The first collected edition of Shakespeare, the Folio of 1623, lists three categories of plays: Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies. Comedy and Tragedy are classical genres going back to the Greeks. But the history play was a new form that became popular in the 1580s. Its popularity is related to the new sense of England as a nation that emerges in the sixteenth century. In this course we will discuss four of Shakespeare’s history plays: Richard III, Richard II, Henry IV (Part 1), and Henry V. In addition, we will consider these plays in relation to comedy and tragedy as older and powerfully influential forms and also in relation to Presented by: Mark Rose contemporary Elizabethan cultural and political developments.

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