William Shakespeare, the Wars of the Roses and the historians / Keith Dockray.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Dockray, Keith, author.

Contributor:

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Fund.

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Library (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616--Histories.

Shakespeare, William.

Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616.

Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616--Political and social views.

Political and social views.

History.

Historiography.

Great Britain--History--Wars of the Roses, 1455-1485--Literature and the wars.

Great Britain.

Great Britain--History--Wars of the Roses, 1455-1485--Historiography.

Literature and history--Great Britain.

Literature and history.

Civil war in literature.

Physical Description:

190 pages ; 24 cm

Edition:

Revised edition.

Other Title:

Wars of the Roses and the historians

Place of Publication:

[Oxford, UK] : Fonthill Media Limited, [2016]

Summary:

For historians of the Wars of the Roses William Shakespeare is both a curse and a blessing: a curse because he immortalized Tudor spin on fifteenth-century civil wars that helped justify Elizabeth I's occupation of the English throne; a blessing because, without Shakespeare's eight-play Plantagenet history cycle, hardly anyone beyond specialists in the history of the period would know of their existence. Moreover, no mere historian will ever paint a more compelling and dramatic picture of England's Lancastrian and Yorkist kings, and the Wars of the Roses, than William Shakespeare. The book begins with an examination of the context, content and significance of Shakespeare's Richard H. Henry IV Parts 1 and 2, Henry V, Henry VI Parts 1, 2 and 3 and Richard III. It then considers the contemporary, near-contemporary and Tudor sources on which Shakespeare drew; how such authors chose to present fifteenth Century kings, politics and society; and why, and in what ways, historians since Shakespeare have sought to reinterpret the Wars of the Roses era. The book ends with a retrospective assessment of Shakespeare's Plantagenet plays, both in performance and as a result of their impact on historical writing. Book jacket.

Contents:

1. William Shakespeare, the Later Plantagenet Kings and the Wars of the Roses

2. Richard II, Henry IV and the Establishment of the Lancastrian Dynasty

3. Henry V, Henry VI and the Hundred Years War

4. Henry VI, Richard of York and the Wars of the Roses

5. Edward IV, Warwick the Kingmaker and the Wars of the Roses

6. Richard III, Henry VII and the Wars of the Roses

7. Tudor Historians and the Wars of the Roses

8. The Wars of the Roses in Stuart and Hanoverian Times

9. The Victorians and the Wars of the Roses

10. Twentieth-Century Historians and the Wars of the Roses

11. William Shakespeare's Plantagenet History Plays in Perspective.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical referenes (pages 186-190).

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Horace Howard Furness Memorial Fund.

ISBN:

9781781554159

1781554153

OCLC:

946705616