Is Shakespeare History? The Plantagenets
In Our Time: Culture
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Shakespeare's History of the Wars of the Roses
You can never say with certainty that shakespeare set out to write one vast sweeping history leading to the tudors. But certainly towards the end of richard, the second you get reference hol er er spending time with the kind of people he shouldn't be spending time with. He read about the wars the roses first, and he wrote a great deal about a weak king. And the weak king served his dramatic purposes well, because these great wars were going on. So it was worth perhaps rewriting. Had hit on it, and he had a major hit on his hand. Not so much with the history, perhaps, as with falstaff. But we don't know. We only have
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