There was a threat of Catholicism returning in the Elizabethan period. History plays don't present an entirely comfortable or triumphant narrative, so they're not entirely comforting if that's their role. They give us historical past and therefore perhaps a historical future which is very fractured. Shakespeare doesn't write a play about Elizabeth. He doesn't talk about in his since modern times. Was that a worry for him? Did he deliberately avoid it? Were history plays regarded as dangerous? So 1599 is the point when the writing of history in drama and in other forms becomes much more regulated. That's the point when Shakespeare, there's the date of 1599, the last of those history playshecksman
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