Table Of ContentSHAKESPEHRESE NGLISHK INGS
ENGLISH
kINGS
ShakespeaRe's
English
Kings
histoRy, chRonicle, and bRama
Second Edition
peteR saccio
OXFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
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UNIVERSITY PRESS
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Copyright © 1977, 2000 by Oxford University Press, Inc.
First published by Oxford University Press, New York, 1977
198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016
Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of Oxford University Press.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Saccio, Peter.
Shakespeare's English kings: history, chronicle, and drama /
Peter Saccio. — 2nd ed.
p. cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-19-512318-2 (alk. paper) — ISBN 0-19-512319-0 (pbk. : alk. paper)
i. Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 — Histories.
2. Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 — Characters — Kings and rulers.
3. Historical drama, English — History and criticism.
4. Great Britain — History — 1066-1687 — Historiograpy.
5. Kings and rulers in literature. 6. Great Britain — In literature. I. Tide.
PR2982.S2 2000 822-3'3 21 —dc21 dc2I 99-043297
Maps drawn by David Lindroth
13579 10 8642
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
In Memoriam
James Leslie Steffensen, Jr.
I930-1999
pRefatony note
to the Second Edition
This new edition is not prompted by fresh discoveries about the rudi-
mentary facts of English medieval history: the same kings fought the
same battles and died in the same years. The chapters that follow, re-
counting the events of these kings' reigns and the changes Shake-
speare made to put them on the stage, remain the same, save for
errors and infelicities that I have amended. But over the past two
decades a great deal of work has been done by historians, Shake-
spearean scholars, and the people who create Shakespearean theatre.
This edition also provides access to what I consider to be the most
enlightening of that work.
The most important statement that I must make as I introduce a
second edition is this: no longer is the fifteenth century a neglected
period of English history. Since Shakespeare's English Kings appeared
in 1977, for example, the English Monarchs series of biographies
(now published by Yale) has added impressive volumes on Richard II,
Henry V, Henry VI, and Richard III. Detailed studies have altered
and enriched the way we understand the nature of royal rule and the
way kings arrived at the decisions they did. The Afterword at the end
of this second edition discusses what historians have lately taught us
about the Plantagenets. It also speaks of new interpretations in
Shakespearean scholarship. The Further Bibliography serves as a
vi
Prefatory Note to the Second Edition
specific guide to this work. One fascinating result of recent research
and reinterpetation is that Shakespeare's account of the kings now
seems closer than before to history as we now understand it. Artistic
instinct and necessity led him to make changes in the chronicles he
read, but he knew how his late medieval characters looked at things.
The present widespread availability of Shakespeare also makes a
new edition of this book appropriate. In 1977 the only movie versions
of Shakespeare's history plays generally available were Laurence
Olivier's films of Henry V (1944) and Richard III (1955), and Orson
Welles's condensation of the Henry IV plays into Chimes at Midnight
(1966). One had to go to a cinema to see them. Videocassettes and
the making of new versions for film or for video have changed all
that. BBC-TV has taped the complete works of Shakespeare, doing a
fair job with some of the plays. By filming Henry V in 1989 Kenneth
Branagh proved again that large audiences will attend a Shake-
spearean history, and thereby initiated a spate of Shakespearean films
that has included Ian McKellan's resetting of Richard III in a fascist
Britain of the 1930s. As I write, the Academy Award for best movie
has just been given to a fantasy biography called Shakespeare in Love,
in which the screenwriters Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard risk
several references to the Henry VI plays.
It is not simply the younger media that make Shakespeare more
available. For stage productions of the history plays in 1977, one gen-
erally had to go to Britain. Now the Royal Shakespeare Company is
willing not only to produce such a seldom performed play as Henry
VIII but also to tour it to New York and Washington. The Public
Theater has produced the complete works in New York. Regional
Shakespeare theatres have multiplied in America, led by the venera-
ble and distinguished Oregon Shakespeare Festival, where, in 1995,
the actor Derrick Lee Weeden played the most carefully motivated
and lucidly expressive Bolingbroke I have yet seen.
This book makes accessible to the audiences of such productions
information that they will find useful for understanding the plays.
vii
Prefatory Note to the Second Edition
My delight in Weeden's performance in Richard II was tinged with
sadness for the two theatregoers sitting behind me, who sporadically
tried to figure out (in suitably hushed tones) whether Bolingbroke
and Henry and Hereford and Derby were all the same person. They
were not alone in their problem. The notable scholars editing the
Norton Shakespeare (1997) heroically condense an account of Shake-
speare's kings into their endpapers: the result is breathless and not
without error.
It is naturally gratifying to an author to find that his book has
maintained usefulness over twenty-two years, and is still sufficiently
sought after to be worth updating. Scholars usually thank other
scholars at the end of a preface. I am delighted to thank the students,
the theatre people, and the general readers who have found some in-
struction and pleasure in my effort to narrate medieval history in a
form that makes Shakespeare more accessible to them. And I am
glad to say once more that the credit for the original idea belongs to
James Steffensen, then at Wesleyan University, lately my colleague at
Dartmouth. To his memory this new edition is dedicated.
Sanborn House Peter Saccio
Dartmouth College
November 1999
via
pRef atony note
to the First Edition
This book recounts English history during the reigns of eight
Plantagenet kings and one Tudor. That is, it concerns the people
and events that Shakespeare put on stage in his ten history plays.
I have written with an eye on the differences between medieval
history as we now understand it and Shakespeare's version of that
history. I hope that the book will be useful to students of Shake-
speare, theatergoers, and general readers interested in these kings
and these plays. My precise scope and purposes are more fully de-
scribed in the first chapter.
Since childhood I have found the Plantagenets to be highly en-
joyable, if occasionally disconcerting, company. Although some
of them behaved like gangsters, they were at least high-minded
and gorgeous gangsters, and they ruled England—often well—for
three centuries. Shakespeare lavished ten years of his art upon
them. Englishmen of their own and succeeding times held strong
views about them; they inspire controversy still among modern
historians; and I have some definite opinions about them, opin-
ions that I have occasionally let creep into these pages. But I have
no thesis to argue: I wish chiefly to provide information. My
work is based largely on secondary sources, as acknowledged in
the bibliography.
I am glad to thank a number of persons who have aided me
ix
