider, that foul bunchback’d toad”, whilst praising Richard's successor,Henry VII (r. 1485–1509) as the better man to beKing of England.
The playwright's political bias for the House of Tudor also is evident inThe Famous History of the Life of King Henry the Eighth, which concludes in celebration of the birth of his daughter Elizabeth. Thematically important to Shakespeare's representation ofsocietal decline in theLate Middle Ages (1300–1500) is the politicking that propels the action inRichard III, which indicates that the Medieval collapse originated from the opportunistic practises ofMachiavellianism in all politics. By way ofnostalgia for the less treacherous way of life of the Late Middle Ages, in the history plays, Shakespeare shows the evolution of politics andsocial class that armed the House of Tudor to claim and take theThrone of England.
To accurately portray the people and personages who were theHouse of Lancaster, theHouse of York, and theHouse of Tudor, Shakespeare used the family myths of right and law (bloodline andpolitical legitimacy) reported inHolinshed's Chronicles. In dynastic claims to the Throne of England, the Lancaster Myth claimed that the deposition of Richard II and the reign of Henry IV were actions divinely sanctioned, and that the military victories and thegeopolitical achievements of Henry V were divine favours. The York Myth claimed that Edward IV's deposition of Henry VI was the divine restoration of the usurpedThrone of England to the rightful and lawful heirs of Richard II. Moreover, the claims of the Tudor Myth condemned the York brothers for murdering King Henry VI and Prince Edward; stressed divine sanction in the fall of the House of York and the consequent ascent of Henry Tudor — whose union of the houses of Lancaster and York was prophesied by Henry VI.
The family and political myths of the House of Tudor claim that Henry Tudor's praying before the start of theBattle of Bosworth Field (1485) indicated he was divinely favoured for martial victory.[2] That Henry's battlefield defeat of Richard III “was justified on the principles of contemporary political theory, for Henry was not merely rebelling against a tyrant, but putting down a tyrannoususurper, whichThe Mirror for Magistrates allowed”.[3]
In their histories of England, the chroniclersPolydore Vergil,Edward Hall, andRaphael Holinshed stressed the lessons learned from past divine interventions to British history. InUnion of the Two Noble and Illustre Families of Lancastre and Yorke (1548), Edward Hall said that divine Providence had cursed England for the deposition and murder of Richard II, but then laid peace upon the realm in the person of Henry Tudor and his dynasty. Holinshed's judgement was that Richard, Duke of York, and his line were divinely punished for Richard violating his oath to allow the full reign of Henry VI. As political propagandists, the chroniclers incorporated elements of all three myths in their narrative histories treatments of the period from Richard II to Henry VII.[4] For Shakespeare's use of the three myths, seeInterpretations.
As in theFirst Folio (1623), the plays aboutEnglish history are listed by historical chronology, not by the chronologies ofcomposition, publication, and performance.
As noted, the First Folio collects the tragedies thus:
As with the Roman history plays, the First Folio classifies the following plays as tragedies. Although thematically related by way of historical background, royal biography, and based upon the Holingshed and the Plutarch sources, these plays are not part of Shakespeare's English histories.
InDivine Providence in the England of Shakespeare’s Histories (1970), the academic H. A. Kelly examines Shakespeare's political bias and analyses his historical assertions about the earthly influence of divine Providence in: (a) the contemporary historical chronicles, (b) the Tudor historians, and (c) the Elizabethan poets — notably the two tetralogies: (i)Henry VI toRichard III and (ii)Richard II toHenry V.[5] As anhistoriographer and as adramaturgist, Shakespeare displaced divine Providence from the historical sources and presented divine influence as the opinions of spokesmen-characters; thus Lancastrians speak the sentimental myth of the House Lancaster, Yorkists speak the sentimental myth of the House of York, whilst Henry Tudor personifies the sentimental myth of the House of Tudor. That literary recasting of divine dialogues to mortal men and women allows each play to create, develop, and establish a uniqueethos andmythos from which spring the actions of protagonists and antagonists.[6]
Whereas the chroniclers explained that historical events were influenced and decided by thedivine justice of Providence, the playwright Shakespeare placed the earthly influence of Providence in the dramatic background. In defending his claim to theThrone of England, Richard, Duke of York, stressed the justification of providential justice to Parliament. To reject Richard's claim to the English throne, Shakespeare did not develop that theme in the scene at Parliament (3 Henry VI).[7] In the first tetralogy, Henry VI does not perceive his troubles as divine retribution; in the second tetralogy, there is no thematic leitmotif of Providential punishment for Henry IV.[8] The allusions to hereditary punishment by Providence are Richard II's prediction ofcivil war — at his abdication;[9] Henry IV's fear of punishment through his wayward son;[10] Henry V's fear of Providence punishing him for the sins of his father;[11] and Clarence's fear of providential retribution against him through his children.[12]
Whereas the chroniclers of history explained that divine Providence was twice displeased; first, by the marriage between the English King Henry VI and the French duchessMargaret of Anjou, and second, because of Henry's broken vow to the Armagnac girl, the playwright Shakespeare has Duke Humphrey object to Margaret as queen consort because the marriage would lose England possession and control of theDuchy of Anjou and the territory of theMaine.[14] Dismissing the chroniclers' historical opinions that Talbot's victories were divinely ordained,[15] Shakespeare shows that the defeat and death of Talbot were consequences of dissention among the ranks of the English.[16] Shakespeare further presents the outcomes of political and military events and of personal drama as the results ofpoetic justice, as established inSenecan dramaturgy;[17] thus dreams, prophecies, and curses are of narrative importance in the early tetralogy, which shows poetic justice take effect — especially Henry VI's prophecy about the future Henry VII.[18]
Accordingly, Shakespeare'smoral characterisation andpolitical bias, Kelly argues, change from play to play, "which indicates that he is not concerned with the absolute fixing of praise or blame", though he does achieve general consistency within each play:
Shakespeare meant each play primarily to be self-contained. Thus inRichard II the murder ofThomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester, inaugurates the action—John of Gaunt places the guilt on Richard II—but Woodstock is forgotten in the later plays. Again, Henry IV, at the end ofRichard II, speaks of a crusade as reparation for Richard's death: but in the next two plays he does not show remorse for his treatment of Richard. As for theHenry VI plays, the Yorkist view of history in1 Henry VI differs from that in2 Henry VI: in Part 1 the conspiracy of the Yorkist Richard Earl of Cambridge against Henry V is admitted; in Part 2 it is passed silently over.[20] Henry VI's attitude to his own claim undergoes changes.Richard III does not refer toany events prior to Henry VI's reign.[17]
Kelly finds evidence ofYorkist bias in the earlier tetralogy.1 Henry VI has a Yorkist slant in the dying Mortimer's narration to Richard Plantagenet (later Duke of York).[21] Henry VI is weak and vacillating and overburdened by piety; neither Yorkists nor Queen Margaret think him fit to be king.[22] The Yorkist claim is put so clearly that Henry admits, aside, that his own is weak[23]—"the first time," notes Kelly, "that such an admission is conjectured in the historical treatment of the period". Shakespeare is suggestively silent in Part 3 on the Yorkist Earl of Cambridge's treachery in Henry V's reign. Even loyal Exeter admits to Henry VI that Richard II could not have resigned the crown legitimately to anyone but the heir, Mortimer.[24] Edward (later IV) tells his father York that his oath to Henry was invalid because Henry had no authority to act as magistrate.
As forLancastrian bias, York is presented as unrighteous and hypocritical in2 Henry VI,[25] and while Part 2 ends with Yorkist victories and the capture of Henry, Henry still appears "the upholder of right in the play".[26] InRichard III in the long exchange between Clarence and the assassins we learn that not only Clarence but also implicitly the murderers and Edward IV himself consider Henry VI to have been their lawful sovereign. The Duchess of York's lament that her family "make war upon themselves, brother to brother, blood to blood, self against self"[27] derives from Vergil and Hall's judgment that the York brothers paid the penalty for murdering King Henry and Prince Edward. In the later tetralogy Shakespeare clearly inclines towards the Lancaster myth. He makes no mention of Edmund Mortimer, Richard's heir, inRichard II, an omission which strengthens the Lancastrian claim. The plan inHenry IV to divide the kingdom in three undermines Mortimer's credibility. The omission of Mortimer fromHenry V was again quite deliberate: Shakespeare's Henry V has no doubt about his own claim.[28] Rebellion is presented as unlawful and wasteful in the second tetralogy: as Blunt says to Hotspur, "out of limit and true rule / You stand against anointed majesty".[29]
Shakespeare's retrospective verdict, however, on the reign of Henry VI, given in the epilogue toHenry V, is politically neutral: "so many had the managing" of the state that "they lost France and made his England bleed".[30] In short, though Shakespeare "often accepts the moral portraitures of the chronicles which were originally produced by political bias, and has his characters commit or confess to crimes which their enemies falsely accused them of" (Richard III being perhaps a case in point),[31] his distribution of the moral and spiritual judgements of the chronicles to various spokesmen creates, Kelly believes, a more impartial presentation of history.
John F. Danby inShakespeare’s Doctrine of Nature (1949) examines the response of Shakespeare's history plays (in the widest sense) to the vexed question: 'When is it right to rebel?’, and concludes that Shakespeare's thought ran through three stages: (1) In theWars of the Roses plays,Henry VI toRichard III, Shakespeare shows a new thrustful godlessness attacking the pious medieval structure represented by Henry VI. He implies that rebellion against a legitimate and pious king is wrong, and that only a monster such as Richard of Gloucester would have attempted it. (2) InKing John and theRichard II toHenry V cycle, Shakespeare comes to terms with the Machiavellianism of the times as he saw them under Elizabeth. In these plays he adopts the official Tudor ideology, by which rebellion, even against a wrongful usurper, is never justifiable. (3) FromJulius Caesar onwards, Shakespeare justifiestyrannicide, but in order to do so moves away from English history to the camouflage of Roman, Danish, Scottish or Ancient British history.
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Danby argues that Shakespeare's study of the Machiavel is key to his study of history. His Richard III, Faulconbridge inKing John,Hal andFalstaff are all Machiavels, characterised in varying degrees of frankness by the pursuit of "Commodity" (i.e. advantage, profit, expediency).[32][33] Shakespeare at this point in his career pretends that the Hal-type Machiavellian prince is admirable and the society he represents historically inevitable.Hotspur and Hal are joint heirs, one medieval, the other modern, of a split Faulconbridge. Danby argues, however, that when Hal rejects Falstaff he is not reforming, as is the common view,[34] but merely turning from one social level to another, from Appetite to Authority, both of which are equally part of the corrupt society of the time. Of the two, Danby argues, Falstaff is the preferable, being, in every sense, the bigger man.[35] InJulius Caesar there is a similar conflict between rival Machiavels: the noble Brutus is a dupe of his Machiavellian associates, while Antony's victorious "order", like Hal's, is a negative thing. InHamlet king-killing becomes a matter of private rather than public morality—the individual's struggles with his own conscience and fallibility take centre stage. Hamlet, like Edgar inKing Lear later, has to become a "machiavel of goodness".[36] InMacbeth the interest is again public, but the public evil flows from Macbeth's primary rebellion against his own nature. "The root of the machiavelism lies in a wrong choice. Macbeth is clearly aware of the great frame of Nature he is violating."[37]
King Lear, in Danby's view, is Shakespeare's finest historicalallegory. The older medieval society, with its doting king, falls into error, and is threatened by the new Machiavellianism; it is regenerated and saved by a vision of a new order, embodied in the king's rejected daughter. By the time he reaches Edmund, Shakespeare no longer pretends that the Hal-type Machiavellian prince is admirable; and inLear he condemns the society which is thought to be historically inevitable. Against this he holds up the ideal of a transcendent community and reminds the audience of the "true needs" of a humanity to which the operations of a Commodity-driven society perpetually do violence. This "new" thing that Shakespeare discovers is embodied in Cordelia. The play thus offers an alternative to the feudal–Machiavellian polarity, an alternative foreshadowed in France's speech (I.1.245–256), in Lear and Gloucester's prayers (III.4. 28–36; IV.1.61–66), and in the figure of Cordelia. Cordelia, in the allegorical scheme, is threefold: a person, an ethical principle (love), and a community. Until that decent society is achieved, we are meant to take as role-model Edgar, the Machiavel of patience, of courage and of "ripeness". AfterKing Lear Shakespeare's view seems to be that private goodness can be permanent only in a decent society.[38]
Chronicle plays—history-plays based on the chronicles ofPolydore Vergil,Edward Hall,Raphael Holinshed and others—enjoyed great popularity from the late 1580s to c. 1606. By the early 1590s they were more numerous and more popular than plays of any other kind.[39]John Bale'smorality playKynge Johan [:King John], c. 1547, is sometimes considered a forerunner of the genre.King John was of interest to 16th century audiences because he had opposed the Pope; two further plays were written about him in the late 16th century, one of them Shakespeare'sLife and Death of King John. Patriotic feeling at the time of theSpanish Armada contributed to the appeal of chronicle plays on theHundred Years' War, notably Shakespeare'sHenry VI trilogy, while unease over the succession at the close ofElizabeth's reign made plays based on earlier dynastic struggles from the reign ofRichard II to theWars of the Roses topical. Plays about the deposing and killing of kings, or about civil dissension, met with much interest in the 1590s, while plays dramatising supposedly factual episodes from the past, advertised as "true history" (though the dramatist might know otherwise), drew larger audiences than plays with imagined plots.[40]
The chronicle play, however, always came under close scrutiny by the Elizabethan and Jacobean authorities. Playwrights were banned from touching "matters of divinity or state",[41] a ban that remained in force throughout the period, theMaster of Revels acting as licenser.[42][43] The deposition scene inRichard II (IV.i.154–318), for example, almost certainly part of the play as it was originally written,[44][42][45] was omitted from the early quartos (1597, 1598, 1608) and presumably performances, on grounds of prudence, and not fully reinstated till theFirst Folio. The chronicle play, as a result, tended ultimately to endorse the principles of 'Degree', order, and legitimate royal prerogative, and so was valued by the authorities for its didactic effect.[46][47][48] Some have suggested that history plays were quietly subsidised by the state, for propaganda purposes.[49] The annual grant of a thousand pounds by the Queen to theEarl of Oxford from 1586 was, it has been argued, "meant to assist him as theatrical entrepreneur for the Court, in such a way that it would not become known that the Queen was offering substantial backing to the acting companies".[50][51] Oxford was to support plays "which would educate the English people ... in their country's history, in appreciation of its greatness, and of their own stake in its welfare".[49] Whether coincidence or not, a spate of history plays followed the authorization of the annuity.[50]B. M. Ward pointed out (1928) that the elaborated, unhistorical and flattering role assigned to an earlier Earl of Oxford,the 11th, inThe Famous Victories of Henry V (c. 1587), was designed as an oblique compliment to a contemporary financial backer of chronicle plays.[52] By contrast, a less heroic ancestor of Oxford's,Robert de Vere, the 9th earl, who deserted at theBattle of Radcot Bridge, is left out ofThomas of Woodstock, which deals with the first part of Richard II's reign, though he was one of the king's early circle of favourites and a contemporary ofRobert Tresilian, the play's villain.[53]
The early chronicle plays such asThe Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth were, like the chronicles themselves, loosely structured, haphazard, episodic; battles and pageantry, spirits, dreams and curses, added to their appeal. The scholar H. B. Charlton gave some idea of their shortcomings when he spoke of "the wooden patriotism ofThe Famous Victories, the crude and vulgarLife and Death of Jack Straw, the flatness ofThe Troublesome Reign of King John, and the clumsy and libellousEdward I ".[54] Under the influence ofMarlowe'sTamburlaine, however, c. 1587, with its lofty poetry and its focus on a single unifying figure, of Shakespeare'sContentionplays, c. 1589–90, and of the machiavels ofrevenge tragedy, chronicle-plays rapidly became more sophisticated in characterisation, structure, and style. Marlowe himself turned to English history as a result of the success of Shakespeare'sContention.[55][56] InEdward II, c. 1591, he moved from the rhetoric and spectacle ofTamburlaine to "the interplay of human character",[57] showing how chronicle material could be compressed and rearranged, and bare hints turned to dramatic effect.[58][59]
| "There was by that time" [the 1590s] "a national historical drama, embodying the profoundest sentiments by which the English people were collectively inspired—pride in a great past, exultation in a great present, confidence in a great future. Such a drama could develop only when certain conditions had been fulfilled—when the people, nationalized, homogeneous, feeling and acting pretty much as one, had become capable of taking a deep and active interest in its own past; when it had become awakened to a sense of its own greatness; when there had come into being a dramatic form by which historical material could be presented in such a way as to reveal those aspects of which the public felt most deeply the inspiration... This homogeneity did not arise out of identity of economic conditions, of political belief, or of religious creed, but was the product of the common participation, individually and various as it might be, in those large and generous emotions. These, for a brief glorious moment, were shared by Catholic and Puritan, courtier and citizen, master and man. And so we can speak of a national unanimity of thought and action, and of a national historical drama." |
| ― W. D. Briggs,Marlowe's 'Edward II' (1914)[60] |
Shakespeare then took the genre further, bringing deeper insights to bear on the nature of politics, kingship, war and society. He also brought noble poetry to the genre and a deep knowledge of human character.[61] In particular, he took a greater interest than Marlowe in women in history, and portrayed them with more subtlety.[62] In interpreting events in terms of character, more than in terms of Providence or Fortune, or of mechanical social forces, Shakespeare could be said to have had a "philosophy of history".[63] With his genius for comedy he worked up in a comic vein chronicle material such asCade's revolt and the youth ofPrince Hal; with his genius for invention, he largely created vital figures like Fauconbridge (ifThe Troublesome Reign was his) and Falstaff.[64] His chronicle plays, taken together in historical order, have been described as constituting a "great national epic".[65] Argument for possible Shakespearean authorship or part-authorship ofEdward III andThomas of Woodstock[66] has in recent years sometimes led to the inclusion of these plays in the Shakespeare cycle.[67]
Uncertainty about composition-dates and authorship of the early chronicle plays makes it difficult to attribute influence or give credit for initiating the genre. Some critics believe that Shakespeare has a fair claim to have been the innovator. In 1944E. M. W. Tillyard argued thatThe Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth, c. 1586–87, could have been a work of Shakespeare's apprenticeship,[68] a claim developed by Seymour Pitcher in 1961. Pitcher argued that annotations to a copyEdward Hall'sUnion of the Two Noble and Illustre Families of Lancastre and Yorke that was discovered in 1940 (the volume is now in the British Library) were probably written by Shakespeare and that these are very close to passages in the play.[69][70] Again,W. J. Courthope (1905),[71] E. B. Everitt (1965) andEric Sams (1995) argued thatThe Troublesome Reign of King John, c. 1588–89, was Shakespeare's early version of the play later rewritten asThe Life and Death of King John (the Second Quarto, 1611, had attributedThe Troublesome Reign to "W.Sh.").[72][73] Sams calledThe Troublesome Reign "the first modern history play".[74] Everitt and Sams also believed that two early chronicle plays based on Holinshed and dramatising 11th century English history,Edmund Ironside, or War Hath Made All Friends, written c. 1588–89, and its lost sequelHardicanute, performed in the 1590s, were by Shakespeare.[75] A rival claimant to be the first English chronicle play isThe True Tragedie of Richard the Third, of unknown authorship from the same period. In practice, however, playwrights were both 'influencers' and influenced: Shakespeare's twoContention plays (1589–90), influenced by Marlowe'sTamburlaine (1587), in turn influenced Marlowe'sEdward II, which itself influenced Shakespeare'sRichard II.[76][77]
Of later chronicle plays,T. S. Eliot consideredFord'sChronicle History of Perkin Warbeck "unquestionably [his] highest achievement" and "one of the very best historical plays outside of the works of Shakespeare in the whole of Elizabethan and Jacobean drama."[78] Chronicle plays based on the history of other countries were also written during this period, among them Marlowe'sThe Massacre at Paris,Chapman'sCharles, Duke of Biron,Webster's lostGuise, and Shakespeare'sMacbeth. In some of the chronicle-based plays, as the various contemporary title-pages show, the genres of 'chronicle history' and 'tragedy' overlap.
Several causes led to the decline of the chronicle play in the early 17th century: a degree of satiety (many more chronicle plays were produced than the surviving ones listed below); a growing awareness of the unreliability of the genre as history;[79] the vogue for 'Italianate' subject-matter (Italian, Spanish or French plots); the vogue for satirical drama of contemporary life ('city comedy'); the movement among leading dramatists, including Shakespeare, away from populism and towards more sophisticated court-centred tastes; the decline in national homogeneity with the coming of the Stuarts, and in the 'national spirit', that ended incivil war and the closing of the theatres (1642).[80] Some of these factors are touched on by Ford in his Prologue toPerkin Warbeck (c. 1630), a defence of the chronicle play.
The above tables include both the Quarto and the Folio versions ofHenry V andHenry VI Parts 2 and 3, because the Quartos may preserve early versions of these three plays (as opposed to 'corrupted' texts).[93] They exclude chronicle-type playsnow lost, likeHardicanute, the probable sequel toEdmund Ironside, and plays based onlegend, such as the anonymousTrue Chronicle History of King Leir and his three daughters, c. 1587,[94] andAnthony Munday's two plays on Robin Hood,The Downfall of Robert Earl of Huntington andThe Death of Robert Earl of Huntington.
Late 16th and early 17th century 'Roman history' plays—English plays based on episodes inVirgil,Livy,Tacitus,Sallust, andPlutarch—were, to varying degrees, successful on stage from the late 1580s to the 1630s. Their appeal lay partly in their exotic spectacle, partly in their unfamiliar plots, partly in the way they could explore topical themes safely detached from an English context. InAppius and Virginia (c. 1626), for example,John Webster added a non-historical episode (the only one in the play) about the starvation of Roman troops in the field by the neglect of the home authorities, to express his rage at the abandonment and death by starvation of the English army in theLow Countries in 1624–25.[95] Dangerous themes such as rebellion and tyrannicide, ancient freedoms versus authoritarian rule, civic duty versus private ambition, could be treated more safely through Roman history, as Shakespeare treated them inJulius Caesar.[96] Character and moral values (especially 'Roman values') could be explored outside an inhibiting Christian framework.
Shakespeare'sJulius Caesar and his pseudo-historicalTitus Andronicus were among the more successful and influential of Roman history plays.[97][98][99][58] Among the less successful wasJonson'sSejanus His Fall, the 1604 performance of which at theGlobe was "hissed off the stage".[100] Jonson, misunderstanding the genre, had "confined himself to the dramatization of recorded fact, and refused to introduce anything for which he did not have historical warrant", thus failing to construct a satisfactory plot.[101] According toPark Honan, Shakespeare's own later Roman work,Antony and Cleopatra andCoriolanus, carefully avoided "Sejanus's clotted style, lack of irony, and grinding moral emphasis".[102]
| Period | Play | Playwright(s) | Date(s) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rome's origins | The Tragedie of Dido, Queene of Carthage | Marlowe andNashe | written c. 1587–88,[103] revised 1591–92 (?)[104] |
| The Rape of Lucrece, a true Roman Tragedy | Thomas Heywood | acted 1638 | |
| 5th century BC | The Tragedie of Coriolanus | Shakespeare | written c. 1608–09, published 1623 |
| 450 BC, Decemvirate ofAppius Claudius Crassus | Appius and Virginia | John Webster (and [?]Thomas Heywood) | written c. 1626[105] |
| 63–62 BC, Consulship ofCicero | Catiline His Conspiracy | Ben Jonson | acted and published 1611 |
| 48–47 BC | Caesar and Pompey | George Chapman | written c. 1612–13,[106] published 1631 |
| 48–42 BC | The Tragedie of Caesar and Pompey. Or, Caesar's Revenge | anon. (Trinity College, Oxford origin [?])[107] | written c. 1594, published 1606 |
| Pompey the Great, his Fair Cornelia | Thomas Kyd's trans. ofCornélie (1574) byRobert Garnier | translated c. 1593 | |
| The Tragedie of Julius Caesar | Sir William Alexander | published 1604 | |
| 44 BC | The Tragedie of Julius Caesar | Shakespeare | written c. 1599, performed 1599, published 1623 |
| 41–30 BC,Second Triumvirate | The Tragedie of Anthonie, and Cleopatra | Shakespeare | written c. 1606–07; published 1623 |
| 30 AD, reign ofTiberius | Sejanus His Fall. A Tragedie | Ben Jonson | written c. 1603, revised c. 1604, published 1605 |
| 90–96 AD, reign ofDomitian | The Roman Actor. A tragedie | Philip Massinger | written c. 1626, published 1629 |
| Play | Playwright(s) | Date(s) |
|---|---|---|
| The Tragedie of Dido, Queene of Carthage | Marlowe andNashe | written c. 1587–88,[103] revised 1591–92[104] |
| Pompey the Great, his Fair Cornelia | Thomas Kyd's trans. ofCornélie (1574) byRobert Garnier | translated c. 1593 |
| The Tragedie of Caesar and Pompey. Or, Caesar's Revenge | anon. (Trinity College, Oxford origin [?])[108] | written c. 1594, published 1606 |
| The Tragedie of Julius Caesar | Shakespeare | written c. 1599, performed 1599, published 1623 |
| Sejanus His Fall. A Tragedie | Ben Jonson | written c. 1603, revised c. 1604, published 1605 |
| The Tragedie of Julius Caesar | Sir William Alexander | published 1604 |
| The Tragedie of Anthonie, and Cleopatra | Shakespeare | written c. 1606–07; published 1623 |
| The Tragedie of Coriolanus | Shakespeare | written c. 1608–09, published 1623 |
| Catiline His Conspiracy | Ben Jonson | acted and published 1611 |
| Caesar and Pompey | George Chapman | written c. 1612–13,[106] published 1631 |
| Appius and Virginia | John Webster (and [?]Thomas Heywood) | written c. 1626[105] |
| The Roman Actor. A tragedie | Philip Massinger | written c. 1626, published 1629 |
| The Rape of Lucrece, A True Roman tragedy | Thomas Heywood | acted 1638 |
"The Wars of the Roses" is a phrase used to describe the civil wars in England between the Lancastrian and Yorkist dynasties. Some of the events of these wars were dramatised by Shakespeare in the history playsRichard II,Henry IV, Part 1,Henry IV, Part 2,Henry V,Henry VI, Part 1,Henry VI, Part 2,Henry VI, Part 3, andRichard III. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries there have been numerous stage performances, including:
The tetralogies have been filmed for television five times, twice as the entire cycle:
Many of the plays have also been filmed stand-alone, outside of the cycle at large. Famous examples includeHenry V (1944), directed by and starringLaurence Olivier, andHenry V (1989), directed by and starringKenneth Branagh;Richard III (1955), directed by and starring Olivier, andRichard III (1995), directed byRichard Loncraine and starringIan McKellen; andChimes at Midnight (1965) (also known asFalstaff), directed by and starringOrson Welles, combiningHenry IV, Part I andPart II, with some scenes fromHenry V.
