The English History Play in the Age of Shakespeare

My cultural buddy, DT, is always telling me that to fully appreciate Shakespeare, I need to study his work in context. Of course by context, DT means his opinion, but even considering the source the idea still has merit. For example, in the last two books, I have read about Shakespeare there has been several references to the idea that much of Shakespeare's early work was in response to the work of Christopher Marlowe (pictured above right). Shakespeare's need to respond to Marlowe ended when Marlowe was killed in a tavern brawl - that's the kind of story that would appeal to DT.

In an effort to work on the whole context issue, I just finished reading Irving Ribner's book - "The English History Play in the Age of Shakespeare." While written a long time ago, I found it very valuable in terms of understanding the whole genre of the the history play. Among other things the book helped me to understand how the history play evolved. I think there is a tendency to think of many things as just starting one day - that someone gets a brainstorm and just decides to start writing plays about English history or to invent baseball -things like that. My guess is that in reality that seldom happens, that almost everything evolves from something else - why, for example, would anyone believe that one person, like Abner Doubleday would one day just invent baseball. It is much more reasonable to believe that it evolved by people making adjustments with what they had to work with, in that case other bat and ball games.

In the case of the history play, Ribner shows how it is rooted in the different kinds of plays that preceded it such as morality plays or chronicle plays. Then the playwrights of the Elizabethan age took those forms and adapted them to meet their own needs and, one suspects, the demands of both the public and patrons. The plays of that time, or any time for that matter, were also influenced by the beliefs and norms of that time. For example, a primary purpose of history for the Elizabethans was to teach, especially to teach lessons relevant to the current time. This was a higher value than historical accuracy so the liberties that Shakespeare and others took with English history were completely reasonable if it was done to help teach an important lesson.

Reading this book is also leading me to think that my basic idea for a book about the history plays would probably not work. My thought had been a book looking at the plays in regnal order to try to analyze what Shakespeare believed about kingship or, in other words, leadership. While Ribner's book has another purpose, he also says much of what I was thinking and I am sure there are others who have done the same. Given the centuries of Shakespeare criticism, it is unlikely that I am going to come up with something new especially without the benefit of a graduate education.

While any such book was not imminent, I need to do some more thinking about this. One question is whether just because you are interested in something you need to write a book about it. Or perhaps the book needs to be different - less emphasis on academic scholarship and instead writing about the importance of these plays to me as sort of a combination memoir and book promoting their interest to others. In going through some of Paul's stuff from a college theater trip to England, I found the program from "Henry IV, Part I" from an RSC production in 2000. A lot of emphasis in the program is placed on the father and son aspect - I have written before about how that alone would make the play a good introduction to Shakespeare for high school students, especially in all male private schools.

As I said, nothing was imminent here so a change in direction is not necessarily a bad thing. I will continue to read about Shakespeare, his history plays as well as going to see them. In the latter regard I have pretty much decided to take a trip to the Blackfriars Theater in Staunton, Virginia this fall for a production of "Henry IV, Part I," possibly in conjunction with a visit to Harper's Ferry. In addition I plan to start learning more about Christopher Marlowe and his approach to the history plays as part of getting even a better sense of context.