Masaryk University Faculty of Arts

Department of English and American Studies

English Language and Literature

Bc. Kristýna Obermajerová

The Elizabethan and Jacobean History Play: Genre Revisited Master’s Diploma Thesis

Supervisor: doc. Mgr. Pavel Drábek, Ph.D.

2011

I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.

…………………………………………….. Bc. Kristýna Obermajerová

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Acknowledgement: I would like to thank my supervisor, doc. Mgr. Pavel Drábek, Ph.D, for his valuable comments and suggestions during the writing of the thesis. 3

1 INRODUCTION ...... 5

2 THE DEFINITION OF THE HISTORY GENRE ...... 8

3 THE SOURCES OF THE HISTORY PLAY ...... 17

3.1 The impact of other dramatic genres on the history play ...... 17 3.2 The impact of rhetoric on the history play ...... 24 4 THE DEVELOPMENT AND UTILIZATION OF THE HISTORY PLAY ...... 26

4.1 The rise and fall of the history play ...... 26 4.2 The utilization of the history play for propaganda ...... 31 5 THE CENSORSHIP OF THE HISTORY PLAY ...... 34

5.1 The censorship of the history play under Elizabeth I ...... 34 5.2 The censorship of the history play under James I ...... 41 6 HISTORIOGRAPHY ...... 44

6.1 Historiography in the Renaissance ...... 45 6.2 Playwrights‘ use of the sources ...... 49 7 PRACTICAL PART ...... 56

7.1 The Scottish History of James the Fourth ...... 56 7.2 The Tragedy of Richard III ...... 63 7.3 Perkin Warbeck ...... 73 8 COLCLUSION ...... 81

9 BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 85

10 RÉSUMÉ ...... 90

10.1 Résumé ...... 90 10.2 Resumé ...... 90

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1 INRODUCTION

The history play was one of the three basic dramatic genres in the Elizabethan and Jacobean era. Nevertheless, in contrast to the other two basic dramatic genres, comedy and tragedy, the history play has always been seen as problematic to define because of the wide diversity of plays it should encompass. Even though, there were many attempts to define this genre, so far there has been no definition that would be generally accepted. Moreover, the problem with this genre is that not even its boundaries are clearly set and therefore there are many plays which some scholars classify as history plays and others as other genres. The aim of this thesis will be to propose a new definition, or rather characterization, which would clearly fix the boundaries of the genre but which would at the same time take into consideration the variability and development of the genre.

This work will be divided into two general parts. The first part will be more theoretical as it will deal with definitions, origins and the development of the genre and with the external factors which contributed to the shaping of the genre. The second part will be much more practical as it will present case analyses of three plays which are in some ways classified as a history play and as it will demonstrate whether the suggested characterization of the genre is applicable practically.

This introduction is followed by a chapter which inquires into what is generally understood by the term history play and it will illustrate how diverse the genre is, how various scholars have tried to define it and why their attempts at definitions are not always efficient. This section will also serve the purpose of comparing the history play with other dramatic genres, namely tragedy and chronicle play. Eventually, I will make my own tentative characterization of the genre of history plays based on the information

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obtained from the study of history plays. The subsequent chapter will provide a series of the most important dramatic as well as non-dramatic genres which were essential in the formation and shaping of the history play and from which the history plays largely borrowed. This chapter is especially important because the inspiration by and borrowings from these sources were so meaningful and significant that some of the features of the sources even became typical features of the history play. The next chapter, dealing with the development and utilization of the history play, will demonstrate the connectedness of the rise of nationalism with the surge of popularity of the history play and it will also deal with Tudor‘s and Stuart‘s appreciation of the importance of history plays and their endeavour to avail the genre for purposeful propaganda. The following chapter will provide a new look at the genre from the perspective of censorship. It will be very useful for the purpose of this thesis as it will explain the double allusions to the political history and the necessity of symbolic interpretation of the history play. In the last chapter of the theoretical part I will investigate how Elizabethan and Jacobean historians and playwrights handled historical facts and what was their methodology in rendering them in a dramatic form.

Information acquired from this study will be fundamental for understanding what the early modern playwrights had in their minds when writing about historical events and historical personalities.

In the following practical part, I will utilize all the information and employ it in analyzing three selected plays, which are often denoted as history plays and each of which represents a different time period of composition. The plays analysed will be:

Robert Greene‘s The Scottish History of James the Fourth (1590-91), William

Shakespeare‘s The Tragedy of Richard the Third (1592), and John Ford‘s Perkin

Warbeck (1622-25). The aim of this part is to demonstrate the practical usage of the 6

characterization of the history play as suggested by me and through the use of the data ascertained from the previous chapters it will be figured out whether these plays are legitimately classified as history plays, and if so, into what extent they represent prototypical examples of the genre. This analysis will also test practicality of utilization of the above suggested definition in recognizing the dramatic genre of a play.

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2 THE DEFINITION OF THE HISTORY GENRE

At the beginning of any discussion about history plays it is necessary to try to define the genre and mention some of its basic characteristics. Generally speaking, in formulating the definition of history plays, it is usually looked at Shakespeare‘s history plays, as they form the best-known and best-preserved series of history plays written by a single playwright. Nevertheless, there is nothing like a single and clean-cut definition of what features, characters and other characteristics are typical of the history play. It is so because history plays did not emerge suddenly out of the blue but they gradually developed from other genres and thus it could be claimed that that in some form they had been around for a very long time. Moreover, as Irving Ribner says in his The

English History Play in the Age of Shakespeare (English), ―The Elizabethans themselves have left us little of value in so far as a definition of the history play is concerned‖ (6).

While discussing the usage of the term and classification of the genre, some time should be spent on the explanation of a difference between the history play and the chronicle play. The term chronicle appeared in several titles of plays but its use was as unsystematic as the usage of the term history. For example The Chronicle Historie of

Henry the Fifth (1599) in the first quarto form 1600 bears in the title the word chronicle.

The general belief is that chronicle plays imply that what is treated in the play is English history while history plays draw mostly from Roman history (Ribner, English 5). Sen

Gupta claims that the difference is that chronicle plays are usually long and depict a long period of time and numerous events while history plays, especially Shakespeare‘s history plays, are much more similar to tragedies in the respect that they focus on a limited time span and much more attention is paid to the main hero (6). However, this rather indistinct

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division into history and chronicle plays is not generally accepted by all scholars and thus it will not be distinguished in this thesis either.

It is unascertainable when the term started to be used for the first time first in order to indicate a genre of plays, but it is clear that by 1623, when the First Folio was published, the term had been used quite frequently. The Folio includes ten

Shakespeare‘s plays classified as histories but only one of them, The Famous History of the Life of King Henry the Eight (1613), bears the denotation history in the title. It is noticeable that a significant part of the plays includes in its name the denomination life and death, such as it is the case in the history play The Life and Death of King Richard the Second (1593?), or the plays sometimes bear the denotation life or death individually, which seems to suggest that these plays work as biographies. One of the plays categorized as history plays, The Tragedy of Richard the Third, is even labelled as tragedy in the Folio. Moreover, some tragedies also contained the word history in their titles. These were for example The Famous History of Troilus and Cressida (1602) in the Folio, and The True Chronicle History of the Life and Death of King Lear and His

Three Daughters (1605) in the quartos from 1608. Even The Taming of the Shrew

(1591) was also designated as a history play (Campbell 8). The fact is that the dividing line between tragedies and histories is often almost impossible to fix. In some cases the two genres simply blur and some plays are often simply classified as both, as it is so in case of such plays as e.g. Richard II, Richard III, Julius Caesar, and Sejanus (1603)

(Ribner, English 27). Therefore, the word history in the title did not always necessarily mean that the play would or would not be thought as a history play. At that time the designation was used for almost anything and it is thus relatively useless (Ribner,

―Tudor‖ 592).

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In the Folio, however, Heminges and Condell divided a third of the plays under the category ―histories‖ and there are many theories why they chose just these. Some of them say that the plays were chosen because they contain names of English kings in their titles, others believe that they ―form a coherent generic grouping‖ or that their selecetion was ―merely dictated by convenience‖ (Dutton and Howard 185). It was definitely not because of the sources used by the playwrights since most of the tragedies and histories were derived from the same sources. Some scholars believe that the dividing line between these genres is the nationalistic sentiment. But how to explain plays like Henry

V, where the appeal is to make the English improve relations with Frenchmen, and

Richard III, where there is hardly any appeal to evoke a nationalistic sentiment in the audience. Many scholars also believe that the history play does not necessarily have to deal with purely English history. These scholars instance plays such as Greene‘s Scottish

History of James the Fourth, which deals with Scottish rather than English history but which has the term ‗history‘ in its title and, more importantly, it is often classified as being at least partly a history play.

It is not easy to make a simple definition because the genre covers so wide a range of topics, themes, styles and structures that they differ from each other not only according to its authors but in time too. One of the vaguest but at the same time most precise definitions was made by William Webbe, who said that the history play

―comprises ‗the reste of all such matters, which as indifferent between the other two

[comedy and tragedy] doo commonly occupy the pennes of Poets‘‖ (qtd. in Riggs 13).

Despite its pregnancy, this definition is simply too general and tells actually nothing at all about what was typical of the genre. H. B. Charlton believed that what was characteristic of history plays was that the main hero was not any king but the nation,

England (Campbell 12). And Gupta‘s quote could be used as a confirmation of 10

Charlton‘s theory: ―Histories are larger than comedies and tragedies; for it is not the fates of individuals but of communities and of nations that are involved‖ (Gupta 35). If

Charlton‘s statement is accepted as true, then it is understandable why no Roman plays are ranked among the history plays in the Folio. Michael Hattaway, along with other scholars, warns against underestimating the role of politics in history plays. He defies that the chief theme and intent of history plays was to summarize historical events and inform the audience about them. He maintains that history plays are in fact ―dramatic essays on the institution of kingship and on the origins, nature, and transfer of power‖

(―Drama‖ 94). William Dinsmore Briggs also tried to find a suitable definition of the genre. He believed that the main characteristic features of the history play were that, first, it drew material from chronicles, and, second, that it surveyed a limited period and that there was ―no other principle of connection than that of personality‖ (xxii). Nevertheless, there are many history plays, such as Thomas of Woodstock (1592), The Troublesome

Reign and Lamentable Death of Edward the Second (1592), or Richard II, where this is certainly not the case because these plays exhibit a ―well-knit dramatic structure and integrating forces far more important than the chronological‖ (Ribner, English 7).

Lily Campbell distinguishes the often overlapping genres of history play and tragedy by conjoining the central idea of history plays with politics and with ethics in case of tragedies (17). This distinction is, however, too narrow. It is true that politics was, if not the primary, then definitely at least one of the central issues discussed in history plays but, as such, it cannot be separated from ethics. The genre is often characterized by its tendency to be a political mirror and to reflect the situation in the country. But not even this definition seems the best possible because politics was discussed in all types of genres, no matter whether it was a comedy, tragedy, or a court masque. What seems a broader but hardly more useful characterization of the position of 11

politics in the history plays is Gupta‘s claim that what distinguishes history plays from the other two genres is their politico-ethical emphasis.

Having shown only a few instances of all the various attempts of a definition of the history play, it is clear that there has been no conclusive definition of the genre among scholars. So far the most convenient characterization of the genre was formulated by Irving Ribner in his The English History Play in the Age of Shakespeare in 1957. In his characterization he does not try to formulate a sentence-long definition but rather concentrates on the purposes of the genre. This approach makes the description of the genre not only very precise but at the same time flexible enough to embrace all the diverse plays presented in the Folio as history plays and many others under one category. Since it is a relatively novel description of the genre and because it will serve as a source for further analyses it feels useful to quote it here, despite its length.

We may summarize the purposes for which these matters were treated

under two general headings. Those stemming from classical and

humanist philosophies of history include (1) a nationalistic glorification

of England; (2) an analysis of contemporary affairs, both national and

foreign so as to make clear the virtues and the failings of contemporary

statesmen; (3) a use of past events as a guide to political behaviour in the

present; (4) a use of history as documentation for political theory; and (5)

a study of past political disaster as an aid to Stoical fortitude in the

present. Those stemming from medieval Christian philosophy of history

include: (6) illustration of the providence of God as the ruling force in

human – and primarily political – affairs, and (7) exposition of a rational

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plan in human events which must affirm the wisdom and justice of God.

(Ribner, English 24)

Even though Ribner‘s approach, consisting of trying to base the characterization of the genre on the purposes of the history play, brings a new view of how to look at genres, not even this one seems to be absolutely flawless. First of all, it seems to be too long and complicated, and it includes too many conditions to be easily applicable.

Second, some points of the definition slightly contradict his further statements in the work. To be precise, in his work Ribner writes about Sejanus as about a history play but, being a Roman play, it can hardly evoke ―a nationalistic glorification of England‖

(English 12-24). He thus does not make any difference between plays which deal with

English history and those dealing with history of a foreign country, such as the Roman plays. This, however, did make a great difference to e.g. Heminges and Condell, who did not classify any Roman play as a history play. Third, some of the points in the characterization, especially point seven, are not relevant solely to the genre of history play but they could be called characteristic features of all genres written in that period, as it will be shown later in this work. And last, most importantly, Ribner obviously does not take into consideration such situations when a play which fulfills all the criteria of the purposes of the play includes for example some anachronism or when a supernatural element is present in the play or when the play appears to fulfill purposes typical of, e.g. a comedy.

Becasuse of all the above mentioned shortcomings of the existing definitions a new and different approach to the genre of history plays will be devised. The new characterization will draw significantly from Ribner‘s approach but it should be much

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shorter, simpler and it should be able to at least roughly suggest a new approach to seeing the boundaries between dramatic genres.

This theory should suggest a new approach to classifying dramatic genres and one of its basic criteria which it should meet is explaining Heminges and Condell‘s selection of plays which they classified as history plays. The basic premise of this theory is that what all history plays, those in the Folio included, have in common is: first, they deal with, from the historical perspective, mostly true and factual ―political events of late medieval England‖, and second, that their purpose should be to mirror the political issues and situations of the medieval past as well as those of the Elizabethan and Jacobean era (Jowett 21). These two criteria, which will be called ‗essential features,‘ are those issues the presence or absence of which determines whether the play should or should not be classified as a history play. In addition to these two features there are many other features, purposes, and characteristics, which are typical of the history play. These are primarily all those mentioned in the aforementioned quotation of

Ribner (with the exception of point seven). But there are also other features which occur exclusively in history plays and not in any other genre. These are primarily interest in political ethics, study of the position and qualities of a king and other noblemen and limits of their theoretic as well as practical power, the relation between the ruler and his subjects, explanation of history from a long-term perspective, and demystification of politics and politicians in general. However, all these features are second rate because their absence does not mean that the play is not a history play. But on the other hand, their presence only intensifies the element of the genre of history play and thus they could be called ‗additional features‘. These ‗additional features‘ are mostly derived

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from findings of reputed scholars investigating Elizabethan and Jacobean drama1 as well as from the study of origins and influences on early modern history plays and the plays themselves. Most of these additional features will be further discussed in the following chapters of this thesis.

To explain the boundaries between individual genres, a new perspective of looking at genres is necessary. As shown above, the genre of history play is in no way clearly cut and its boundaries are extremely blurred. The same, however, works for other genres as well. History often mingles with tragedy, just as it does with comedy and morality. The suggestion of this work is not to perceive genres as strictly and clearly cut and definite categories, and individual plays either do or do not fit in the definition only because some feature is not present in the play. Instead, according to this theory genre should be envisaged as a conventionally specified scale of characteristic features. The plays in their purest and clearest form should be designated as occupying the centre of the scale and if a play ceases to include the characteristic features and starts to include features of other genres then it should be located somewhere near the boundaries. Nevertheless, the boundaries, being also conventionally determined, should exist even here. In case of the genre of history play, my claim is that the boundaries of the genre are represented by the two ‗essential features‘ mentioned above. To put it differently, the more ‗additional features‘ a play includes, the more in the centre of the scale it is located. If a play meets the basic requirement of inclusion of the two

‗essential features‘ but contains few or no ‗additional features,‘ and possibly even contains some ‗additional features‘ of some other genre, then it should be located on the boundaries of the genre. It is also possible that some play could contain ‗essential

1 Works of these scholars are used as secondary sources of the following chapters. 15

features‘ of more than one genre; then it should be accepted that it belongs to both of these genres since it must be remembered that genres are only human conventions and their form can change in time as well as depending on culture.

In this work, this concept will be used in order to show that the existence of the history genre is certainly justifiable. In the practical part of this work, three plays will be analyzed in terms of their characteristics, features and purposes and it will be ascertained whether they would fit into the scale of the genre of history play, defined like this and if so, where on the scale they would be probably placed – whether somewhere in the centre or somewhere near the boundaries.

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3 THE SOURCES OF THE HISTORY PLAY

In order to better understand the reasons of the diversity of history plays it is useful to look at the sources and origins from which the genre developed and from which it heavily borrowed throughout the whole time of its existence. Another thing why it is useful to engage in discussing the sources of the genre is that many features typical of the source genres later became typical features of the genre of the history play. Altogether, in addition to explaining the historical background of the genre this chapter will also serve as a repertory of some of the most important additional features characteristic of the history play.

3.1 The impact of other dramatic genres on the history play

History plays have deep roots especially in folk plays, in morality plays, or to be more precise in chronicle moralities, in heroic plays, de casibus plays, Senecan tragedy, biographical history plays and quite a few other non-dramatic genres such as chivalric romances and chronicles. In this chapter, the sources will be discussed in the same order.

There are too few records of the folk plays which could form an adequate sample to demonstrate the similarity of its features with the later history plays.

Nevertheless, the major links are clear anyway. The most important linkage between these two is that historical matters had been originally dramatized in the genre of folk plays. Folk plays, similarly to history plays, usually drew upon some warrior king or other great knight, such as Robin Hood, St. George of England, and they captured their achievements in the form of a dramatized dialogue (Ribner, English 30, 169). The old

Coventry folk play The Hock-Tuesday Play (1410s), which Chambers in his The

English Folk Play speaks of as ―the earliest dramatic production fulfilling, if rudely, the 17

conditions of a national historic drama‖ is an example par excellence (Ribner, English

30). In the later period folk plays also often dramatized the king or some other monarch making an entry into the town. Since the entry was usually displayed in a very spectacular way, one could find some analogy between this majestic welcoming of the sovereign with the typical impressiveness and pomp which Elizabeth tried to create about the image of the ruler.

Without the influence of the morality plays, this genre alone could never develop into a full and mature historical drama. Morality plays, supplied the historical theme with a new ―didactic, philosophical and political scope‖ (Ribner, English 31). They brought along concerns about the questions of universal virtue, religion, obedience, sin and the practical usage of allegory and symbolism, which came in handy in the later period of the Elizabethan era (Ribner, English 32). Morality plays also contributed to the shaping of the new genre by focusing on a span of a human life of the chief protagonist instead of on a historical event. To name just a few plays that cannot disclaim their original source and inspiration in morality plays, Richard Tarlton‘s 2

Seven Deadly Sins (1585) has to be mentioned for its use of allegory and moral religious lessons, despite its not being a history play (Moseley 52; McMillin, and MacLean 93), and John Skelton‘s morality play Magnyfycence (1519), in which, as Ribner states, ―we find the first clear application of the morality play form to problems of secular politics‖

(English 32). Here, as in mant other history plays, it uses the means of allegory and allusion to a particular secular political situation although nothing else than a particular historical event is portrayed. Other plays using the means of transferring meaning are:

Sir David Lyndsay‘s excessively long play Ane Styre of the Thrie Estaites (1540) and

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John Bale‘s Kynge Johan (1538-58) 2, which is often called the very first history play

(Hoenselaars 25; Ribner, English 33). Seeing this wide range of features with which the morality play contributed to the formation of history plays, it should not be so surprising to learn that the morality play is often seen as the original genre from which the new genre arose and separated from.

It is an important issue to distinguish the moment when the morality play on a historical theme became a true history play. There are several options of what that moment could have been. It could have been the moment when the traditional themes of man‘s fall and redemption abandoned the personal level and began to focus on the

―theme of order and succession in the state (Pierce 10). It could also have been just when the morality play turned away from the abstract supernatural characters and when the authors imprinted the heroes with temper and made them thus particularized individuals and not just tableaus acting according to a predefined typology. An apt example of this transition is noticeable in the characters of England, Verity, Treason and others in John Bales‘ Kynge Johan. Or it could have been the moment when the plays took up the political perspective and started to figuratively reflect the current political issues began to appear to the current social course of events, which was mainly during the Reformation. What is most probable is that it could not have been only one single change but it must have been a combination of all these little but important changes and factors that caused the actual change and separation of the new genre. If some, at least rough, dating is needed, Bernard Spivack says that already in the 1560s there were many plays which are currently designated by as ‗the Hybrid Play‘, i.e. ―an adaptation of morality conventions to the biography of an historical or legendary character‖ (qtd. in

2 The first version of its text was written in 1538 and the second version, which complemented the first text into what it is known to us today, was written in about 1558. 19

Potter 119). One example of such plays is Sackville‘s and Norton‘s play using a pseudo- historical motive, Ferrex and Perrex, or Gorboduc (1562), which was even performed for Elizabeth I and which is described by Potter as ―(f)undamentally a political morality play in blank verse‖(115).

Another important genre which significantly influenced the genre of history plays was the heroic play. David Riggs in his Shakespeare‟s Heroical Histories holds the view that heroical histories are the actual original genre from which the later history plays evolved (2). According to Riggs, the heroical history show ―worthy and memorable‖ deeds presented through ―lively and well-spirited action‖ (14).

Many other external sources show proofs of the fact that heroic poetry and heroic drama had an important impact on early history plays. From the chronological perspective, Philip Sidney is the first to mention the importance of heroic poetry for drama. He praised heroic poetry because, according to him, it was ―not onely a kinde but the best and most accomplished kinde of Poetry. For as the image of such Worthies most inflameth the mind with desire to be worthy, and informes with counsel how to be worthy‖ (qtd. in Riggs 9). About thirteen years later, in 1592, Thomas Nashe wrote a pamphlet Pierce Penniless, His Supplication to the Devil, a biting epoch-marking satire on the society of his age, with numerous comments, which revealed a lot about the genre of history plays.

―How would it have joyed brave Talbot, the terror of the French, to think

that after he had lain two hundred years in his tomb, he should triumph

again on the stage, and have his bones new embalmed with the tears of

ten thousand spectators at least (at several times) who in the tragedian

that represents his person imagine they behold him fresh bleeding.‖

(Nash 30) 20

This excerpt shows that the fundamental storyline of a history play was based on physical strength and courage through the use of which the hero achieved his valiant actions. Much later even Ben Jonson wrote a note in his own commonplace book, where he compares, among others, the language quality of plays and playwrights in his own age, i.e. in the Jacobean or possibly even Caroline drama, with the history plays of the

―late age‖, understand Elizabethan era. Here Jonson speaks of the older plays as of ―the

Tamerlanes and Tamer-chains of the late age, which had nothing in them but the scenical strutting and furious vociferation to warrant them to the ignorant gapers‖

(Maclure 56).

But to warn against immoderate diffusion of the genres of heroic drama and history plays, a brief note should be made which will clearly separate the two genres. In

Sidney‘s Apology for Poetry it is clearly understood that ―Sidney‘s heroical poet locates the topoi of courage and magnificence in a milieu where they can be presented as ideal forms of the individual existence‖ (Riggs 24). In contrast to that, ―The humanist historian, operating in the intellectual environment of the later sixteenth century, uses them to elicit particular social phenomena from localized stretches of time‖ (Riggs 24).

The de casibus play, having inspiration in Boccaccio‘s De Casibus Virorum

Illustrium (1355-74), which is usually translated as ‗On the Fates of Famous Men‘, is usually associated with the English literary piece, Mirror for Magistrates (1559-87), a collection of poems describing tragic ends of famous people, which for example even

Shakespeare used as the chief source for his King Lear. It is said that the de casibus tradition helped to form Elizabethan tragedies. But an analogy between de casibus genre and history plays is appropriate too because in the moral stories, just as in history plays, success and loss are not so much in the hands of an individual but they are rather 21

directed by the turning of the Fortune‘s wheel. And some scholars claim that the turning of the Fortune‘s wheel was the central theme which connected all Shakespeare‘s history plays. This theory is fully developed in Paul Vincent Budra‘s book A Mirror for

Magistrates and the De Casibus Tradition, who in this book for example expresses his opinion that ―Shakespeare turned to writing history plays on the basis of the popularity of the Mirror and that he modeled his dramas on that best-selling history‖ (78).

The original genre of Senecan revenge play is actually a tragedy and as such it had a big effect mostly on the Elizabethan and Jacobean tragedies. Nevertheless, in the discussion of the origins of the heroical histories Riggs mostly refers to the classical

Roman plays as model exercises which the Elizabethan playwrights studied at school, told over and tried to imitate in the rhetoric classes (40-49). These plays were still in fashion in the sixteenth century and, according to Dominique Goy-Blanquet, the

Elizabethans even felt heirs to Romans and tried to imitate them in nearly every aspect

(67). Even teaching the arts of oratory and rhetoric at schools was inspired by Romans.

And just by means of rhetoric, the histories took over much of the heroical attributes from the Roman plays. In his book Riggs claims that ―Where modern scholarship looks for an allusive, didactic commentary on Renaissance politics and the ways of

Providence, Shakespeare‘s contemporaries were more likely to begin by expressing their enthusiasm for a visual and rhetorical display of heroic deeds‖ and he proves his statement with numerous comparisons of the description of the main characters of

Shakespeare‘s histories with the descriptions of the Roman heroes (7). In both cases the major protagonists are praised for being brave, valiant, physically strong and nearly god-like, and this his physical attractiveness combined with congenitally given high social status elevate him to a moral greatness, or in Riggs words, ―to the level of a moral spectacle‖ (9). An excellent example of this can be found in Marlowe‘s Tamburlaine 22

(1587-8), a play which is only loosely based on the life of Timur, an emperor and conqueror of West, South and Central Asia. Although it is not a proper history play, this play offers a unique demonstration of how the hero can be described in such commonplace rhetorical clichés that they create an honest liking for the hero in the audience. However, it was not only this one play but most plays in the 1580s, if such an oversimplifying division into decades will be excused, depicted rulers who were usually bold warlike protectors of their country against foreign, often Spanish, invasion

(Heinemann 173).

A.J. Hoenselaars also mentions the biographical history plays as a source of inspiration for the history play. According to him, these plays tended to focus on a non- royal persona and captured his political activity. The themes are drawn mostly from

Foxe‘s rather large book Acts and Monuments3. Hoenselaars offers only three examples of plays which could fit into this category; these are Sir Thomas More (1593), Thomas

Lord Cromwell (1602), and Sir Thomas Wyatt (1607). It is probable that plays Sir John

Oldcastle (1600) and The Famous History of Captain Thomas Stukeley (1605) would fit to this category too but for some reason he does not include them within the category.

Hoenselaars‘s characteristics of this subgenre is simply so brief that this possible source of inspiration or perhaps even a subgenre of the new history plays will not be discussed here any further.

Two other sources which affected the history play into a great extent were the non-dramatic genres of chivalric romance and chronicles. As for the former, it is hardly surprising that there is a significant similarity and cohesion of the chivalric romance and the historical drama as they both feature a knight or another highly placed nobleman

3 The original title is The Acts and Monuments of the Church: Containing the History and Sufferings of the Martyrs and it was published in 1563 and later again in 1570. 23

who is described as rich in gallantry, bravery, courage, fairness, and who comes in need and helps whoever needs. The later source, the chronicles, was so important for the development and shaping of the genre that it will be discussed separately in the chapter dealing with historiography.

3.2 The impact of rhetoric on the history play

Although being a non-dramatic art, the genre which heavily influenced the process of development of the newly arising genre and helped to shape its style was the art of rhetoric.

As a rule, professional players were educated in rhetoric even in their early forms and they were taught by reading, learning and paraphrasing classical stories written by Roman writers, historians and rhetoricians. As Riggs describes, in the classroom pupils were supposed to study works by classical historians and they had to learn by heart those passages of the texts, which usually described some great achievements of the heroes. The selected passages of the old texts were being analyzed into detail as far as the topics and style of writing were concerned and afterwards they were compared with other passages and copied in commonplace books, which later on could have been used as a great source of general and universal knowledge and as an example of exquisite language mastery of the classical style (Riggs 35-52). It was not uncommon to use these exempla as a basis for descriptions of the characters and their actions, and thus they actually became something like a list of rhetoric clichés, which could always bring about the desirable emotion among the audience, whether it be admiration, sorrow, compassion or hatred, and which could for example uplift the physical attributes of the hero into nearly divine ones. It is generally taken for granted that this method of working with text taught at school was applied in writing dramatic

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plays as well. And as it was demonstrated in the discussion of the influence of the heroic plays, this ability of using catchy rhetoric phrases which would evoke desired feelings must have been a very useful and widely-used know-how.

In the process of analyzing the classical texts and adapting them for the purpose of rhetoric, students‘ attention was focused mostly on individual passages of the texts, or rather on exemplary episodes describing some heroic moment, which formed the major scenic bases of the plot, rather than concentrating on the cohesion and coherence of the story as a whole (Riggs 40-49). It comes as no surprise that this method of working affected the form of history plays as well and that so many plays, and even the mature ones, have such an episodic character, rather than a cohesive fluently developing plot. Even Heywood in his An Apology for Actors, which dates as late as to 1612, declares that ―‗history‘ is still more a matter of individual scenes than entire plays‖ (qtd. in Riggs 14).

When one realizes that it was a common rhetoric device to study stories through the deeds of individual characters, it is understandable why so much attention is paid to action and doings of noteworthy characters and not so much on their character.

Therefore, what mattered and changed in the plays were the actions and events but not the characters‘ nature and temperament.

To sum it up, the study of rhetoric and the use of classical rhetorical clichés was so important for the development of the genre that it even redirected the attention of the playwrights writing history plays from the historicity to rhetoric. Riggs beautifully summarizes it as follows: ―The historian‘s goal, in other words, is to achieve the highest level of rhetorical ‗polish‘ and thematic cohesion, and he is free to disregard the temporal priorities that control the movement of ordinary narrative history‖ (51).

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4 THE DEVELOPMENT AND UTILIZATION OF THE HISTORY PLAY

Speaking about the rise of history plays and their emergence as a genre on the

English stage, it is necessary to mention not only the possible sources from which the genre stemmed but also the socio-political background. In this chapter it will be discussed what possibly could have given rise to the popularity of the genre and what outer forces contributed to the formation of the genre. Therefore in this chapter it will be discussed under what socio-political circumstances the new genre of history plays emerged. It will be primarily discussed whether, and if so, then into what extent the rise of popularity of histories was connected to the upswing in the nationalistic sentiment in society. What also necessarily needs to be mentioned in this chapter is the role of royal propaganda and the means of how it was distributed.

4.1 The rise and fall of the history play

Even though, as mentioned in the previous chapter, the very first history plays, such as John Bale‘s King Johan, had been actually no more than a harbinger of the new genre as they had still much more to do with morality plays than with proper mature histories as they were to be seen several decades later. Initially, thus the early history play only was a mixture of the source genres and, as shown earlier, it was difficult to distinguish it from the original genres. The actual big oncoming of the genre and its significant advancement in the development of the genre took place no earlier than in the second half of the 1580s. The actual boom in popularity of histories, however, only came a few years later, roughly about the year 1590 and the absolute mania with this genre went on for five years at most. During this five-year period at least fifteen history plays passed on either completely or only partially until these days. From 1596 on, the trend of writing history plays most likely declined as from the period between 1596 and 26

1598 only two history plays passed on from each year. The number of plays written each year gradually decreased until 1603, the year when Elizabeth died and James I ascended the throne. During James‘s reign the history plays were much rarer and after

Charles came to the throne, the genre ceased to exist (with a few exceptions).

This rapid rise and rapid fall must have been evoked by some outer factors which caused that the genre enjoyed popularity just from 1586 to the 1590s. The usual explanation of the expanse of history plays is a rise of a nationalist sentiment in

England. Such a new feeling among the people was absolutely unknown until the late

Tudor period because before that time it was common that monarchies married other monarchies from a different country or region only to vindicate and insure an alliance between two countries. The royalty all around Europe was thus so mutually linked and interwoven that any notion of nationalism was absolutely impossible.

It is believed that there were two major reasons why patriotism awoke in

England just in this period. The first reason was the Reformation of church under Henry

VIII, in which England distanced itself and actually broke away from the centralized

Roman Catholic Church, and Henry VIII became the head of the Church in England.

This gave the English some sense of uniqueness and individuality even despite the fact that in the half of the century less than half of England was Protestant in belief. On the one hand, the constant and reoccurring struggle between the Catholic and the Protestant church divided the nation in twain but at the same time it helped the country in realizing that it was independent of some other sovereign and that it was strong enough even to stand up to such a power as the Roman Catholic Church was. A substantial interest in this matter was also caused by Mary I of Scotland, who represented a threat to Elizabeth

I not only because of her attempts to usurp the English throne, which were supported by

Spain as Mary was roman Catholic, but also in the support she received from the 27

English Catholics. In this respect, Mary boosted patriotism in people and made

Elizabeth more aware of the need to evoke patriotism. The second reason why the nationalist sentiment arose just at the time was a politico-economical reason. The rise of nationalism was evoked by the new foreign policy launched by Henry VII and later on braced up by Henry VIII and Elizabeth I. Even though the course of foreign policy changed several times, some generalization about its development can be made. In comparison with the previous periods, much more attention was paid to trade, merchant expansion and to becoming an economic superpower. In this respect the major rival and enemy was Spain. The mutual antipathy became openly declared in 1585 when

Elizabeth agreed to help the Dutch Protestants in their revolt for independence against their Catholic Spanish sovereign and let them anchor in English harbours so that they could attack Spanish ships. The enmity became even more severe after Elizabeth executed Mary, Queen of Scots in 1587. As a result, the most severe friction took place in 1588 when King Philip tried to conquer England by use of his huge fleet of ships, called an Armada. At this moment Queen Elizabeth delivered one of the first and most memorable calls for nationalistic sentiment in her pre-war speech to the soldiers: ―I am come … to live or die amongst you all, to lay down for my God, and for my kingdom, and for my people, my honour and my blood even in the dust. I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of

England too‖ (qtd. in Stater 125). The rivalry and aversion of these two countries, however, did not cease only until Elizabeth died and James I ascended the throne.

Moreover, Ania Loomba, just like many other famous scholars, believes that there a third reason of the rise of patriotism toward the end of the sixteenth century. She says that ―the formation of English nationhood is interwoven with that of overseas trade and empire‖ and overseas discoveries (Loomba 153). Stephen Greenblatt held the view 28

that the rise of the nationalistic sentiments had much to do with the ―newly discovered

‗natives‘ of the New World‖ (Loomba 152). And Kim Hall eked out this claim with the opinion that Renaissance literature and art in general started to define the image of the a white English people by contrasting itself to the image of dangerous, unknown and unpredictable blackness (Loomba 152). In other words, Hall used Edward Said‘s concept of orientalism for describing the very beginning of the nationalistic sentiment and self-defining in England. Janet Clare even believes that the antagonism against immigrants and foreigners was ever-present but she accords with others in her claim that this sentiment ―reached its peak in the last decade of the century,‖ the time when most history plays were written (54).

The sudden rise in popularity of histories was evident not only on the stage but also in the non-dramatic literature. No sooner was Polydore Vergil of Urbino or any other scholar asked to write a complete history of England than under the king Henry

VII. Even though being Italian, he is considered to be an innovator of the chronicles because of his attempt to make the chronicles impartial in relation to truth, and his effort and ―desire to understand the causes of events‖ (Tillyard 34). It seems to be a too big concurrence of circumstance that the first proper original English chronicles were written about the half of the sixteenth century. To be precise it was in 1548 when

Edward Hall wrote and published his Union of the two Noble and Illustre Families of

Lancastre and Yorke, where he adverted to the new moralizing role of history with numerous nationalistic features. Moreover, it seems rather improbable that it was only by chance that Raphael Holinshed‘s Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland,

Shakespeare‘s major source for his histories and also a few tragedies, was published for

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the second time just in 15874, in the period when England was in conflict with Spain. It was also in this period, full of the feeling of jeopardy from Spain, when John Stow published his Chronicles of England (1580) and Annales of England (1592) (Kastan

168). The transition to popular drama happened actually immediately. It is more than probable that the Tudors propagated the new genre of history plays in order to warrant their war aggression and tried to evoke in people the feeling of unity and alliance. Or as

Guy-Blanquet puts it ―The Tudor thirst for respectability turned the quest of origins into a national pastime.‖ (61). As a result, nearly every favourable playwright either wrote at least one history play or incorporated its features into some of his plays. And as Tillyard proves: ―Shakespeare with his career to make would hardly have risked so much in the chronicle form without a strong demand for history‖ (55).

The popularity of the genre, however, did not last for long. It was most probably due a combination of numerous factors that history plays gradually ceased to appear on the stage after James‘s accession to the throne. First of all, the sentiment of nationalism and patriotism which was on the rise during Elizabeth‘s reign has nearly disappeared in

1603, when a Scottish king became the king of England and when he tried to ally with

Spain, the country which had been one of the greatest enemies to the English under

Elizabeth. And it has already been shown that nationalism is absolutely quintessential to the formation of history plays. It thus soon happened that histories were replaced by some other genres in which politics was discussed as well but in a slightly different way. It was primarily the genre of the Jacobean revenge tragedy, which had already come into existence in the Elizabethan era but had not been that popular as under James.

Other possible reasons might be that the fade of history plays has outlived its genre, that

4 first being published in 1578 30

the Stuart Court was not interested in English history and above all, or there were no new topics to offer to the neophilic society. What seems as much probable is the influence of the continental drama, which focused mainly on contemporary life, as well as from other genres, which were on the rise, such as satirical plays, masques, city comedy, romance, and the above mentioned revenge plays. Moreover, due to the arrival of humanism into England, it was increasingly believed that history should be treated by proper scholarly historians rather than the playwrights of popular plays for general public (Ribner, English 266-67, Keenan 100). It is necessary to throw in that it was not only history plays which underwent a material alternation. Other genres, such as

―romantic comedy, Petrarchan poetry, prose romance, and other genres as well‖ fell out of favour (Tennenhouse 73). The new political era brought along a new era on the stage.

4.2 The utilization of the history play for propaganda

The monarchs were rightfully thoroughly convinced that theatre had a great impact on people‘s minds and that it could be used to at least partially support the desired goal and evoke some definite feeling of affinity for and loyalty to the ruling class among the people. The monarchs started using the theatre as it along with the pulpits and the cheap printing became an analogy to the present-day mass media. The price of popular plays allowed even the poor to go to the theatre several times a month and to form a valid idea of what the current politics was like. Theatregoing was, I dare say, much commoner activity than today in part also because it was one of very few other possibilities how to experience some entertainment except for drinking in pubs and seeing prostitutes. The plays were not particularly expensive, the cheapest admission was one penny, and thus the London audience from all social classes could choose where to go in the afternoon (Gurr 215).

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And the monarchs even more clearly realized that the genre of history drama, dealing with the successes and failures of late English rulers, their ancestors, was on the one hand the most useful and on the other hand potentially the most dangerous to what thoughts it could evoke in people‘s minds. It was so because even though political drama was not a single distinctive genre but it was discussed across all genres such as satirical comedies, tragicomedies, religious and political allegories, political street- pageants and so on, it had much more to do with politics and political drama than comedy and tragedy (Heinemann 164-65). John William Allen even claimed that ―the chief use of history is to subvserve politics; to help us understand the meaning and the function of the state‖ (qtd. in Campbell 30).

In this respect, Tudors endeavoured not only to prevent spreading of all any unfavourable image of their house, but they even developed their own desirable interpretation of history, which is well-known as the Tudor myth. The goal of this myth was to evoke in people the feeling that the Tudors have a rightful claim to the throne and that the reign of their house would bring the final happiness and God‘s salvation to the nation, which had suffered too much under the Wars of Roses. This myth was based on two claims made by Henry VII. These were only partially based on truth, which explains the word ―myth‖ in the denotation. The first of them claimed that ―the union of the two York and Lancaster houses through his marriage with the York heiress was the providential and happy ending of an organic piece of history‖ (Tillyard 29). Henry‘s second claim was that he was of Welsh ancestry and this fact gave him the right to the throne because he was born in Wales, which was the requirement of any English, and thus also any Welsh ruler since the time of Edward I, and because he was in no way connected to the Lancastrians on the Yorkists. In order to still more support this myth of the unique and prosperous ascendance of Tudors on the throne, Henry named his first 32

son Arthur, as a reference to the Arthurian claim (Tillyard 30). This myth was founded by Henry VII but it was greatly propagated by other Tudor rulers too. Elizabeth, especially, was an expert on creating and propagating her image as the heaven-sent ruler who came to save the nation. In time this myth became a royal scheme which the kings tried to distribute in literature and drama as an ingenious purposeful propaganda.

In addition to that, there was another reason why the court devoted so much attention to the history play. The reason was that history plays commented not only on the past historic-political events but they also served ―a politico-journalistic function‖ of the contemporary political events (Ribner 15). In other words the plays took into account the knowledge that ―The past could offer political lessons to the present, and dangers from earlier times could be seen as analogous to contemporary troubles‖

(Heinemann 177). History plays used a lot of references and allusions and they simply worked as a mirror to the current politic. Moseley says that ―It is essential to grasp first the point that history plays were nothing if not topical‖ and this analogy between the monarchs of the past and the present ―was such common practice that Elizabeth herself is reputed to have stressed it in a retort to one of her counselors: ‗But I am Richard II.

Know you not that?‘‖ (Moseley 76; Goy-Blanquet 61) It was quite common that these plays offered no definite interpretation and solution to the problem tackled, but instead they ―only‖ uncovered the inviolable mystery and mystique of state and the ruler, which

Elizabeth so persistently tried to create.

Nonetheless, it is not to imagine that the analogy concerned only topical political issues because very often the plays dealt with analogy rather ―general theoretical and conceptual issues like the nature of rule, subject‘s obedience, and the way politics fits in with a given view of the universe,‖ and last but not least with the nature and character of the monarch (Moseley 78). 33

It is thus obvious that history plays could either help to improve or totally destroy the reputation and public image of a king or queen and his or her deeds. The ruler was the person who, with help of the Privy Council, decided about finance, domestic and foreign policy, about the laws and the church, and it was just him who was in charge of well-being of the country and its people. That is why ―The monarchs‘ personal character and the company he kept were thus truly matters of deep concern to the people and not merely of curiosity‖ (Heinemann 162). Moreover, before the ruler had any standing army which he could use for his defence ―The consent and approval of the ‗political nation‘ had been of a decisive importance in maintaining hierarchy and stability, given the limited powers of coercion possessed by the central state‖

(Heinemann 164). This all logically explains why the monarchs had a strong tendency to supervise the content as well as the form of history plays.

5 THE CENSORSHIP OF THE HISTORY PLAY

Even though it may seem that a discussion of censorship can say only a little about the history plays, the opposite is true. Looking at history plays through the eyes of censorship can demonstrate how much the history play used references to mirror the current political situation, what topics the royalty was responsive to, and what they, on the contrary, demanded. It can also help to disclose some of the common references to

Elizabeth and James. And land but not least, this discussion will also explain why allegory and symbolism is so often used in history plays instead of direct and clear references.

5.1 The censorship of the history play under Elizabeth I

Censorship was important for the monarch because it was, together with issuing various laws and proclamations, only and the most important way of how to limit 34

players‘ freedom and restrict and affect what was staged and what interpretations of political matters were offered to people.

Although the very first mention of the office of Master of Revels dates back to

1347, i.e. in the period of Edward‘s III rule, it was only in year 1494 when Henry VII for the first time officially recognized the office Master of Revels (Fowell 6). It is not so much surprising that his appointment was made just under Henry VII when it is realized that he was also the first ruler who laid foundations of the nationalistic sentiment among the English and who also discovered the power of propaganda. It was, however, not before Mary‘s accession to the throne when players‘ freedom was restricted for the first time and no sooner did Elizabeth ascended the throne than a licensing system was established. Seeing the mounting tension on the parts of the Mayor of London and the

City authorities, who held a similar power, and on the part of Puritan preachers and the city shopkeepers, who wished to see the stage abolished, the queen was increasingly aware of the fact that if she wanted to turn the theatre to good account for herself and for the prestige of the Court she had to step in and make it clear who is to assign the rules and rights for the players. And thus she decided to intervene in 1581 and radically extended the Master of Revels‘ range of responsibility. Until that time the Master was actually only answerable for finding and choosing suitable inoffensive plays for the queen to watch in the Court, but from that moment on his ―commission transformed from purveyor of royal entertainment to government censor‖ (Clare 45). It was just shortly after the first playhouses were being built and the players were being transformed from rogues and vagabonds into professional players (Clare 31). The

Queen must have had a good faith in Edmund Tilney, who superseded Sir Thomas

Benger and Sir Thomas Belgrave in the office only two years before, in 1579. And it seems that this trust paid off as Tilney remained in the office of Master of Revels until 35

his death in 1610, even though the records make it clear that from 1606 Buc actually replaced Tilney in the office. From this year on the Master had also the power to send to jail those players who would repeatedly contravene the prescribed obligations. In the early 1590s, when it started to be clear that the Queen was growing old and she would hardly give birth to an heir to the throne and when it was thus seen that the her succession would be very likely problematic, the censorship was much more severe than ever before (Clare 81). Still, even at this time the Common Council did not seem to be satisfied with Tilney‘s work and the Queen‘s proclamations since they found them insufficiently strict and the City authorities kept grudging over the power over theatre right up until Queen Elizabeth‘s death.

As shown above the queen supported the theatre much more than the city council wanted. In contrast to the Common Council, Edmund Tilney did not have such high requirements and it was possible to come to terms with him. Tilney did not want to cause enmity between him, or consequently between the queen, and the players, and even though his office was ex officio limiting freedom of the playing companies, he tried to be instrumental to the players and introduced them at Court more and more often, which was a highly prestigious and relatively profitable event for the players. As a result the relationship between the players and Tilney was in most cases ―a hard but a profitable collaboration‖ (Gurr 74). It was profitable for the players in terms of prestige and for Tilney as regards money5. Nevertheless, this is not to suggest that Tilney or his successors, who even increased the charge for licenses, were corruptible and that the players could perform any play if they paid enough. Some kinds of rules were given, even though they often transformed. All told, censorship was unpredictable and it seems

5 Tilney charged 7s. for licensing a play and after 1590s he charged a few pounds for licensing a up to £20 for licensing a playhouse. 36

that reasons why some play was severely censored and some was left untouched depended largely on the current context and circumstances. Nevertheless, some tendencies of what topics were usually disapproved and recommended for transformation are clear anyway.

There are two sources of how to find out what ways these ―forbidden topics‖ were. First, it were the numerous acts and patents edited by the queen, And second, it were the plays themselves which reveal a lot when compared the manuscripts before and after Tilney checked and revised them. In this part, both of these methods will be combined in order to most clearly shed light on how common and normal it was for the history play to reflect current political situation, and to explain the political background referred to in the plays.

First of all, in May 1559 Queen Elizabeth issued a proclamation, which flat and plainly permitted ―none to be played wherein either matters of religion or of the gouernance of the estate of the common weale shalbe handled or treated‖ (Potter 112)6.

Therefore no openly Catholic, puritan or atheistic plays were allowed to be staged

(Heinemann 169). This proclamation became even more apt in the second half of the

1580s, to be more specific in the years 1588 and 1589, when the so-called Marprelate

Tracts circulated illegally in England. These pamphlets were Puritan doctrines attacking the Catholic Church and the current situation of the Church of England, which awoke a vigorous response on the stage in form of a anti-Martinist ―dramatic satire composed by

Lyly, Nashe and Greene and performed by the Queen‘s Men and Paul‘s Boys‖ (Clare

6 Robert A. Potter in his book says that this proclamation was issued in 1599, which is, however, obviously wrong it must be only a misprint, because this proclamation was issued in 1559 and it was one of Elizabeth‘s first official acts, as Potter correctly mentions. 37

45) 7. According to Janet Clare, the author of „Art made tongue-tied by authority‟:

Elizabethan and Jacobean Dramatic Censorship, on the one hand ―Such plays may have succeeded in undermining the popular appeal of Puritan propaganda,‖ but on the other hand they made the government realize that ―satire, despite its effectiveness to undermine opposition, is potentially anarchic and once loosed cannot be consistently harnessed to orthodoxy and state interest‖ (46). This explains why in 1587 the Queen prohibited spreading of all seditious rumours and two years later she proclaimed that the playing companies who perform unlicensed plays may lead to extinction.

Elizabeth‘s main goal concerning religion was to avoid any possible religious revolts. And this is a cause as well as the result of why the Church under her rule had a form of an amalgamation of the contending Catholic and Protestant church. She was not in favour of radical Protestantism and at the same time she hoped that Catholicism would die out spontaneously and naturally. Her major concern was to make her realm peaceful and free of any religious conflicts. In the early years of her reign, however, she made several attempts to repress those Mystery plays, which were too apparently pro-

Catholic and in some cases she even tried to dispose of sacred drama altogether (Clare

26). Although Elizabeth was no affectionate Protestant, it was a part of her propaganda to be dramatized as a heroine of Protestantism (Heinemann 197).

As far as politics was concerned, the situation was quite similar in many respects. According Robert A. Potter, ―Overtly political drama, which had flourished amid the controversy of the Reformation struggle during the reigns of Henry, Edward, and Mary Tudor, quickly expired in the moderate environment of the Elizabethan compromise‖ (112). Nevertheless, this claim cannot be so completely true because as it

7 This affair is detailly described in Janet Clare‘s book „Art made tongue-tied by authority‟: Elizabethan and Jacobean Dramatic Censorship on pages 45-46. 38

is easily provable ―theatre was shot through with politics at every level, from political court masques at one end to parody-bishops fighting with crosiers at the other‖

(Heinemann 164-65). It is true, however, that from the time when the above mentioned proclamation was edited and Tilney‘s responsibility increased, it was no longer possible to discuss and criticise politics openly on the stage and Elizabeth even completely forbade to represent people who were still living (Hoenselaars 29). Censorship of any allegory which too obviously referred to a statesman, lord, earl, churchman or any other distinguished person who was still living or shortly dead was uncompromising. An example par excellence is Sir Thomas More (early 1590s), which was the very first play

―to demonstrate state interference with secular drama‖ (Clare 51). In this play Tilney recommended leaving out whole passages and dialogues dealing with insurrection against aliens in England. As a result, it is assumed that the play was actually never staged. Janet Clare claims that other history plays which did not avoid at least some

Tilney‘s interference were for example The Life and Death of Jack Straw (1593), 2

Henry VI (1590), 3Henry VI (1590), Thomas of Woodstock (1592), Richard II (1595) and many others (48). And thus as it was actually impossible to treat on the stage contemporary English history, the only way to refer to current political and religious situation was only through allegory and ―within the relatively safe context of far-off historical events, subtly linked to the contemporary moment by analogy‖ (Potter 112-

13). This might be one of the causes or possibly just likely to be the result of why the history plays became so fashionable under the Tudors. But the fact is that even for the historians and the playwrights of history plays it was very difficult to write a text that would be left untouched by Tilney. The difficulty of avoiding censorship stemmed primarily from the knowledge of all the hidden allegory and parallel between the past

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and the present, which was created intentionally by the playwrights of history plays.

And this allegory was not any secret even for the monarchs.

Another subject matter which was in the centre of Tilney‘s attention was foreign policy. Generally speaking, all allusion to the relations with other countries and foreigners was banned from the stage from the very same reason why the queen held down public commenting on the religious matters, i.e. not to induce any potential cause for public upheaval against the foreigners. Andrew Gurr mentions that there was just one exception to this rule and that was Thomas Middleton‘s comic satire A Game at

Chess (22). Nevertheless, references to Spain were much more common than how Gurr says and it will be demonstrated in the Practical part of this thesis too.

Elizabeth‘s persistent effort to keep the peace in her realm is apparent in one more act which she issued in 1581 and which strictly limited the freedom of what was staged. This one was ―AN ACTE against sedicious Wordes and Rumors uttered againste the Queenes moste excellent Majestie‖ and it ―made it punishable by death to circulate

‗any false sedicious and slaunderous Matter‘ which might lead to ‗the encoraging stirring or moving of any Insurreccon or Rebellion, within the Realme‖ (Clare 47).

One last subject matter which was very suspicious to the censor was ―history which rejected the traditional providential interpretation in favour of a secular analysis of political action‖ (Clare 47-48). This preference of explaining actions by means of politics to explaining it through the medium of Fortune‘s wheel was typically common for Machiavelli. Some of his works were forbidden to be printed in England because they were too topical and the Privy Council supposed that the works could inflame some public disorder in the country, which was highly undesirable.

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5.2 The censorship of the history play under James I

It is understandable that after Elizabeth‘s death and after the succession of the first Stuart king to the throne the situation with censorship changed a little. James did not bring a radical change in the attitude to drama. He was also quite supportive of theatre and immediately after his arrival in England he promoted the Chamberlain‘s

Men to the position of members of the royal household and renamed them to King‘s

Men. At the same time the Queen, Anne of Denmark, became the patron of the Children of Chapel and Prince Henry gave his patronage to the Admiral Men. Several things changed, however. In 1603 James also granted the reversion of the office of the Master of Revels to George Buc. On the one hand, on 23 June 1603 the Master of Revels was charged to license plays for print, which was an important advancement of power on the censor‘s authority. On the other hand, however, his power decreased in the same year because he was no longer in charge of licensing the above mentioned companies, which were under a direct supervision by the king (Clare 123)8. Nevertheless, this fragmentation and decentralization of censorship from the hands of one person to hands of many brought along that censorship was much more unpredictable and far less consistent in tendencies to censor particular issues than in the Elizabethan era. A few years later the king realized that this system was not working as he wanted it to and returned to Elizabeth‘s model of centralized censorship.

Naturally, James was also responsive to different allusions than his predecessor was. While Elizabeth was very particular about her image in the eyes of the population and she promoted the cult of Gloriana by all suitable means, under James‘s reign ―the protection of the sovereign‘s mystique ceased to be one of the censor‘s priorities‖ (Clare

8 It is also possible that this James‘s attitude could be explained by the fact that he was used to make direct contact with his subordinates and not to use the various offices, just as the Master of Revels was. 41

120). His method of designating some books and plays as problematic also differed from Elizabeth‘s. His choices were usually made upon his personal disapproval, not taking much into consideration the national interest. It was also not unusual to see that he intervened in and objected to some play which had already been licensed, which was in direct contrast to Elizabeth‘s slow but premeditated selections of what to censor

(Clare 120-21).

Analogous to Elizabeth James saw a potential danger in Catholicism and thus in

1606 he issued the ―Acte to restraine Abuses of Players‖ which forbade using ―‗the holy

Name of God or of Christ Jesus, or of the Holy Ghoste or of the Trinitie‘, such uses being a legacy of the Catholic drama‖ (Clare 124).

In addition to that, the censor intervened mostly in the matters on problematic relationship between the king and his realm. James‘s will to gain money from a would- be prosperous wedlock between Prince Charles and the Spanish Infanta, Maria Anna of

Spain, and his lack of will to join in the war against Catholicism in the Thirty Years

War in Europe were severely opposed among the people. The most difficult period for

James to retain a good image on the stage was between 1619 and 16219. Along with the above mentioned 1590s and the very first years of James‘s reign these were the years when censorship was most severe (Heinemann 168). Under these circumstances it is absolutely understandable why only few playwrights dared to tackle this issue and it is still clearer that even the slightest allusion to these was heavily censored. Nonetheless, this task was not an easy one for the Master of Revels since censoring too consistently these allusions would mean that he was aware of the king‘s deficiencies, and that was too dangerous. Therefore he usually focused on limiting too explicit references to

9 In 1621 the king even prohibited the Parliament from making any debate on foreign policy. 42

criticism of absolute power of the ruler. Nevertheless, plays referring to this problematic were no less frequent (Clare 173). This amount of criticism of allusions and references to public disapproval with king‘s government also explains the fact that James censored about twice as frequently as Elizabeth (Robertson 3).

Due to the changes on the throne and in the approach of the censor history plays necessarily changed as well. In the early period of James‘s reign the playwrights were happy that with the death of Elizabeth the ban on portraying living monarch was no longer valid and a wave of history plays depicting the Queen followed. The most famous plays of this sort were Thomas Heywood‘s If You Know Not Me, You Know No

Bodie in two parts, bearing the subheadings Or, The troubles of Queene Elizabeth

(1605) for the first part and With the building of the Royall Exchange: And the famous

Victorie of Queene Elizabeth, in the year 1588 (1606) for the second part. Seeing that the hopes for a less autocratic ruler were fallacious and that the new king was an utter disappointment to the English, these plays on Elizabeth were rather nostalgic in nature.

When James was referred to in the early period, he was mostly likened to such kings as King Lear or to the feminine and antiwarlike ruler Ninus and it was not rare to see the kings which stood for James counterpointing clowns, which also brings along necessary analogy. But since these plays were severely disapproved by the censor, the playwrights soon ceased to write plays about national heroes and focused on ―Spies and informers, driven by poverty and lack of political preferment, [who] serve in dissolute courts under rulers shown as corrupt or even mad, aided by unscrupulous churchmen‖

(Heinemann 190). The history plays were never the same after 1603 and gradually all those little changes in politics and in the vogue brought about an end to the genre.

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6 HISTORIOGRAPHY

Historiography is an integral part of any discussion of the Elizabethan and

Jacobean history plays because the early modern historiography differed significantly from what it was in the Middle Ages as well as from what it is today10. The Renaissance method of selecting suitable materials, examining, analyzing and finally adapting it into new pieces of writing was very much unlike any time before or after. Without studying historiography and comparing the playwrights‘ method of working with sources with the historian‘s method, it could happen that the playwrights‘ approach would be seen as unusual and unique, which was certainly not the case. This study thus will be particularly useful for the purpose of this thesis as it will demonstrate and explain how early modern scholars and playwrights perceived history and what their approach to and method of working with sources was. Moreover, it will warn against applying our modern veracity criteria on the history works of the early modern era. It will be also explained why the formulation of the first essential feature in the definition above suggested exacts from the history plays to be based on ―mostly true and factual,‖ and not absolutely true and factual political events. In addition to that, the study of historiography will bring in and explain even more of the so-called additional features typical of the history play. Last but not least, it will demonstrate what an impact chronicles had on the history genre.

10 In fact there was nothing like the modern historiography until as late as the seventeenth century

(Ribner 12-13).

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6.1 Historiography in the Renaissance

Historiography in the Renaissance cannot deny its medieval roots, as they shared a number of features. Therefore, it will be useful to focus on the characteristic features of the medieval perceptiveness of history and on medieval historiography and then to comment on the elements in which Elizabethan and Jacobean approach differed.

The basic feature which characterised the medieval historiography and apprehension of history and which was later on taken over by early modern historians and people in general, was their belief in the parallel between the natural and the heavenly world order. The world was seen as a single unity, where everything perfect was the product of God. In other words, people believed in the providential organization of world. The medieval belief was that no man could alter the destiny enjoined to him or her because lives were directed by the great omnipotent God and if something bad happened, this was seen as an act performed by Chance, or to use its traditional name,

Fortuna11, which held sway over human beings and their lives and which kept turning and that bad times will be succeeded by good ones (Gupta 33-37). Historians thus in their works combined two opposing visions of how time runs. The first one was clearly linear comprehension of time and it saw the beginning in the creation of the world and the ultimate end in the judgment day. The other apprehension of time and history was a cyclical one. The historians saw and often also made it intentionally more visible that history cyclically repeated itself and that everything bad would eventually end and it would be replaced by something good. As Woolf beautifully describes this second approach, ―The resulting shape of time was that of a spiral, endlessly repeating the drama of rise and fall of sin, repentance, and mercy and punishment, and ever coming

11 Originally a Roman goddess of chance and destiny.

45

nearer the apocalypse‖ (qtd. in Dutton and Howard 12). The connection between these two perspectives was such that the Fortune‘s wheel functioned as God‘s instrument

(Iser 40). In the Middle Ages the desire to present history providentially was much stronger than any will to represent facts truthfully, and this tendency partly devolved to the Elizabethan and Jacobean time as well.

Nonetheless, there were many features in which early modern historiography differed from the medieval. The two most important differences were the affectedness by the newly emerged historiography and by humanism, which came to England from the Continent.

The first historians who introduced in England the first signs of historiography was Polydore Vergil, an Italian humanist historiographer, who came to England during the reign of Henry VII. Nevertheless, the proper historiography was fully recognizable and accepted only as late as in the second half of the sixteenth century. David Riggs summarizes characteristic features of historiography as follows: ―the foundation of scientific criteria for validating historical evidence; the cultivation of legal and constitutional, and of territorial and local, history; the periodization of ordinary historical chronology; the systematic analysis of political authority and its utility for historical inquiry‖(35). Nevertheless, this should not be understood that from the beginning of the Tudor period histories were treated systematically and just like modern histories. This image would be false because the contrary was true and despite this new method of handling and working with history the emergence of historiography did not mean any sound and sudden change in working with the sources and materials. ―The

Tudor chroniclers still worked with the tools, methods, and intellectual limits of the medieval annalists‖ and all the changes that historiography brought along came out only very slowly and gradually (Goy-Blanquet 65). 46

The other element which evoked a unique form of working with the sources was humanism, which, just like historiography, came to England from the Continent and radically changed the shape of works dealing with history. Since the influence of humanism on historiography, literature and drama in general has been discussed in many book-length works, it will be only presented here in a very brief form, listing just the major points of humanistic theory. Roger Ascham unwittingly but felicitously summarized these points into a text when he described characteristic features of Sir

Thomas More‘s style of work. Later, this text was made into a well-arranged list by Lily

Campbell and published in her book Shakespeare‟s Histories. To start with, instead of long descriptions it will be apt to copy Campbell‘s list of the basic characteristic of the humanistic theory. It says that the aims of historiographers are:

1) to write nothing false, 2) to be bold to say any truth, 3) to marke diligently the causes, counsels, actes and issues in all great attemptes, of euery issue, to note some generall lesson of wisedome and 4) [to use diligence] to kepyng truly the order of tyme, 5) [to describe] lyvely, both the site of places and the nature of persons not onely for the outward shape of the body: but also for the inward disposition of the mynde. (Campbell 65)

By commenting on each point, it will be shown in what ways the Elizabethan and Jacobean historiography was similar to the medieval approach and in what ways it differed from it, and why many of these features and characteristics could not have been observed strictly. This commentary will also serve the purpose of showing and explaining some of the typical features of the Elizabethan and Jacobean history play.

Because of their concurrence and resemblance points one, two and five will be discussed together. Although the general tendency encouraged historians to the tell truth all the time, this was actually unfeasible in practice mostly because of the pressure from above, i.e. the king and the censors. For this reason, truth and historical fact often had to 47

yield precedence to the Tudor myth instead of veracity. Since historical facts were in contradiction with the desired version, it was often the case that in order to ―prove‖ the veracity of the Tudor myth historiographers often had to adapt the facts and make them fit the popular propagated theory. It is quite well-known that even the second edition of

Raphael Holinshed‘s Chronicles, the major source for Shakespeare‘s history plays and tragedies, underwent some censorship and that Holinshed had to change some of the interpretations because they were not in correspondence with the officially approved interpretation and ideology (Clare 47). But it has to be admitted that historians themselves did not make much distinction between the fictive and historical characters.

They also often used prosopopeia, the rhetoric figure when an imaginary person speaks.

The third point of the list suggests that historians should put their minds to studying the causes and objects of all attempts. What is meant by this appeal is that all issues should not be taken as granted and as given and always controlled by God, but that attention should be ascribed to people and their wilful and reasonable deeds. For the first time the focus shifted from God to humans and from the great order of theology to much more down-to-earth and matter-of-fact issues such as politics, struggle for power and other individual motives. For the first time it was believed that the Fortune‘s wheel was not in the hands of God but that its neverending turning could be altered by the will of human power. Human being was no longer a chess-man but he was within his power to determine his fate. Sen Gupta even says that ―upsurge of faith in man, in his dignity and worth as an individual‖ was the most characteristic thing about Renaissance (32).

The call for making ―some generall lesson of wisedome‖ mentioned in the same point could be interpreted also as a request for summarizing the moral message of particular historical events or of people‘s lives. It is true that medieval histories often offered some moral understanding of the texts but this was usually based on theological 48

explanation and interpretation and not on secular interpretation of the past. Humanists used history as a means by and from which not only ordinary people but the noblemen could learn lessons of what to do and what mistakes it would be better not repeat.

―Historia‖ was seen a ―magistra vitae‖ in the most practical and purposeful sense.

The last point refers again to the concentration on the ―revelation of the richness and complexity of human nature,‖ which was already discussed within the frame of point three (Gupta 41).

Another thing in which the Elizabethan historiography differed from the medieval was its patriotism and nationalism, A few of the historians were even ardent nationalists which necessarily recognizable in all their works.

6.2 Playwrights’ use of the sources

This subchapter will discuss what sources the playwrights of history plays usually drew from, how the they treated historical facts, and whether, and if so, then into what extent they followed the model of non-dramatic history works. Here the term history works and not the term chronicles is intentionally used because it was not only proper chronicles which influenced and inspired the writers of history plays but it was predominantly the old plays on the particular topics, and largely also the poetry books about history, such as Mirror, and many various old legends as well.

Most of the playwrights of history plays based their stories on various histories.

The Renaissance is characteristic of its unprecedented expansion of historical works. As

Lily Campbell says, during the Renaissance there was such a number of writings, readings, translations and criticisms of history that one life would not be long enough to compile them all (19). It was highly praised and valued for its major two uses. First, it accumulated a large amount of knowledge, and second, it could have been immediately

49

used for moralization and comparison to contemporary situation (Tillyard 55). It was used by both the Catholic and the Protestants because everyone could find something useful for them in it. Histories were so popular that with the playwrights that they did not borrow from these books only when they were writing a history play but other genres too, especially tragedies. For example, Shakespeare‘s tragedies King Lear and

Macbeth (1606), as well as his comedy Cymbeline all draw from the same chronicles as history plays (Campbell 8).

However, the chronicle was the most important source used by the playwrights.

The list of important chronicles from which the playwrights drew their themes and information is very long; however, to cut the long list short, only the most important, the most used and the most widely read historians and their works will be mentioned here. Those contemporary histories, which were in any way influential and should not be left unnoticed were the above mentioned Anglicae Historiae Libri Vigintiseptem

(1534) by Polydore Vergil, Edward Hall‘s Union of Two Noble and Illustre Families of

York and Lancaster, and Raphael Holinshed‘s The Chronicles of England, Scotland and

Ireland. Other widely used chronicles were John Froissart‘s Chronicles of England,

France, Spain and the Adjoining Countries (1338-1410), John Hardyng‘s Chronicle (p.

1543), Richard Grafton‘s A Chronicle at Large (1568/9), John Stow‘s Chronicles of

England (1580) and A Summarie of Englyshe Chronicles (1565), William Camden‘s

The Annales of England (1592), Sir Walter Raleigh‘s History of the World (1614) and

Francis Bacon‘s Historie of the Raigne of King Henry the Seventh (p. 1622) (Campbell

57-71; Ribner, English 6; Tillyard 58; Campbell 77-79).

As David Riggs says, it is generally believed that the Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatists ―appropriated the themes if history and chose their materials in the same way as the professional historians‖ (qtd. in Riggs 2). Nevertheless, this statement is only 50

partially true because the work of historians and playwrights differed dramatically in many respects. First, as Sir Philip Sidney argued in his Apology, poetry was in every aspect superior to history because ―Historians deal in relative truths, based on hearsay, and tied to random facts, whereas poetry has access to higher and universal form of truth‖ (Goy-Blanquet 64) 12. Second, it has been already shown that the dramatists‘ aim was chiefly to draw the crowds into theatre and make commercially attractive plays, which was not that much important for the historiographers. This gave the poets a freer hand and a bigger tendency to adapt the script to vogue the demands of the audience.

Thirdly, the playwright necessarily had to pay much attention to aesthetics than historians, which, again, made them less adhere to the basic points of historiography and let the playwright conform some rules to the principle of aesthetics. Then it comes as no surprise that Shakespeare, just as his contemporaries, learned to approach the chronicles ―with a big knife, and an eye to their dramatic potential‖ (Goy-Blanquet 66).

And fourthly, the dramatists, even though borrowing from older materials, always had to be aware of the political situation and the tricky topics which might not have been approved by the censor.

In addition to chronicles there was a whole range of non-dramatic material which could not be named histories because they were not written by historiographers but by poets. In this respect the most influential books were Boccaccio‘s classical De casibus illustrium virorum , John Lydgate‘s The Fall of Princes (1431-39) and the above mentioned Mirror for Magistrates (1559-87), which was a compilation written by multiple authors (Iser 41-42; Goy-Blanquet 64). Out of these the most contemporary and most widely read book which was edited and republished many times in the

12 Sidney took over this opinion from Aristotle. 51

fifteenth century was the last mentioned and therefore it deserves most discussion. In contrast to its predecessors, Mirror was into a great extent influenced by the wave of humanism, which newly focused attention on individual people and their abilities instead of on humanity driven and controlled by God. Although its chief sources were various chronicles, especially Hall‘s chronicle, and many other primary and secondary historical material, its intention was not to cover the course of history and evaluate the reigns of individual kings but rather to focus on people who were not in high politics, such as ―the Chief Justice of England, Jack Cade, and the blacksmith,‖ and to show that even a common man can become the alter their Fortune (Iser 41). In the book nineteen

British statesmen appear as ghosts and they tell each other their life stories and comment on them, expressing their political as well as ethical opinions. Later on in the edition from 1563 eight new stories were added and in 1587 the compilation did not cover the period from Richard II only to Edward VI but it ended in the time of rule of

Henry VII (Tillyard 73). Even though the time span covered in Mirror might suggest that it could not avoid implying the Tudor myth, the contrary is the case. Two more things about Mirror should be at least listed here. These are the unusually frequent reference to stars and their impact on people and the great metrical variety of the compilation. Both of these features were quite unique for example in comparison to the chronicles and they both, among other things, were often referred to and reused in the history plays which drew on the material from the Mirror, such as Shakespeare‘s Henry

VI and many other of his plays.

Playwrights also often took over themes from various legends and they often tacked on to the factual information some fictional events or characters. This is for example the case in Robert Greene‘s The Scottish History of James the Fourth (1598), where Oberon, the king of fairies takes his part. There are many more such examples, 52

where historical characters meet and even talk to non-existent characters, who are either mythical characters or they are a personification of some very abstract or very general thing, such as is the role of England in Bales‘ King Johan.

Some other sources used by playwrights were the above mentioned poetry books on a historical topic as well as pamphlets, translations of commentaries on current political situation in Europe, and various classical stories and legends. All told, the final outcome was often utterly transmuted and only remotely similar to the chief source and even more distant from factual history. As a result, the history plays should not be viewed as basically historiographic plays.

The fact is that it must have been extremely confusing to tell facts from fiction for Shakespeare and other playwrights of history plays when one realizes what the position of historians and other poets was to truth. No one could expect of a playwright to study the original materials, to verify them and work only with the information which told truth (Campbell 75). In reality, not only did the playwrights care little about mixing of facts and fiction, but they also usually intentionally participated in this blending. The first and primary reason for this was the necessity to adapt and adjust the stories to the format of a play, which had to be relatively short, include a limited number of characters and above all which had to be easily comprehensible to the house. Therefore for example the characters of Sir William Montague and Sir Walter de Manny in

Edward III conflate into a single character (Melchiori 57). Even more common it was for the playwrights to rearrange the order of events in such a way so that the message which the author wanted to tell would be better manifested and more easily understandable to the viewers. The audience was for the most part acquainted with the history, which was dramatized and delivered to them in a slightly anachronistic way. As

Hattaway says: ―no play stands or falls by its historical ‗accuracy‘‖ and at that time 53

exactitude was not so much demanded (―Shakespearean‖ 12). There were also other reasons for such numerous deviations from truth. The first one was the moral message of the stories which was so important. By the term ―moral message‖, however, it is not meant the universal theological moral similar to homilies but rather the lesson which were meant to be exhibited in the plays so that everyone could use history to good.

Another reason which made the playwrights change some facts in the plays and which was of high importance for the dramatist was the above explained fear of censor‘s intervention. Sir Walter Raleigh knew too well why he advised all the ―would-be historian not follow truth too near the heels if he did not want his teeth struck out‖ (qtd. in Goy-Blanquet 61).

Another characteristic feature of playwrights‘ working with the sources was that playwrights rarely chose some new topics to discuss and dramatize. As Tillyard says it was common for playwrights to revive old themes and they were often quite talented to remake an older play and cause in the audience an excitement as if they saw it for the first time (55). Reviving was not seen as something inferior, but on the contrary, it was seen as a chance to show off ones mastery. Janis Lull believes that what the audience conversely demanded from the playwrights was showing the causes why the good and bad things happened.

To wit, the seeds of historiography were not only in the dramatists and historians but also in the people. They wanted to be taught lessons and wanted to understand the reasons for the fall or success of a king. It is true that the stage was used as a mirror for the noble as well as for the humble but the thing is that the playwrights as a rule did not give verdicts or interpretations. The works were full of explorations but since the audience was so diverse, Catholic as well as Protestant, and the moods of the monarch changed in time, the playwrights did not openly criticise but they ―only‖ uncovered the 54

mystics about the state and its ruler. This fact also explains the reasons for ambiguity in many of Shakespeare‘s history plays, when the viewer, or rather the reader, cannot tell who the dramatists sided.

Some scholars hold the view that the Elizabethan playwrights of history plays actually had a prearranged cohesive method of how to approach and how to work with chronicles and historical material in general (Riggs 2). Evidence for this theory could be that dramatists always preselected all important deeds, event and speeches before actually writing the plays. As shown earlier, this method probably came from rhetoric and its hero-centered focus. This gives the plays their selective, episodic and slightly fragmented touch. Riggs also mentions other characteristics, that were, in his opinion, decisive in the selection of a topic and hero and consequently the choice of historical materials from the chronicles. According to him these are ―the range of exemplary deeds, and a general definition of individual worth that leans heavily on parentage and ancestry, as well as on individual fortitude‖ (Riggs 24). One objection going against this theory is that every history play was quite unique in its form and themes, and that they differed significantly from each other.

To sum it up, even though the tendencies in society were heavily influenced by the newly emerged streams of historiography and humanism, which admonished to veracity, there were many more reasons why playwrights could not follow the tendencies and why their method of working with sources was much freer. As a result, it is clear that no history play could have presented true facts and it can thus not be demanded of them as a criterion.

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7 PRACTICAL PART

This chapter looks at three plays, which are all often classified as history plays and I will study into what extent this classification is correct in light of the above suggested definition of the genre of the history play. The first play will be Robert

Greene‘s The Scottish History of James the Fourth and it will represent early history plays which should theoretically have much in common with morality plays and all the other genres discussed in the third chapter of this work. The second play, Shakespeare‘s

The Tragedy of Richard III, is often said to balance on the verge of two genres: history play and tragedy. Even though the play does not belong to the best and the most typical of what Shakespeare‘s histories can offer, it is very interesting to study just this play as it can demonstrate the transition and mingling of two genres in a single play. The last play to be studied here will be John Ford‘s Perkin Warbeck. This play, written towards the end of James‘s reign was written long after the peak popularity of the genre of history plays. Not only the date of its composition but also its title, which suggests that the story will be about no royal nobleman but an impostor may suggest that this play will hardly be a genuine history play. It is thus interesting to look at this work to see into what extent this presupposition is true.

7.1 The Scottish History of James the Fourth

The first play to study in terms of its genre classification is Robert Greene‘s play

The Scottish History of James the Fourth (1590-91) (Cavanagh 58). This play takes pride in having the term history in its title, but as stated earlier, this does not mean that the play necessarily has to be a history play. However, it needs to be added that according to its title, the play is supposed to be not a clear history play but a history play mixed with comedy, as it is stated on the title page of its first publication by Thomas Creede in 56

159813. The aim of the analysis of this play will be to show why this play is often called a

―pseudo-historical‖ play and to demonstrate that, according to the above suggested definition of the genre of the history play, this classification is correct (Schelling 35).

This subchapter will show why the play can hardly be considered a history play and subsequently what features would possibly justify its classification as a history play.

From the first glance at the play, it is apparent that the story itself is a mixture of various styles and genres and that it offers a unique show full of a bit of everything. As

L. G. Salinger lists, ―there are passages of antic dances and clowning in popular style, scenes of symbolic dumb-show in the manner of Gorboduc, discourses on the common weal, a hunting song, a wedding masque, and a battle scene with the English and

Scottish armies marching ‗with all their pomp‘ (i.e. with pageantry)‖ (Salinger 6). The very fact that the framework of the main story depicts Bohan, a Scottish nobleman, who at the very beginning of the play suddenly gets up from a tomb, and Oberon, the king of faeries, indicate that romantic elements, supernatural features and illusoriness play a big role in the play. All the supernatural elements are there not only to evoke some desired feeling in the audience but they form a significant body of the play. Oberon and Bohan are present not only at the beginning of the play and towards its end but they also appear several times throughout the play, usually interrupting the run of the play with some only a little interrelated jig, dance or a sketch. In the play a lot of attention is also paid to astrology and charlatanism. Reality is mixed with fiction in such a manner that one intervenes with the other and the result is that the two can hardly be distinguished.

Bohan tells Oberon the story about James IV as a demonstration of why he hates the

13 The full title is: The Scottish Histories of James IV, slaine at Flodden Field. Entermixed with a pleasant Comedie presented by Oboram King of Faeries. As it hath been sundrie times plaise. Written by Robert Greene, Maister of Arts. Omne tulit punctum 1589. (Greene 87) 57

world, but throughout the story he asks Oberon to save his sons, who take part in the story. All of these are rather romantic features typical of later Elizabethan and Jacobean romantic comedies, such as Shakespeare‘s Midsummer Night‟s Dream, which is said to be inspired by James IV (Collins 84). The play includes one more feature, which only became rather common in the romantic comedies, and that is the use of disguise, when men, acting women, pretend to be male characters within the play.

It seems that the major theme of the play is not any political issue but problems with love. It is present in the main story of the play, where the Scottish king James IV, married to Queen Dorothea, daughter of the English king, desperately and inadvisably falls in love with Ida, daughter of Countess of Arran. For James IV, love seems to be more important than even the destiny of the whole nation: ―Ida is fair & wise, fit for a

King; / And for faire Ida will I hazard life, / Venture my Kingdome, Country, & my

Crowne: / Such fire hath loue to burne a kingdome downe‖ (1.1.283-36). And love is the topic number one discussed by many other characters, for example the father-son relationship, in case of Bohan and Nano and Slipper . Even though political issues are discussed as well in the play, Greene concentrated much more on the personal lives of the characters.

What might be surprising to find in a so-called history play is the occurrence of so many minor characters, who have very little to do with the plot of the play and whose presence in the play is purely comical. It is clear that the importance of the dialogue between Andrew and Purveyor about rubbing a horse or Slipper‘s explanation of what ten properties of woman has any horse has no other function than to amuse the audience

(1.2.481-93). Slipper is the play‘s clown. A few other history plays include some comic character but they are usually fully developed and rounded characters, whose jesting is rarely only cracking jokes about nothing but who rather represent an alternative view of 58

the political issue. To name just a few examples, the character of Bastard in

Shakespeare‘s The Troublesome Reign of King John (1596) is actually a deeply moral character and an English patriot who performs ―kingly qualities‖ (Van de Water 143).

Another example may be Falstaff, the comic character who often comments on political machinations in Shakespeare‘s Henry IV, Part 1 and Henry IV, Part 2. In contrast to these, Slipper is a flat and one-dimensional character who should lighten the play.

To mention another reason why the play could hardly be classified as a history play, the sources of James IV should be mentioned briefly. It is well-known that the story of James IV is taken from an Italian romance Hecatommithi (1565), written by G. B.

Giraldi Cinthio (Collins 80; Cavalchini 59). Even though this romance was no chronicle of Ireland and Scotland it still provided plots not only for Greene‘s James IV but also for

Shakespeare‘s Othello and Measure for Measure (Cavalchini 59). It has already been stated that sources are not the criterion which determines whether a play is or is not a history play because histories, tragedies, as well as romantic comedies borrowed from the same sources, but here one exception should be made because the source of this play reveals a lot about Greene‘s approach to history. The main heroes of this original source are Astation, the King of Ireland, and the King of Scotland. In his play, Greene changed the King of Ireland into James IV, the King of Scotland, and he also changed the King of

Scotland into the King of England. Moreover, he renamed most of the characters and created at least eight new characters (Senn 51-55)14. It was of no importance to Greene that the so-called history play was not based on any reliable source, which would at least marginally endeavour after truth. And what is more, Greene did not resist still modifying the story even more. On the top of it he obviously did not afflict him that the plot of the

14 The concrete list of the personages in the original novel and their parallels in Greene‘s play is quoted in The Plays and Poems of Robert Greene. Vol. 2. on page 80. 59

story had nearly nothing in common with the life and reign of the actual James IV.

Greene seemed not to care that the Battle of Flodden mentioned in the title of the play took place in 1513, seven years before the story should happen, according to the text of the play: ―In the year 1520, was in / Scotland a King, ouerruled with parasites, misled by lust, and / many circumstances too long to trattle on now, much like our / Court of

Scotland this day‖ (Interlude 102-105). Moreover, had Greene wanted to keep the historicity of the play at least a bit, he would not have changed Arrenopia‘s name not to

Dorothea but to Margaret, the name of James IV‘s wife (Collins 80). Hence it is apparent that Greene did not even try to make the play veracious.

It seems that the only reason why Greene used the term history in the title and denoted it as a play about James IV is that his initial intention was to make the story a satire on the contemporary political and situation and transferring the criticism into the

―relatively safe context of far-off historical events,‖ as was already explained above

(Potter 112-13). When the play is perceived as a satire and a critical political commentary on the events of the turn if the 1580s, then numerous parallels and analogies can be found. The most striking analogy is to be found with James IV‘s great-grandson,

James VI (1566-1625), the later James I, the King of England. He was allied with

England and all matters in Scotland were of great interest to the English. Just like James

IV in the play, James VI was involved in an utterly romantic love affair with Anne of

Denmark, who he fell in love with and who he wanted to marry immediately (Hudson

654). James VI, having been crowned only as a child, had a lot of experience with regents, advisors, and nobility, difficulties with who brought him a notoriety in England as ―these troubles frequently touched English affairs‖ (Hudson 665). The probability that

James IV was actually meant to be a reflection of the current situation between England and Scotland is still enhanced by the recorded complaint from Scotland ―that the 60

comedians of London … scorn the king and the people of this land in their playi‖

(Hudson 659).

In addition to the purpose of the play as a mirror for the politics of the 1590s, several more features, though not many, characteristic of history play may be found in the play. First of all, James IV depicts a king who prefers individual interests to those of his country. The play makes it clear that such an abuse of powers only leads to the country‘s destruction. The king‘s love affair has such a consequence that the King of

England declares war to Scotland and were it not for Queen Dorothea‘s unexpected appearance, the whole of Scotland would subdue to England, as it is perceptible from the scene where Douglas without any delay lets the English King in, saying: ―We will submit us to the English king‖ (5.3.2003). It is possible to interpret it as a warning to kings who would not hold the interests of the nation as a priority. This didactic element destined for kings is even directly pronounced in the play when the Bishop of St. Andrews and others reveal their fear about the king‘s acting:

B. S. Andr. Oh wrack of Common weale! Oh wrethed state! Doug. Oh haplesse flocke whereas the guide is blinde! Mort. Oh heedlesse youth where counsaile is disis‘d! (2.2.881-83)

Another moral lesson resulting from the plot of the play is that kings should carefully choose their advisors and avoid causing even the slightest reason for their turning the king adrift. In James IV the veracity and importance of this lesson is well demonstrated by the result of king‘s injudicious acceptance of Autekin and by the unhappy Bishop‘s ditching the king. This lesson is quite a common one in other history plays too. It even seems to be the central lesson of Marlowe‘s Edward II.

One of the other themes typically discussed in history plays is that of nationalism.

This theme is heavily discussed in Bale‘s King Johan, where one of the characters is

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called England, and in Henry V, probably the most patriotic of Shakespeare‘s history plays. In this play, just as in Shakespeare‘s King John, the nationalistic appeal makes itself felt by criticizing the king who turns against his nation. In this play, there is no character of England, but Greene used the characters of a Lawyer, a Merchant and a

Divine and he lets them analyse the reasons for ―this present state‖ (5.4.2017). In this scene Greene lets the characters, the names of which symbolically represent law, market and church, criticize the individual state organs most openly and roundly. In this scene much attention is paid to the ethics of politics too. In addition to that, many other political issues are hinted at here. These are issues such as the likelihood of wronged poor people raising a rebellion, bribe-taking by the churchmen, and the destructive run of money.

To sum it up, Robert Greene‘s play James IV is a play which bears the denotation history in the title and which harbours some of the features typical of history play: primarily, it works as a mirror to the political situation of the time when the play was staged, it is also concerned with the issue of the two bodies of a king, his private and public body and their order of precedence, furthermore the play most probably proposes to serve as a didactic lesson to the kings. In addition to that, the play includes a few references to the nationalistic sentiment, which was an important issue at that time, and it even offered a scrutiny of the political situation and search after the reasons why it was

―so full of spots‖ (5.4.2020). Nonetheless, the play should in no way be called a history since it does not meet the basic requirement, the so-called ‗essential feature,‘ of showing mostly true and factual political events of late medieval England. The story is based on an Italian novella and it does not make a bit of effort to present any facts. The story is thus only adapting Cinthio‘s story and wrapping it in a pseudo-historical package. On top of its ahistoricity the play includes numerous elements characteristic of comedies and 62

romantic comedies, which makes the play even less suitable for the denotation a history play. It can be thus concluded that according to the definition above suggested, Greene‘s

James IV cannot be called a history play though it contains several so-called ‗additional features‘ of the genre.

7.2 The Tragedy of Richard III

The second play to be studied is the classical history play by William

Shakespeare The Tragedy of King Richard III. This play represents plays created in the period of peak popularity of history plays. Being written some time during 1592, this play does not belong to the best and most mature pieces of Shakespeare‘s production in terms of history plays, but it is useful to scrutinize it because even though it represents an indispensable part of Shakespeare‘s history it is often a called a play teetering on the boundary between history play and tragedy. Even in terms of the title and classifying this play is ambivalent. Henry Condell and William Heminges ranked it among history plays, being the play which concludes Shakespeare‘s first tetralogy15, but they did not change its title and they kept the term ‗tragedy‘ in its title. And as it will be demonstrated later both classifications are justifiable. The study of this play will be primarily important from the perspective of which features in this play are those of tragedy and which features it shares with other history plays.

The history of the rule of Richard III was well-known to all the university wits as the story was studied even at grammar schools as a canonical example of ―a cruel

15 Eight of the ten Shakespeare plays which are libelled as history plays in the Folio are believed to be written as two tetralogies. The plays in the particular tetralogies concur in regards of historical development, theme as well as characters. Since the first tetralogy depicts period from 1422 to 1485 and thus it is often called ―Wars of Roses cycle‖ or ―Wars of Roses saga‖. It consists of plays Henry VI parts 1 to 3 and Richard III. The second tetralogy, though written after the first one tells earlier history beginning with the rule of Richard II and ending with the reign of Henry V. This tetralogy consists of plays Richard II, Henry IV, Part 1, Henry IV, Part 2, and Henry V. 63

tyrant‖ (Jowett 32). Richard III‘s character was viewed as a daemon and a villain in all the chronicles and other historical materials until as late as 1646 when Sir George Buc more or less successfully challenged the negative view and defended Richard‘s character (Jowett 16). When Shakespeare wrote the play, everyone remembered Richard

III as a villain sent by devil, a usurper of the throne, murderer, and the cause of

England‘s numerous sufferings. This was so because in this way Richard was pictured in Thomas More‘s The History of King Richard III, Edward Hall‘s The Union of the

Two Noble and Illustrate Families of Lancastre and Yorke, as well as in the anonymous play The True Tragedie of Richard the Third (1588-94), which could have been used by

Shakespeare together with the Latin play Richardus Tertius (Hoenselaars 26; Schelling

22). It is thus needless to deal into deep detail with the analysis of his image as a daemonic monster and it will be more apt to proceed straightforward to the analysis of the genre characteristics in the play.

There are many reasons why the play is believed to be a genuine tragedy. First of all, even though the whole play, just as many other history plays, deals with the life of an English monarch and his more or less successful reign, in this play, however, the majority of the play is not concerned with the rule of the king, which is only discussed in the last two acts of the play. The first three acts depict Richard‘s way to reach the throne. What the plays mostly focus on in terms of Richard‘s biography is the manner of how he got to the throne and how he eventually lost it. This rise and fall story, or to use the proper term de casibus storyline, is well known from numerous other tragedies such as Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Anthony and Cleopatra and many other tragedies following the pattern of Mirror for Magistrates. As mentioned earlier, however, the genre of a play cannot be judged based on the sources and structure of the play.

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Nevertheless, there are other reasons for considering the play to be tragedy rather than history. The primary reason is that it bears many features of revenge tragedy.

In the play revenge is present in many forms and sported by numerous characters. Two people who, however, starve for revenge most are those who see themselves as being most wronged by God and by destiny. These are Richard and Margaret. Richard sees himself as the one who was deprived of the chance to live a normal life and find love at his birth because of his body deformation and he compensates all the wrongs done to him by fighting for the place on the throne. Margaret feels affronted by being deprived of the throne and the position of the Queen. But the word revenge is uttered by six different characters and the word vengeance by two more. Moreover The great number of murders committed in the play also comes close to the massacre of fourteen people in

Titus Andronicus. In his soliloquy at the beginning of the play Richard makes it clear to the audience that he is determined to prove a villain (1.1.30) and this initial prophecy he fulfils to the letter. According to Charles Moseley, the image of such a ―man– monarch or subject – who refuses to keep the rules and plays purely for advantage fascinated the

Elizabethan mind‖ (67-68).16 On the way to the throne he gradually needs to ―get rid of‖: Edward IV, who however dies spontaneously, his brother Clarence, Edward IV‘s two sons, Edward V and Richard of York, and the noblemen who accompany young prince to coronation, Lord Rivers, Lord Grey, and Sir Thomas Vaughan. But it is not only the enemies he has orders to kill. Later on he turns against his former allies and sends to death doubting Lord Hastings, his new wife Anne, and his true friend the Duke of Buckingham, who he orders to execute. This series of murders is depicted very

16 Evidence supporting this statement could be found for example in the figure of Mortimer in

Marlowe‗s Edward II.

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emotively in the play as the characters and members of Richard‘s family realize his true character. Only too late does Clarence learn that the person who actually plans to kill him is not the King but his other brother, Richard.

CLARENCE … If you be hired for meed, go back again, And I will send you to my brother Gloucester, Who will reward you better for my life Than Edward will for tiding of my death. SECOND EXECUTIONER You are deceived, your brother Gloucester hates you. (1.4. 208-12)

This scene also shows how the actual murder is difficult for the second executioner who eventually prefers saving his soul and to gaining some money from

Richard. Generally, in the play the issue of God‘s final judgement and damning or saving one‘s soul is one of the crucial matters.

FIRST EXECUTIONER Why dost thou not help me? By heavens, the Duke shall know how slack thou art. SECOND EXECUTIONER I would he knew that I had saved his brother. Take thou the fee, and tell him what I say, For I repent me that the Duke is slain. (1.4.248-52)

Another similarly, or even more, emotive scene is when Tyrrell, the executioner of the two young princes, describes his ―tyrranous and bloody deed‖ (4.3.1):

A book of prayers on their pillow lay, Which once, ‘quoth Forrest, ‗almost changed my mind. But O, the devil—‘ There the villain stopped, Whilst Dighton thus told on: ‗We smotherèd The most replenished sweet work of nature That from the prime creation e‘er she framed.‘ Thus both are gone with conscience and remorse. They could not speak; and so I left them both, To bring this tidings to the bloody King. (4.3.14-22)

This scene is immediately followed by a scene when old Queen Margaret, the

Queen and the Duchess of York meet and jointly mourn the numerous deaths of their relatives caused by Richard. As there is no basis for this scene in the sources, it is most 66

likely that Shakespeare created it only to evoke feelings in the audience and lay stress on the amorality of Richard‘s murders. The women curse Richard for his evil acting and do not hesitate to call him ―A hell-hound that doth hunt us all to death. / That dog that had his teeth before his eyes, / To worry lambs and lap their gentle bloods, / That foul defacer God‘s handiwork‖ (4.4.45-48). He was also accredited to be a charlatan and shaman sent by the devil (1.2.32; 1.2.43). Moreover, the presence of the supernatural element of eleven ghosts in the next to last scene of the play is usually not a typical part of history but it is there possibly only to enhance the image of the reality of God‘s and

Evil‘s interventions (Besnault and Bitot 120; Campbell 317). This is another reason why the play could be ranked among tragedies.

As apparent, morality and amorality plays a crucial role in this play. Richard is a typical protagonist of the Machiavellian approach to life. His pragmatic and reckless acting full of machinations and egotism practised on the way to reach his desired goals has definitely some common features with the definition or rather explanation of the term ―machiavellism.‖ Nonetheless, in this work it will not be discussed whether it is possible that Shakespeare was inspired by Machiavelli‘s Prince or Innocent Gentillet‘s

Contre-Machiavel or A treatise of Treason or not. The reasons for this are that it is not of primary importance for the purpose of this work and also because the fact whether he did or did not know the works does not change anything about the parallel between the two approaches practiced by Richard and propagated by Machiavelli (Campbell 322).17.

To interpret Richard‘s character in a more general perspective, he not only tries to win recognition and power but he also seems to beat the turning of the Fortune‘s wheel by his own will. Shakespeare shows the hero as a character whose determination of

17 In the discussion of Richard‘s character it needs to be at least briefly mentioned the similarity between him and the archetype of Vice from morality plays. 67

achieving goals is nearly admirable and he scrutinises the psychology of this character, the causes of his desire for revenge, for recognition and reasons of his eventual fall. All this focus on the individual and analysis of his mental processes is very much derived from humanism, and it was also something which gained ground mostly in his tragedies.

To sum it up, if one accepts Lilly Campbell‘s claim, that the most important characteristic which distinguishes tragedy from history play is that tragedy is associated with ethics, then it seems that since analysing morality and ethics is given so much space in this play it rightly deserves to be classified as tragedy in the title (310).

It is true that for example in comparison to the other play depicting the life and career of Richard III, the anonymous The True Tragedie of Richard the Third, and

Shakespeare‘s later history plays, this one does not include so many great speeches on political issues, such as nationalism, usurpation, or lawfulness of accession to the throne. Only hardly can there be found such an emotive and patriotic appeal to defend the country and punish a false usurper in Shakespeare‘s Richard as it is so in

Richmond‘s speech in the anonymous play:

And we hardly fiue thousand, being beset with many enemies, hoping vpon a few friends, yet dispair not Rich- mond, but remember thou fightest in right, to defende thy coun- trey from the tyrannie of an vsurping tyrant, therefore Rich- mond goe forward, the more dangerous the battell is in attein- ing, it prooues the more honourable being obteined. Then for- ward Richmond, God and Saint George, for me. (Legge 61)

However, the history and politics in this play is present in a different way than in the form of patriotic speeches on topics which would purposefully analyse politics.

Although it seems that the primary focus of the play is paid to the discussion of

Richard‘s personal life, it needs to be realized that Richard was the king of England and thus this play should be also understood as a treatise on the nature of a monarch and on questioning his power. And these are very political themes, which are definitely part of 68

what history plays deal with. When one looks at it from this perspective, the central issue discussed in this play changes from morality of horrible deeds to the discussion of the power of the ruler, a public obligation to obey a bad king and a discussion of the relationship between God and the king. From this perspective Richard is not only a desperate nobleman who tries to find at least a bit of success, respect and power, but he is a tyrant and usurper who does not hesitate to commit numerous sins against God, even though as a king he should be the one who is sent by God and who serves as his vice- regent. From the Tudor perspective, king‘s power was nearly unlimited and Englishmen had a sacral image of kings in their minds (Moseley 62). Even though kings knew that it was a myth and knew that the people knew it as well, it was a constructed convention of the world order, which was, however, accepted by both sides. According to Elizabethan political thinkers, ―a despotic king had to be endured‖ (Jowett 18). Heywood even believed that ―the ‗true use‘ of histories is ‗to teach the subjects obedience to their king,

… to present them with the flourishing estate of such as lavie in obedience, exhorting them to allegiance, dehorting them from all trayterous and felonious stratagems‘‖ (qtd. in

Riggs 25-26). A problem arose when a person like Richard ascended to the throne and was supposed to rule England. In those moments the fact that ―In the 16th century there is a considerable and growing body of opinion which sees the relationship between prince and people as contractual‖ makes the people doubt the justification of the king‘s position

(Moseley 65). But, in addition to that, in this case Richard is depicted not only as a tyrant and a despotic king but also as a usurper, which makes him ―inevitably regarded as the archenemy, and this already implies that ultimately he must be defeated‖ (Iser 50). This creates a tension between two generally accepted beliefs: the necessity or desirability of deposing a bad king and the inviolability of his position and person (Gupta 19). Any usurper, no matter of what blood and origin, was in principle presented as an enemy of 69

the king and thus of the country who has to be punished. In fact there were only few plays ―before Shakespeare‘s, in which ‗trayterous and felonious stratagems‘ are employed against a divinely appointed sovereign‖ and if it was done, then the usurper was always punished (Riggs 26). The case of Richard is just one example. Other cases of these unsuccessful attempts to uncrown the king and ascending to the throne are to be found for example in Richard II, Henry IV, Edward II, and many others. Thomas Nashe even believed that what histories show foremost is ―the ill successe of treason, the fall of hastie climbers, the wretched end of usurpers, the misserie of civill dissention, and how just God is ever more punishing of murther‖ (qtd. in Riggs 26). Richard, being a traitor to the king as well as to all his family and all the noblemen and the kingdom as a whole, was eventually punished by losing his crown together with his head.

When it is realized that very often history plays were used by the authors to hold the mirror up to current politics, Richard III necessarily points out to the desired and undesired qualities of a good king and the limits of his power. It is not difficult to see that

Richard was in many respects seen as an absolute opposite to the image of the ideal monarch. The classical book Policratius (1150s) by John of Salisbury defines that the basic obligation of the king ―to his people to provide for their well-being‖ (Moseley 65).

This is definitely not what Richard manages to do and he is thus considered a bad king.

Though the king‘s power was theoretically unlimited, it did not mean that he had the right to abuse his power for personal revenges. Moreover, during his fight for the throne it seems that Richard forgot that the king should not only be the king of the land, but primarily of the people (Leggatt 36). In the play the disaffectedness of the people is expressed in the scene when Buckingham‘s speech to them is answered by silence most probably because of their fear to express disapproval.

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Together with showing that Richard III was a bad king, this scene, just like the other scene were common citizens speak about the future of their country after the death of King Edward IV, gives voice to the English people and thus makes England actually speak for itself, which is a deeply political and partly also nationalistic element.

Moreover, these two scenes, showing some humble and base-born people discussing important issues of the destiny of the country, also shows that the play is not only about the one king but about the whole country. The play thus should not be viewed merely as a play about one bad king but it should be realized that Richard represents ―a political monster whose deformity … invasively infects the land and its creatures‖ (Besnault and

Bitot 111).

Just as Richard is an example par excellence of what the ideal ruler should not be like, Richmond and Edward exhibit all the good and desired qualities. Richard is shown as courageous, patriotic, religious, loving, and right-minded, he is simply a pure idol of knighthood and a model of a king. Edward IV is also depicted as a good monarch who is popular with the people (2.3.3-4) and who tries to solve things in a non-military way.

The play, showing all the good and bad qualities of a king, works thus as a didactic material for kings or possibly also as a reflection of the current situation. Therefore the parallel between Queen Elizabeth and the great monarchs, Edward IV and Richmond, lies ready at hand (Tillyard 203). Lilly Campbell believes that also Richard had its exemplar in real life, specifically in Cecil and his hunchback grandson, who desired for the throne (332).

So far the play has been studied as if it was simply an issue without any broader historical context. But as mentioned earlier, Richard III was the last play in

Shakespeare‘s first tetralogy, bringing to the end the Wars of the Roses and introducing the first Tudor monarch. Thinking of the past not as of an unfinished story and a 71

―metaphorical vehicle for exploring the concerns of the Elizabethan present,‖ the reading which Jowett called ―analytical‖ but rather thinking of it as of an extended

―series of events leading forward towards the present as an ordained outcome,‖ the so- called ―teleological reading‖ brings new horizons to the play (Jowett 17). In this view,

Richard III finally brings a definite explanation of the basic motif of the whole tetralogy. Richard is the last and the cruelest king rounding off the series of degenerated monarchs. And through Richmond, the later King Henry VII, the play introduces a new generation of the good and successful house on the English throne, the Tudors. It is therefore possible to read the tetralogy as promoting the notion of the, so-called, Tudor myth. But the tetralogy could be also understood in the way that it ―does not serve primarily to illuminate the founding of a dynasty so much as to bring about the healing of an injured nation‖ (Iser 53). From a broad perspective, the play itself as well as the whole tetralogy could be also viewed as a demonstration of the work of the turning of the Fortune‘s wheel and thus of its inscrutability and inevitability.

As shown above, there are many reasons why the play could be rightly classified as tragedy. To sum them up, these are: the striking similarity to the genre of revenge plays, the unusually large number of murders, the big emphasis on emotiveness of the murders and their amorality, the focus on the life before Richard actually became a politically important person, presence of supernatural elements, and a deep scrutiny of the character and psychology of the villain. On the other hand, here is a summary of all the reasons why the play is considered a history play: First off all, it meets the two essential criteria defined in this work as the essential features of any history play. It depicts Richard of Gloucester becoming Richard III, the King of England. It also briefly summarizes the most important events which happened under his reign and it shows his eventual deposal. Although some of the scenes in the play are not based on any 72

historical source, these scenes are not the key ones and certainly do not constitute the majority of the play. All told, it is undeniable that the play describes mostly true and factual political events of late medieval England. And second, the analysis of Richard‘s character and the depiction of two ideal rulers, Edward IV and Richmond, offer an apt allegory to those would-be usurpers of the throne of that time, just as Cecil and Queen

Elizabeth, respectively. Moreover, the play includes many more ‗additional features‘ typical of a history play, such as its very deep study of nature and qualities of a king, its discussion of the relation between God and the king. In addition to that the play deals with the issues of obedience of a bad king and obedience of a usurper, and it also refers to the king‘s obligations, it offers an insight into all social strata of the society and lets

England as a nation speak for itself, the characters of Edward IV, Richard and

Richmond represent a didactic example of a good and bad king, and last but not least the play, closing the first tetralogy, describes the history of the English nation. To conclude, even though the play includes many features of a tragedy, it also includes the two essential features of the history play and many additional features, which make it sure that the classification of the play in the Folio as a history play is correct and that the play could also rightfully be called a history play.

7.3 Perkin Warbeck

The last play analyzed in this work is the play, which is often believed to be the last preserved English history play of the pre-1642 period, John Ford‘s Perkin Warbeck

(Dutton and Howard 187). This play, being printed for the first time in 1634, but written sometime in the last years of the reign of James I of England18, is, as Ford claims

18 Ivo Kamps dates the play back in year 1622 or, as he says, more probably in year 1625 (231).

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himself in the Prologue, a revival of the genre. Just as in case of the previous two plays also in this case the play is sometimes ranked as not a clear and pure history genre but as a ―meta-historical history‖ play or sometimes it is ranked as a ―psychology play‖

(Kamps 194; Weathers 218). It is true that Ford, not having written any other history play, is not considered a traditional history writer or ―a political dramatist, but he would seem to be one in Perkin Warbeck‖ (Anderson 177). This chapter will demonstrate why the classification of the play as a history play should not be doubted.

As in the previous two chapters, however, it will be first shown why the play is often discounted as a history play. The first reason why it is often discarded from the genre is, as in the case of James IV, its principal sources and its deviation from them. In contrast to Greene‘s play, Ford drew information from chronicles, Edward Hall‘s

Union, and William Warner‘s Albion‟s England (1586) and from other history plays19 which had drawn information from chronicles (Ford xxi). It is thus not the sources themselves which are criticized as deficiently accurate or being too little historical but it is Ford‘s adaptation of them. Although the data and factual information are mostly true, where Ford deviates mostly from the sources is the characterization of the main heroes, i.e. Warbeck, Henry VII, and James IV. Generally speaking, all the characters are portrayed more favourably than in the sources. Warbeck is often spoken well of even by his enemies. He is described as ―An ornament of nature, fine and polished, / A handsome youth indeed‖ (5.2.38-39) by Henry VII and at many places in the play his perfect eloquence charms the audience as well. In one scene where Warbeck speaks with James about the destiny of England, using phrases like ―My land depopulated, and my people / Afflicted with a kingdom‘s devastation. / Show more remorse, great king,

19 These were Bacon‘s History of the Reign of King Henry VII (1622) and Gainsford‘s True and Wonderful History of Perkin Warbeck (1618) (Anderson 183-84). 74

or I shall never / Endure to see such havoc with dry eyes. / Spare, spare my dear, dear

England,‖ he appears to be honest and deeply concerned with the England and its people (3.4.63-67). He is also shown as a loving husband who deeply cares about his wife, James IV‘s daughter Katherine. Moreover, Ford makes Warbeck appear true to his belief and, in contrast to the sources, he does not let him confess his imposture of his pretended ancestry but makes him appear to be even internally persuaded of his truth.

This shift is so radical that if the audience of the 1620s and 1630s did not know the actual history, they could have demurred whether Warbeck really was of royal blood or not, or prospectively whether he was mentally unbalanced. Even the pictures of Henry

VII and James IV are more idealized than in the source materials. Henry is very foresighted and his wisdom is highly praised and James IV is eventually shown as a fair man. It is mostly this unusual shift of the final perception of the characters which makes the play very much unlike its sources. In his introduction to the play, Peter Ure even believes that the shift is so significant that it makes Warbeck even ―a literary and fictious or ahistorical creation‖ (Kamps 172). But as Kamps opposes ―the term ‗literary‘ is useful here if we take it not in its conventional sense of ‗fictious‘ or ‗invented,‘ but in

Hayden White‘s sense as a type of ‗plot‘ used by historians to order historical information for the purpose of making it accessible and comprehensible to audiences in the present‖ (179). For all this Winston Weather even believed that

The play is a history play only on the surface, and is no more concerned with ‗kingship and government‘ than is the Oedipus Tyrannus. Writing late in the history-play tradition (1634), Ford completely transcended, or transformed, the political nature of the Elizabethan history-play genre and is now using the history drama as a vehicle for psychological observations. (Weathers 217)

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Nevertheless, since it is not a goal of this work to manifest Weather‘s inaccuracy, it will have to suffice to substantiate the claim that Perkin Warbeck is primarily a history play.

It is a matter of fact that Ford changed some elements, such as the character descriptions of the heroes and the order of some of the events in the play, but it was often purely for a better understanding of the plot by the audience. And as shown in the chapter dealing with historiography, this was absolutely common among playwrights. In some cases he also compressed the time between individual events. Another Ford‘s change is that James ―regards as obligatory the aiding of fallen foreign princes‖

(Anderson 180). Most probably, however, this was also done to simplify the plot.

Otherwise, the play sticks to reality so strictly and precisely that it was even unusual at the time. Gifford, for example, thinks that Ford ―follows with injudicious fidelity the narrative delivered by Lord Bacon‖ and he slightly criticizes it for making no embellishment but making it ―a chronicle and nothing more‖ (qtd. in Ford xlv-xlvi).

And even in the Prologue to the play Ford makes it clear that presenting truth is his primary goal:

To countenance wise industry. No want Of art doth render wit, or lame, or scant, Or slothful in the purchase of fresh bays, But want of truth in them who give the praise …………………………………………… A history of noble mention, known, Famous and true: most noble ‘cause our own …………………………………………… A multitude. On these two rests the fate Of worthy expectation: Truth and State. (The Prologue 5-8, 15-16, 25-26)

In addition to this fidelity to historical sources, the play includes also the other

‗essential feature‘ which determines whether a play is or is not a history play, i.e. that it goes beyond a description of a historical period and refers to some political issue of the

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time when the play was written and staged. Nevertheless, there is not a single interpretation of what the play dashes against. For its better demonstration it will be useful to summarize the plot of the play at least very briefly and even simplistically.

Perkin Warbeck is an illegitimate pretender to the English crown, who appears out of nowhere and claims to be Richard of Shrewsbury, the younger of Edward IV‘s sons who were reportedly murdered in the Tower in obedience to orders by Richard III.

Henry VII, the governing king of England, who is currently solving problems with internal treason committed by Sir William Stanley, the chamberlain, does not believe a word of his story and is resolved to defend his position. A different situation is with

James IV, the king of Scotland. Due to his appearance and eloquence Perkin is able to persuade the Scottish king to ally with him. James, seeing a great opportunity in Perkin effort to reach the English throne, approves of Perkin‘s marriage with his distant cousin,

Katherina, daughter of Earl of Huntly. But since most of James‘s noblemen discourage him from his alliance with Perkin and since a Spanish agent who offers other ways of uniting England and Scotland, James is less and less supportive of Perkin and eventually tells Perkin that he cannot support him any longer. Subsequently the pretender then follows Frion‘s advice and joins Cornish rebels. However, when the rebels are defeated Perkin flees. Towards the end of the play it is notified that Perkin was captured, put in the Tower and after several attempts to run away he is executed.

This very simplified summary of the main plot shows an unsuccessful attempt of an impostor to become a king, insisting that his claim to the throne is much better founded than that of Henry VII‘s. Although the question of Divine Right is heavily discussed in the play, it is generally believed that it was not Ford‘s primary goal to challenge the legitimacy of Charles I‘s crown since he was a legal son of James I of

England (Kamps 194). In my opinion, what the play possibly hinted at was not the 77

discussion of Charles‘s legitimacy to ascend the throne but rather the legitimacy of the

Parliament to limit the king‘s power. From this perspective, Perkin represents the

Parliament. He emerges out of the blue and declares himself to be entitled to the throne.

Similarly the Parliament started to claim to have the right to make laws and limit the king‘s powers. In my view, this play alludes to the problem of who is actually to rule, whether the divinely chosen king or the self-proclaimed person or state power body. If this statement is true, it is evident that Ford sided with the king in this case. Donald K.

Anderson, however, believed that rather than questioning the Divine right the play hinted at the contemporary discussion of the best way of what attitude to assume to foreign policy, as joining the Thirty Years War in Europe was a very important and heavily discussed issue in the 1620s (Anderson 191-92). Whichever of these statements is closest to truth, it is most probable that Ford really used Perkin Warbeck as a commentary on the contemporary political situation.

In addition to the two above explained reasons why Perkin Warbeck is justly classified as a history play, there is abundance of other ‗additional features‘ which evidence that the play is a representative example of the genre. First of all, it is just the above-mentioned ambiguity of whether Perkin is a pretender or not, which makes many scholars believe that in this play Ford actually challenged the Tudor Myth and suggested illegality of Henry VII‘s accession to the throne. Nevertheless, even if Ford had been that brave to challenge the generally accepted belief in royal ancestry or not, all this discussion only supports the claim that the chief idea discussed in the play was a politico-historical one. Second, the play is concerned with what features distinguish a true royal from any other pretender. In this respect it is shown that the status is not just a matter of how one looks and speaks but what other qualities he has. Moreover, in Ford‘s version of the story, Perkin could possibly really be of royal blood and still he does not 78

succeed in becoming the king. Therefore it is shown that not even royal blood is a justification of why he is not a king. What distinguishes a pretender from the king is, as

Ribner says, that ―a matter of strength in the preservation of a kingdom and of wisdom and of mercy in the admission of justice, qualities which Henry VII exemplifies, but which neither James IV nor the handsome pretender, Perkin Warbeck, can approach‖

(English 303). Next, just as in case of many other history plays, even here Henry VII represent the idol of what the ideal monarch should be like and what qualities he should harbour. Henry is depicted as being wise, reasonable and deeply interested in his country and the people and strives after international peace. Urswick even calls him ―a wise king, sent from Heaven‖ and ―Protector of the just‖ (3.1.36-37). He is dominant and respected and places the interest of the country first among his priorities. This is well apparent in the scene where he, though unwillingly, decides to execute his friend

Stanley after he learns of his treason (2.2. 28-41). As Irving Ribner says, ―Nowhere in earlier English history plays may we find so clear a statement of a king‘s responsibility to his subjects‖ (English 302). In one of his speeches, Henry makes it clear that he and the people are one body: ―There‘s not a drop of blood spilt but hath drawn / As much of mine; their swords could have wrought wonders / On their king‘s part, who faintly were unsheathed / Against their prince, but wounded their own breasts‖ (3.1.84-87). Henry also demonstrates that he is aware of the affection of the people for their king: ―… O.

Happy kings, / Whose thrones are raisèd in their subjects‘ hearts‖ (3.1.117-18)!

Furthermore, the play deals with many others political issues. Henry is shown as drawing attention to the issue of ever-present traitors in the nearest surroundings of the king: ―Keep silence. I accuse none, though I know / Foreign attempt against a state and kingdom / are seldom without some great friends at home‖ (1.1.82-84). And later on Stanley shows that history makes it clear that rebellion against the true king is never 79

successful: ―Most spectacles of ruin, some of mercy― / Are precedents sufficient to forewarn / The present times, or any that live in them, / What folly, nay, what madness

‘twere to lift / A finger up in all defence but yours, / Which can be but imposturous in a title‖ (1.1.95-100). The play also adverts to the importance of allies, to the corruption of churchmen, and to the never-ending turning of the Fortune‘s wheel. Discussing all these issues, it is clear that the play must have been used as an example of what the kings should be like and what they should watch out.

To sum it up, even though written towards the end of James I‘s reign and being thus the last history play, Perkin Warbeck is an example par excellence of what a history play looks like. It deals with a political issue from late medieval English history which is based on truth. It also offers a commentary on contemporary issues and problems of the 1620s. Therefore the play meets the two basic criteria essential for classifying a play as a history play. Moreover, the play covers many topics and issues typically dealt with in history plays, such as discussion of the qualities of the ideal king, the importance of preferring the public interests to the private ones, the appeal on reasonable and peaceful acting, warning against treason and rebellion, and the repetitiveness of history. Even though Ford paid much attention to the psychology of individual characters in the play, it does not mean that the play loses anything of its quality as a history play. On the contrary, Perkin Warbeck shows little, if any, features of other dramatic genres and should thus be placed somewhere near the middle of the hypothetical scale of plays defined as history plays.

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8 COLCLUSION

The history play was a highly popular dramatic genre in the years when deep nationalistic feelings were provoked in people after the Spanish attempt to conquer

England in 1588. Its popularity, however, significantly declined after the first Stuart king, James I, ascended to the throne and it completely ceased to be written and staged when James‘s son became King Charles I of England in 1625. Throughout the roughly

20 years of its peak popularity it was so fashionable that most playwrights of the era wrote one history play at least. It also won a lot of attention from the royalty as they realized its importance and its impact on the people‘s understandings of English history as well as of the contemporary political situation in England. As a result, history plays became a constituent part of official propaganda and the genre found itself under an oversight by the Master of Revels, a licenser of plays, who cooperated with the playwrights to make their plays politically correct.

In addition to the socio-political background, which shaped the genre, other numerous dramatic as well as non-dramatic genres had an immense impact on the final form of the genre. The most important ones were morality plays, Senecan tragedy, heroic plays, de casibus plays, and the art of rhetoric. Their impact on the history play was so notable that many features typical of these individual genres even became characteristic features of history plays.

Another essential issue which needs to be realized in order to fully comprehend the Elizabethan handling of the past is their conception of historiography and how it differed from its modern purport. Elizabethans were not accustomed to seeing history as an absolutely and purely true record of a course of events, but its interpretation was into a great extent affected by the will of the ruling class and also by the fact that the

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historians, and playwrights even less than chroniclers, saw no problem in mixing facts and fiction and not distinguishing one from the other.

Generally speaking, the plays differed significantly in what features they took over from the original sources, what historical material they depicted, what issues they focused on, how much they distinguished between facts and fiction, how daring they were in reflecting the contemporary political situation or, on the other hand, how much they ingratiated to the contemporary ruling class and propagated the so-called Tudor myth. The result is that the plays generally classified as history plays are very different and it is difficult to comprise them collectively under a single definition. Although there were many attempts to make a suitable definition, so far there has been none which would be generally accepted and which would simply and clearly fix the boundaries of the genre.

The aim of this thesis was to suggest a new definition, or rather characterization, of the genre of history plays which would take into consideration the wide diversity of its features and its position and its account in the socio-political sphere. Moreover, this characterization should approximate and be based on the understanding and perception of the genre as it was done in the Elizabethan-Jacobean period. Furthermore, the definition should encompass most of the plays generally classified as history plays, because, after all, any genre is just a conventional label used by people to denotate a particular scale of plays which are similar to each other and which are characterized by analogous features. This implies that any good definition of a genre should not differ too much from people‘s comprehension of what the genre looks like.

The suggested characterization of the genre of history plays introduces a scalar approach to understanding the boundaries of individual genres. In case of the history plays this approach recognizes two basic criteria which set the bounds to the genre. The 82

first criterion is that any history play should deal with a real and essentially true political topic from English medieval history. The second criterion is that every history play should in some respect reflect the political situation of the time when it was written and staged. These two essential features advert to the duplicity of references to political history: first, the medieval history treated in the content of the plays and, second, the

Elizabethan-Jacobean history hinted at with symbolic allusions and references. I have chosen these two criteria since these are the features which distinguish history plays from the other genres and, in addition to that, the twofold allusion to history was also the reason why the history plays were given such attention by the royalty in the 16th century. This definition is susceptible of the existence of other features which are typical of many history plays but it ponders them only as additional features, whose presence or absence does not determine whether the play is or is not a history play, but the presence of which can only move the play on the imaginary scale closer to the centre and thus make it a more prototypical example of the genre.

In the practical part of this thesis it was demonstrated how diverse plays have often been designated as history plays and that the term history and tragedy in the title is of no predicative value in respect of its classification as a history play. The analysis of

Robert Greene‘s play The Scottish History of James IV suggests that despite being designated as a history in the title, it does not answer the two basic criteria of history plays. The analysis of Shakespeare‘s The Tragedy of Richard III on the other hand has evidenced that even plays which are believed to be liminal in terms of genre can be clear examples of the genre of the history play. The analysis of the last play, John

Ford‘s Perkin Warbeck, has shown that exemplar representatives of the genre of the history play were not written only in the years when the genre was on the summit of its popularity and that the date of composition says nothing of the purity of the genre. The 83

practical part has also demonstrated that suggested characterization of the genre is practical, simply applicable and that it can be encompass a wide range of plays.

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10 RÉSUMÉ

10.1 Résumé

This diploma thesis deals with the Elizabethan and Jacobean history play. The thesis proposes several objectives, which can be divided into two general groups. First, this work aims at apprising the reader of what is generally understood by the term history play, how and when this genre developed, what formed and affected its final shape, what was its background and what was the usual method of playwrights while working with source material. And second, this thesis endeavours to advert to the deficiency of existing definitions of this genre, to suggest a new definition, which would carry out all the drawbacks criticised in case of the other definitions, and to demonstrate the practicality of this definition in identifying the genre of a play.

The analysis of the historical background of the Elizabethan and Jacobean era shows that the history play is rather a wide and deficiently defined genre, which was affected not only by other dramatic and non-dramatic genres, but also by the royal court, which intentionally modified the shape of many history plays with the view of spreading a desirable interpretation of history, both the medieval history and the

Elizabethan or Jacobean political situation. In addition to that, by use of comparison with the methodology of historians and chroniclers it was manifested that historiography practiced by early modern historians, and all the more by playwrights, differed significantly from today‘s way of handling historical facts and data. The outcome of this rather theoretical part of the thesis necessary for the second part is the realization that any definition of this genre should necessarily take into account: the diversity of plays classified as history plays, the fact what was recognized as the major messages of history plays at the time when they were written and staged, and also the 90

fact that no one should expect the history plays to accomplish the truth value criterion, which is often demanded from contemporary works dealing with history.

The second, more practical, part of the thesis adverts to the inadequateness of the existing definitions of the genre of the history play and it brings in a proposal of its new characteristic. While the analysis of the history plays in the first part envisaged them from a general perspective, in the second part three very dissimilar history plays are selected as representatives of the genre of history plays and these are then analysed with a view of finding out whether these plays quadrate with the criteria of the new definition of the genre. For this purpose three plays were selected, each of which was written by a different playwright in a different time period, and bears a different denotation in the title. They are Greene‘s The Scottish History of James the Fourth, Shakespeare‘s The

Tragedy of Richard III, and Ford‘s play Perkin Warbeck. The analysis of their basic features evinced that the genre classification of a play as a history play is determined neither by the denotation in the title, nor by the date of its creation, and not even by the sources, but it was shown that it is determined only by the double reference to history.

Simultaneously, by use of this analysis it was manifested that the newly devised definition of the history play as a genre is practically and simply applicable.

10.2 Resumé

Tato diplomová práce se zabývá historickou hrou alžbětinské a jakubovské doby.

Práce si určila několik cílů, jež se dají rozčlenit do dvou základních skupin. Zaprvé, obeznámení čtenáře s tím, co je běžně chápáno pod pojmem historická hra, jak a kdy se tento žánr vyvíjel, čím byl formován a ovlivňován, jaké bylo jeho pozadí a jaká byla běžná práce dramatiků se zdroji. A zadruhé poukázání na nedostatečnost současných definic tohoto žánru a navrhnutí nové definice, jež by splňovala u jiných definic

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kritizované nedostatky, a dokázat praktickou a jednoduchou použitelnost této definice v rozpoznávání jednotlivých žánrů.

Analýzou historického pozadí alžbětinské a jakubovské doby je dosaženo zjištění,

že historická hra je dosti široký a špatně definovatelný žánr, jenž byl ve své době ovlivňován ne jen ostatními dramatickými a nedramatickými žánry, ale i královským dvorem, jenž cíleně upravoval podobu mnohých historických her v prospěch šíření

žádané interpretace historie a současné politické situace. Mimo to bylo při porovnání s metodickým přístupem historiků a kronikářů ukázáno, že historiografie praktikována renesančními historiky, a o to více dramatiky, se významně odlišovala od současného přístupu k práci s historickými fakty a daty. Souhrnem z této teoretičtější části práce využitelným pro druhou část práce je zjištění, že jakákoliv definice tohoto žánru by měla nutně vzít v potaz různorodost podoby her klasifikovaných jako historická hra, to, co bylo chápáno jako hlavní sdělení historických her v době svého vzniku přenášely, a také to, že by se od her tohoto žánru neměly požadovat takové standardy pravdivosti, jaké se v dnešní době často kladou na současná díla o historii.

Druhá, praktičtější, část práce poukazuje na nedostatečnost současných definic

žánru historických her a přichází s návrhem nové charakteristiky tohoto žánru. Zatímco analýza historických her v první části pojímala historické hry z obecného hlediska, v druhé části práce jsou vybrány tři příklady velice nepodobných her, jež jsou často klasifikovány jako představitelé historických her, a ty jsou pak podrobeny analýze s cílem zjistit, zda tyto hry odpovídají kritériím žánru, jak byl nově definován. Pro tento

účel byly vybrány hry tří různých autorů z různých období a nesoucí jiná označení v názvu, konkrétně Greenova The Scottish History of James the Fourth, Shakespearova hra The Tragedy of Richard III a Fordova hra Perkin Warbeck. Analýzou základních prvků bylo zjištěno, že podle nově navrhnuté definice není klasifikace hry jako 92

historické hry určena ani tím, jak je hra označena v názvu, ani datem vzniku či zdroji, ze kterých vychází, ale je určena pouze dvojím odkazem na historii. Současně byla touto analýzou prokázána praktická a jednoduchá použitelnost nově navržené definice historické hry jako žánru.

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