Shakespeare's Serial History Plays

A re-reading of the two sequences of Shakespeare's English history plays.

Nicholas Grene (Author)

9780521045636, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 3 December 2007

300 pages, 15 b/w illus.
21.6 x 15.2 x 1.8 cm, 0.501 kg

"The book will deservedly find a wide audience across the English/Drama subject area, offering cogent textual and performance criticism." New Theatre Quarterly

Shakespeare's Serial History Plays provides a re-reading of the two sequences of English history plays, Henry VI-Richard III and Richard II-Henry V. Reconsidering the chronicle sources and the staging practices of Shakespeare's time, Grene argues that the history plays were originally designed for serial performance. He charts the cultural and theatrical conditions that led to serial productions of the histories, in Europe as well as in the English-speaking world, and looks at their original creation in the 1590s and at modern productions or adaptations, from famous stagings such as the Royal Shakespeare Company's 1960s Wars of the Roses through to the present day. Grene focuses on the issues raised by the plays' seriality: the imagination of war, the emergence of character, and the uses of prophecies and curses through the first four; techniques of retrospection, hybrid dramatic forms, and questions of irony and agency in the second.

List of illustrations
Acknowledgements
Chronology of major serial productions/adaptations
Note on the texts
Introduction: Part I. The Story of the Histories: 1. Serialising the chronicles
2. Staging the national epic
Part II. Henry VI-Richard III: 3. War imagined
4. The emergence of character
5. Curses and prophecies
Part III. Richard II-Henry V: 6. Looking back
7. Hybrid histories
8. Change and identity
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: plays & playwrights [DSG], Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800 [DSBD], Theatre studies [AN]