Shakespeare S Early History Plays

Recognized as one of the leading books in its field, The English History Play in the Age of Shakespeare presents the most comprehensive account available of the English historical drama from its beginning to the closing of the theatres in 1642.

Publisher Description (unedited publisher data) Shakespeare's history plays have been performed more in recent years than ever before, in Britain, North America, and in Europe. This volume provides an accessible, wide-ranging and informed introduction to Shakespeare's history and Roman plays. It is attentive throughout to the plays as they have been performed over the centuries since they were written. The first part offers accounts of the genre of the history play, of Renaissance historiography, of pageants and masques, and of women's roles, as well as comparisons with history plays in Spain and the Netherlands. Chapters in the second part look at individual plays as well as other Shakespearean texts which are closely related to the histories. The Companion offers a full bibliography, genealogical tables, and a list of principal and recurrent characters. It is a comprehensive guide for students, researchers and theatre-goers alike.

This study examines the early history plays - the first tetralogy and "King John" - as plays, not only by analyzing their theatrical dimensions but also be connecting their staging with the playhouse as a social institution and with the theatricality of Elizabethan culture in the 1590s.

Like many of his fellow playwrights, Shakespeare turned to national history for inspiration. In this study, Dominique Goy-Blanquet provides a close comparison of the Henry VI plays and Richard III with their historical and theatrical sources, demonstrating how Shakespeare was able to meet not only the ideological but also the technical problems of turning history into drama, how by cutting, carving, shaping, casting his unwieldy material into performable plays, he matured into the most influential dramatist and historian of his time. Recent criticism of Shakespeare's history plays has often consisted of fierce arguments over their ideological import and Shakespeare's position on the spectrum of current political opinions. This book, however, stems from the belief that a more constructive starting point for research is the exploration of the technical problems raised by turning heavy narratives into performable plays, rather than the political motives that could inpire a playwright's representation of national history. Illuminating and instructive, Shakespeare's Early History Plays includes not only close investigation of the verbal, poetic, and political texture of the plays, but also provides a broad overview of the wider sixteenth-century historiographical contexts of the plays, and their significance to Shakespeare's oeuvre more generally.

This carefully crafted ebook: "The Complete Histories / History Plays of William Shakespeare" is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents. The Historical Plays by William Shakespeare are 10 of Shakespeare's plays about English history and and include the outliers King John and Henry VIII as well as a continuous sequence of eight plays covering the Wars of the Roses. Shakespeare explicitly chose to include and exclude certain events to make certain (but sometimes unclear) points. Table of Contents: King John The Tragedy Of King Richard The Second King Henry IV, The First Part King Henry IV, Second Part King Henry V King Henry VI, First Part King Henry The Sixth, Second Part King Henry The Sixth, Third Part The Tragedy Of King Richard III King Henry The Eighth William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616) was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon". His extant works, including some collaborations, consist of about 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and a few other verses, the authorship of some of which is uncertain.

Shakespeare's History Plays boldly moves criticism of Shakespeare's history plays beyond anti-humanist theoretical approaches. This important intervention in the critical and theoretical discourse of Shakespeare studies summarises, evaluates and ultimately calls time on the mode of criticism that has prevailed in Shakespeare studies over the past thirty years. It heralds a new, more dynamic way of reading Shakespeare as a supremely intelligent and creative political thinker, whose history plays address and illuminate the very questions with which cultural historicists have been so preoccupied since the 1980s. In providing bold and original readings of the first and second tetralogies (Henry VI, Richard III, Richard II and Henry IV, Parts 1 & 2), the book reignites old debates and re-energises recent bids to humanise Shakespeare and to restore agency to the individual in the critical readings of his plays

The central theme of these five history plays is political, they deal with the gain and loss of power. The plays included are Richard II, Henry IV parts I and II, Henry V and Richard III. Written in the period of national fervour following the abortive Spanish Armada campaign of 1588, the plays reflect the horrors of civil war and anarchy.