Shakespeare’s History Plays: 1952–1983

Summary

When Harold Jenkins wrote his survey of criticism of the English history plays from 1900 to 1951 for Shakespeare Survey 6 (Cambridge, 1953) two critical approaches were dominant: firstly the reading of them in the light of the historical thesis which they were seen to present and which was particularly associated with E. M. W. Tillyard's Shakespeare's English History Plays (1944), and secondly close analysis of their style and imagery. It might be useful first to consider how these two modes of interpretation have developed in the period presently under review.

THE OVERALL PATTERN

The influence of Tillyard's thesis can be seen in the amount of reference to it in later work. Its attraction was that it provided the English histories with an intellectual dimension that they had previously lacked. Instead of being seen as immature and formless, perhaps the result of collaboration and revision by different hands, they were given the weight of a philosophical and political thesis. The interpretation of them in the light of the 'Tudor myth', reading English history from Richard II to Henry VIII as the working-out of a process of punishment and expiation for the deposition and murder of Richard II, God's judgement falling particularly on the house of Lancaster and more generally on the nation, provided the plays with coherence and dignity. An extract from a contemporary review of Tillyard's book illustrates in a small way how the thesis brought new significance to the plays: 'that dull old stick, Alexander Iden, becomes a steadying symbol of degree and of duty done in the allotted state of life'.