The establishment in the 1570s of permanent theaters just outside of the walls of London led to a massive increase in the demand for new plays. Every available source of stories was looted. English history proved to be especially popular or at least easy to adapt to the stage.
William Shakespeare was much more of a history specialist in
the 1590s than I had understood. Nine English
history plays, plus one comic spinoff, and one Roman play, so nine or ten or
eleven plays in a decade. To the extent
that they were published, the plays were generally called tragedies. We still call Julius Caesar a tragedy
rather than a history, but the plays with British subjects were moved into the
category of histories in the First Folio, so that The True Tragedy of
Richard Duke of York and the Good King Henry VI became Henry VI, Part 3. For example.
Since the Henry VI plays were more sophisticated than
the history plays that preceded them, and Marlowe’s Edward II and
Shakespeare’s Richard II even more so, scholars have categorized older plays
with subjects from British history as “chronicles.” Before Shakespeare and After Shakespeare is
what they mean. But I thought I had
better read at least one of the chronicles.
I picked The Famous Victories of Henry V (1580s?)*,
authors unknown. I am rarely sure what people
mean when they talk about their “reading experience” but this was, for me, a
strange reading experience. The short
play in twenty scenes races through the events of three familiar Shakespeare
plays, the two parts of Henry IV and Henry V. Interspersed with the history scenes are clown
scenes, a vehicle for Richard Tarlton, the greatest comic actor of his time. So it was like reading a poor prose summary
of Shakespeare with unrelated comic scenes mixed in. Odd.
As I understand it, the real difference between the
chronicles and the histories is that the chronicle plays more or less just
march through the key episodes. That is
what Famous Victories does (plus the comedy).
So for example in scene vi, wild Prince Hal reconciles with
his dying father. He hands the King his
dagger. King Henry pardons his son. This
is from the historical accounts. I will
go straight into scene vii to show the contrast.
HENRY IV Stand up my son; and do not think thy father, but at the request of thee, my son, I will pardon thee. And God bless thee, and make thee his servant.
PRINCE Thanks, good my Lord. And no doubt but this day, even this day, I am born new again.
HENRY IV Come, my son, and lords, take me by the hands.
Exeunt omnes.
Scene vii
DERICK Thou art a stinking whore; and a whoreson stinking whore. (vii, 168)
The effect was often this jarring. Shakespeare made dull and undramatic followed
by something rather more vigorous.
The scene where Hal renounces the Falstaff character is almost
totally flat. It is one of the most
moving scenes in Shakespeare. Here it is
another checkmark from the list of episodes. Shakespeare knew this play and borrowed a few
things from it, but there is not much hint of his Falstaff here.
Let’s have another bit of Derick the clown. Here he has dragged Cutbert Cutter the thief
into court:
Oh, masters, stay there! Nay, let’s never belie the man! For he hath not beaten and wounded me also, but he hath beaten and wounded my pack, and hath taken the great raze of ginger that Bouncing Bess with the jolly buttocks should have had. That grieves me most. (iv, 158)
And how about this amusing French captain, in the Henry V
section of Famous Victories.
CAPTAINWhy, take and Englishman out of his warm bed and his stale drink, but one month, and, alas, what will become of him? But give the Frenchman a radish root, and he will live with it all the days of his life. (xiii, 186)
No wonder the French lost so badly. This speech, a note tells me, comes right out
of the source chronicle, lightly paraphrased, although the English author added
the radish root. The British theater
audience wants to learn history, and here it is.
The text and page numbers are from The Oldcastle
Controversy (1991) which also includes Sir John Oldcastle, Part 1,
which I have not read but perhaps should.
If you somehow have a particular chronicle play to recommend, please
do. The early version of King Leir
(pre-1594) is tempting.
* Published in 1598, presumably because of the success of
Shakespeare’s Henry IV plays.
