How honest are Shakespeare histories?

Abstract

I must admit that what first attracted me to these plays were the obvious historical inaccuracies scattered throughout most of them. At times the sequence of events is altered; people are made to die earlier or later than they did in actual fact; persons who lived at difference times are brought into close contacts, and so on and so forth. I wondered why Shakespeare made these plays so blatantly dishonest; what made him manipulate history as outrageously as he does in some cases. I know that the modern scientific approach to history, which is characterised by a scrupulous honesty and which has factual accuracy as one of its main ends, was unknown to the Elizabethans, who were interested in history for its didactic potentialities rather than for any intrinsic merit. Elizabethan writers were perfectly willing to alter past events in order that they might better mirror the present. And Shakespeare was no exception. To expect his histories to be historically accurate is just out of the question. However, granted that they are not honest - because they were never meant to be - it still ,remains . .'to discover why Shakespeare gave these . . , plays the bent he did actually .. give them why they are 'dishonest' in the particular way they are'. It ought to be kept in mind that Shakespeare was firs~ and foremost a dramatist, a dramatist who throughout his career showed himself acutely conscious of the prevailing literary fashion of the time, and who was always careful to give his public what they wanted, modifying his approach to suit the current taste. Therefore the date of composition of the plays is of particular importance, because in writing them at the time he did many factors influenced Shakespeare. Because of this I do not agree with the view which sees the ten plays as forming one long epic cycle. And it is mot only the inescapable fact that the later tetralogy depicts earlier events that makes me regard the plays as separate. There is unmistakable evidence in the plays themselves which shows that in the histories Shakespeare's main ' concern is not to show English History in one vast sweep from Richard II to Richard III with King John and Henry VIII as prologue and epilogue. There is a development which can be traced throughout these ten plays. But the development is an artistic one and depends on the chronological composition rather than on the actual historical dating of the events depicted. I believe that the histories can be seen as stages in Shakespeare's career as a dramatist.