Abstract

This is an appraisal of each history play which shows how Shakespeare drew both on learned sources and popular drama to create something uniquely his own. He examines myths surrounding Tudors and Elizabethan beliefs about the great chain of being, order and disorder and punishments visited on children of tyrants and usurpers. Out of all this Shakespeare made a political testament. But as sequence reached its climax in a portrait of perfect king, Henry V, Shakespeare turned from great public themes to heroes like Brutus and Hamlet; it is only Macbeth which perhaps should be considered the epilogue of Histories.