In the First Folio, the plays of William Shakespeare were grouped into three categories: comedies, histories, and tragedies. This categorisation has become established, although some critics have argued for other categories such as romances and problem plays. The histories were those plays based on the lives of English kings. Therefore they can be more accurately called the "English history plays," a less common designation. Macbeth, which is based on a Scottish king, was classed as a tragedy, not a history, as were the plays that depict older historical figures such as Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra and the legendary King Lear. These latter plays, however, are often included in modern studies of Shakespeare's treatment of history.
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The source for most of the English history plays, as well as for Macbeth and King Lear, is the well known Raphael Holinshed's Chronicle of English history. The source for the Roman history plays is Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans Compared Together, in the translation made by Sir Thomas North in 1579. Shakespeare's history plays focus on only a small part of the characters' lives, and also frequently omit significant events for dramatic purposes.
Shakespeare was living in the reign of Elizabeth I, the last monarch of the house of Tudor, and his history plays are often regarded as Tudor propaganda because they show the dangers of civil war and celebrate the founders of the Tudor dynasty. In particular, Richard III depicts the last member of the rival house of York as an evil monster ("that bottled spider, that foul bunchback'd toad"), a depiction disputed by many modern historians, while portraying the usurper, Henry VII in glowing terms. Political bias is also clear in Henry VIII, which ends with an effusive celebration of the birth of Elizabeth. However, Shakespeare's celebration of Tudor order is less important in these plays than his presentation of the spectacular decline of the medieval world. Moreover, some of Shakespeare's histories—and notably Richard III—point out that this medieval world came to its end when opportunism and machiavelism infiltrated its politics. By nostalgically evoking the late Middle Ages, these plays described the political and social evolution that had led to the actual methods of Tudor rule, so that it is possible to consider history plays as a biased criticism of their own country.
John F. Danby in Shakespeare’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 the Wars of the Roses plays, Henry VI to Richard 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) In King John and the Richard II to Henry 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) From Julius Caesar onwards, Shakespeare justifies tyrannicide, but in order to do so moves away from English history to the camouflage of Roman, Danish, Scottish or Ancient British history.
Danby argues that Shakespeare’s study of the political machiavel is key to his study of history. Richard III, the Bastard in King John, Hal and Falstaff are all machiavels, characterised in varying degrees of frankness by the pursuit of "Commodity" (i.e. advantage, profit, expediency).[1][2] Shakespeare at this point in his career pretends that the Hal-type machiavel is admirable and the society he represents historically inevitable. Hotspur and Hal are joint heirs, one medieval, the other modern, of a split Falconbridge. Danby argues, however, that when Hal rejects Falstaff he is not reforming, as is the common view,[3] 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.[4] In Julius 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. In Hamlet 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 in King Lear later, has to become a “machiavel of goodness”[5] In Macbeth 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.”[6]
King Lear, in Danby's view, is Shakespeare’s finest historical allegory. 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 machiavel is admirable; and in Lear he condemns the society we think historically inevitable. Against this he holds up the ideal of a transcendent community and reminds us 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". After King Lear Shakespeare’s view seems to be that private goodness can be permanent only in a decent society.[7]
The plays are listed here according to chronological order of setting, King John being historically the earliest king on the list to be treated, and Henry VIII being the nearest to Shakespeare's age. This list does not reflect the order of the plays' composition. For the purpose of clarity this list omits the full or proper titles of the plays. Shakespeare's one Scottish history, Macbeth, set in the mid-11th century during the reigns of Duncan I of Scotland and Edward the Confessor, pre-dates the English histories.
"The War(s) 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 plays Richard II; Henry IV, Part 1; Henry IV, Part 2; Henry V; Henry VI, Part 1; Henry VI, Part 2; Henry VI, Part 3; and Richard III. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries there have been numerous stage performances including:
The tetralogies have been filmed for television four times, twice as the entire cycle twice times:
Many of the plays have also been filmed stand-alone, outside of the cycle at large. Famous examples include Henry V, directed and starring both Laurence Olivier and Kenneth Branagh, Richard III by Olivier and Richard Loncraine (starring Ian McKellen) and Henry IV, Part I and Part II combined into Chimes at Midnight (with some scenes from Henry V, also known as Falstaff) directed by and starring Orson Welles.
The plays are listed here according to chronological order of setting. This list does not reflect the order of the plays' composition. For the purpose of clarity this list omits the full or proper titles of the plays.
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