page_title: History (theatrical genre)
section_title: Shakespeare
hierarchical_section_title: History (theatrical genre) / Shakespeare
caption_attribution_description: English: Print of Kean playing Richard III, from a mid 19th century performance of the play.
context_page_description: History is one of the three main genres in Western theatre alongside tragedy and comedy, although it originated, in its modern form, thousands of years later than the other primary genres. For this reason, it is often treated as a subset of tragedy. A play in this genre is known as a history play and is based on a historical narrative, often set in the medieval or early modern past. History emerged as a distinct genre from tragedy in Renaissance England. The best known examples of the genre are the history plays written by William Shakespeare, whose plays still serve to define the genre. History plays also appear elsewhere in British and Western literature, such as Thomas Heywood's Edward IV, Schiller's Mary Stuart or the Dutch genre Gijsbrecht van Aemstel.
context_section_description: In the First Folio, the plays of William Shakespeare were grouped into three categories: comedies, histories, and tragedies.  The histories—along with those of contemporary Renaissance playwrights—help define the genre of history plays. Shakespeare's Histories might be more accurately called the "English history plays." These plays dramatize historical events from English history as early as the reign of King John and as late as Henry VIII. In addition to these two, Shakespeare wrote eight plays covering the continuous period of history between the reigns of Richard II and Richard III. The so-called first tetralogy, apparently written in the early 1590s, deals with the later part of the struggle and includes Henry VI, parts one, two & three and Richard III. The second tetralogy, finished in 1599 and including Richard II, Henry IV, Part 1, Henry IV, Part 2 and Henry V, is frequently called the Henriad after its protagonist Prince Hal, the future Henry V.
  Shakespeare himself alludes to the recognition of history as an established theatrical genre in Hamlet when Polonius announces the arrival of "the best actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy, history...". 
  Several of Shakespeare's other plays listed as tragedies in the First Folio, however, could be classified as history plays according to a broader, more generalized definition. Plays such as Julius Caesar, and Antony and Cleopatra depict historical events from classical antiquity, for example, while King Lear and Cymbeline dramatize the history of ancient Britain and Macbeth depicts the historical events not of medieval England but rather of medieval Scotland.
  A consistent theme in historical drama of both Shakespeare and his English contemporaries revolves around questions of who had legitimate claim to participate in the affairs of the state. Shakespeare's history plays are considered the defining works of the genre. Later playwrights of history plays would either follow his stylistic model or at least have an acute awareness of their stylistic differences with Shakespearean histories.
caption: Charles Kean as Richard III
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