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Concept
Shakespearean history
Summary
In the First Folio, the plays of William Shakespeare were grouped into three categories: comedies, histories, and tragedies. The histories—along with those of contemporary Renaissance playwrights—help define the genre of history plays. The Shakespearean histories are biographies of English kings of the previous four centuries and include the standalones King John, Edward III and Henry VIII as well as a continuous sequence of eight plays. These last are considered to have been composed in two cycles. The so-called first tetralogy, apparently written in the early 1590s, covers the Wars of the Roses saga and includes Henry VI, Parts I, II & III and Richard III. The second tetralogy, finished in 1599 and including Richard II, Henry IV, Parts I & II and Henry V, is frequently called the Henriad after its protagonist Prince Hal, the future Henry V.
The folio's classifications are not unproblematic. Besides proposing other categories such as romances and problem plays, many modern studies treat the histories together with those tragedies that feature historical characters. These include Macbeth, set in the mid-11th century during the reigns of Duncan I of Scotland and Edward the Confessor and the legendary King Lear and also the Roman plays Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, and Antony and Cleopatra.
As they are in the First Folio, the plays are listed here in the sequence of their action, rather than the order of the plays' composition. Short forms of the full titles are used.
King John
Edward III
Richard II
Henry IV, Part 1
Henry IV, Part 2
Henry V
Henry VI, Part 1
Henry VI, Part 2
Henry VI, Part 3
Richard III
Henry VIII
As noted above, the First Folio groups these with the tragedies.
Coriolanus
Julius Caesar
Antony and Cleopatra
Set in ancient Rome, Titus Andronicus dramatises a fictional story and is therefore excluded as a Roman history.
As with the Roman plays, the First Folio groups these with the tragedies. Although they are connected with regional royal biography, and based on similar sources, they are usually not considered part of Shakespeare's English histories.
Official source
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