History Plays of William Shakespeare

A large number of Shakespeare’s plays have historical elements, but only few of them are classified as true histories. The Shakespearean chronicles comprise biographies of English kings reigned during the previous four centuries. They include the standalones King John, Edward III, Henry VIII and also a continuous sequence of plays. These eight plays are considered to have been created in two cycles.

• Henry IV, part 1
• Henry IV, part 2
• Henry V
• Henry VI, part 1
• Henry VI, part 2
• Henry VI, part 3
• Henry VIII
• King John
• Richard II
• Richard III

So, the first tetralogy appeared presumably in the early 1590s. It covers the Wars of the Roses saga and consists of such plays as Henry VI, Parts I, II & III and Richard III. In 1599 the second tetralogy saw the light and it included Richard II, Henry IV, Parts I & II and Henry V. This work is frequently called the Henriad after its protagonist Prince Hal, the future Henry V.

Chronicles are a genre section of William Shakespeare's work, including about a third of all his dramatic works. The main theme of Shakespeare's histories is the process of the formation of English statehood through overcoming the chaos of civil strife and the coming to power of the Tudor dynasty.

However, the plots of Shakespeare’s history plays were not invented by the playwright himself.  Most of the them are based on Raphael Holinshed's "Chronicles." Additionally, William Shakespeare pulled inspiration for his works from a number of sources: Sir Thomas North’s translation of Plutarch’s Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans for the Roman plays and the chronicles of Edward Hall and Holinshed for the plays based upon English history.

The chronicles share a number of similar things. First, in most of them the action takes place in times of medieval English history. Second, all of histories are provided with social commentary through the characters and plots. William Shakespeare wrote 10 histories, although 3 of them (King Lear, Macbeth, Hamlet) are often categorized as tragedies with historical elements.