History Commons^™

Figure, Image, And The Shape Of Time In Shakespeare's History Plays, Susan Walker

Inquiry: The University of Arkansas Undergraduate Research Journal

Shakespeare began his career as a dramatist by writing the first of a series of plays remarking upon English history from the Middle Ages through the reign of Henry VIII. Most notable of this historic chronicle are the eight plays, or two tetralogies, that dramatize the tumultuous period of civil conflict between 1399 and 1485. Some critics of Shakespeare's tetralogies have argued Shakespeare's intent to produce a single, unified, and providentially-ordered chronicle in which the deposition of Richard II may be viewed as the nascent event for the civil wars that culminated in Tudor accession to the crown. Nevertheless, more …