He shapes the history that he's dealing with. He puts it into the order that works for a play, not for a chronicle. One of the things he has to struggle with all the way through is how to portray a moment of overthrow of a monarch without looking like he's wholly in favor of that kind of activity. But I think he's also dealing with censorship. And we can see from the manuscript, Hand D writing in St Thomas More is Shakespeare,. Then we know that that particular manuscript had actually been read by the master of the rivals and was scribbled on.
In the first of two programmes marking In Our Time's 20th anniversary on 15th October, Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Shakespeare's versions of history, starting with the English Plantagenets. His eight plays from Richard II to Richard III were written out of order, in the Elizabethan era, and have had a significant impact on the way we see those histories today. In the second programme, Melvyn discusses the Roman plays.
The image above is of Richard Burton (1925 - 1984) as Henry V in the Shakespeare play of the same name, from 1951
With
Emma Smith
Professor of Shakespeare Studies at Hertford College, University of Oxford
Gordon McMullan
Professor of English at King’s College London and Director of the London Shakespeare Centre
And
Katherine Lewis
Senior Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of Huddersfield
Producer: Simon Tillotson