Shakespeare’s Georgic Histories

Summary

Source studies of Shakespeare’s history plays usually focus on matters of direct influence. Most attempt to define Shakespeare’s dependence on those works that presumably inspired his own, the chronicles of Hall and Holinshed – to assess how much he borrowed from each and whether that borrowing confirms or contradicts a providential view of English history. Other studies discuss sources for his dramatic structures, such as hybrid political–morality plays, or for his rhetorical configurations. Seldom do such studies account for indirect or ‘deep’ sources – works that may have influenced Shakespeare’s conception of history more suggestively because less consciously recalled. In this essay I shall propose a deep source for the agricultural references in the history plays. These references are often dismissed as conventional for the time, stock metaphors for good and bad government, probably scriptural in origin, and of limited suggestive power. A closer examination of them and their origins, however, may reveal Shakespeare’s darker purpose.