Shakespeare's Early History Plays From Chronicle to Stage [Hardcover]

Like many of his fellow playwrights, Shakespeare turned to national history for inspiration. In this study, Dominique Goy-Blanquet provides a close comparison of theHenry VIplays andRichard IIIwith their sources, demonstrating how Shakespeare was able to meet not only the ideological but also the technical problems of turning history into drama, how by cutting, carving, shaping, and casting his unwieldy material into performable plays, he matured into the most influential dramatist and historian of his time.

I. The Mysteries ofHenry VI
1. Critical waves
2. Classical shades
3. Cyclical storms
4. From page to stage
II. National Unity and Military Honour
5. The matter of 1 Henry VI
6. Borrowing material
7. The theme of union
8. Space and time
III. Plotters and Plot
9. Refashioning history
10. Playing with time
11. Piecing out facts
IV. Grammatical Laws
12. From narrative to dramatic syntax
13. The appeal to the sources
14. Court masks, street masques
V. Unhappy Families
15. The narrative material of3 Henry VI
16. Dramatic techniques
17. Critical rewriting
18. The literary tradition
VI. The Dawn of Tragedy
19. A turn for the worst
20. The new ethics
21. The actors of the drama
22. The tragic structure of history
23. To be continued
VII. Unnatural Born Killer
24. The text ofRichard III
25. Plotting history
26. Hall's histories of Richard
27. Hall or Holinshed?
VIII. Certain Dregs of Conscience
28. Vergil's tragic hell
29. More's dramaticHistory
30. Poetic licence
31. Designing characters
Conclusion: A world to bustle in
Bibliography

Dominique Goy-Blanquet has remarkable knowledge of Shakespeare's early chronicle plays,l£2