Shakespeare's Histories: A Guide to Criticism (Blackwell Guides to Criticism)

This Guide steers students through four centuries of critical writing on Shakespeare’s history plays, enhancing their enjoyment and broadening their critical repertoire. Guides students through four centuries of critical writing on Shakespeare’s history plays. Covers both significant early views and recent critical interventions. Substantial editorial material links the articles and places them in context. Annotated suggestions for further reading allow students to investigate further. Shakespeare’s Histories......Page 5 Contents......Page 7 Preface......Page 9 Acknowledgements......Page 10 1 The Development of Criticism of Shakespeare’s Histories......Page 13 2 Genre......Page 46 Richard III and the Shape of History......Page 54 The Instability of History in the Henry IV Sequence......Page 78 3 Language......Page 109 Psychoanalysing the Shakespeare Text......Page 115 Value and Metaphor in the Lancastrian Tetralogy......Page 135 4 Gender and Sexuality......Page 155 Elizabeth......Page 159 King John......Page 194 5 History and Politics......Page 208 Shakespeare’s Irish History......Page 215 Shakespeare and National Identities......Page 237 6 Performance......Page 258 In the Context of English History......Page 265 Stagecraft and Imagery in Shakespeare’s Henry VI......Page 284 Index......Page 301 Shakespeare's history plays, with their insistent depictions of leadership and its discontents, have prompted very different critical views over the past four centuries. This book introduces students to the key critical debates under five headings: genre, language, gender and sexuality, history and politics, and performance. The Guide serves both to enhance students' enjoyment of the history plays and to broaden the reader's critical repertoire. By presenting ten recent critical interventions in the field, it provides a compendium of current scholarship. These articles are contextualized with brief critical overviews and annotated suggestions for further reading. An additional narrative chapter on pretwentieth-century criticism excerpts significant views by critics, including Johnson, Hazlitt and Coleridge. Shakespeare's history plays, with their insistent depictions of leadership and its discontents, have prompted very different critical views over the last four centuries. This book introduces students to the key critical debates Contemporary mentions of Shakespeare are thin on the ground.