Shakespeare's History plays: 1900-1951

Summary

Some Nineteenth-Century Views

In contemplating the masterpieces of the past, each age imparts to them something of itself. In few fields of literary criticism is there a more striking contrast between the last century and this than in their interpretation of Shakespeare’s history plays. Although we no doubt add some different alloy from our own prejudice, it is easy for us now to see that the nineteenth century’s conception of them was in some measure the result of its predilection. For an age of industrial and commercial progress, of growing nationalisms and imperialist expansion, the most obvious thing about Shakespeare’s history plays was their expression of a national spirit. Together they formed an ‘immortal epic’ of which England was the true protagonist. It would be foolish to look for a single originator of this common view, but it can be traced back especially to A. W. Schlegel’s Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature, delivered in 1808 and translated into English in 1815. Most of the German and many of the English critics followed Schlegel in regarding the ten histories as one great work of which King John was the prologue and Henry VIII the epilogue. An occasional sceptic found difficulty in accepting as a prologue something which gives no hint of the work to follow or of reconciling such a scheme with the belief, then usual, in the composite authorship of the first three or four plays. Nevertheless, it was the large vision of the romantic critics that showed us the broad historical pattern into which the plays fall. Schlegel himself strikingly anticipated recent critics when he saw that the dethronement of Richard II begins a cycle of revolts which continue until the curse is finally expiated in the overthrow of Richard III.