Shakespeare’s histories or chronicles.

The histories, or chronicle plays, are more closely related to Shakespeare’s tragedies than to the comedies. They can be regarded as a profound and detailed treatise upon the nature of monarchy. In them Shakespeare shows us all types of autocratic rules.

The best histories of Shakespeare are Henry IV and Henry V. In Henry IV the central character is Prince Hal, the King’s son and later Henry V. The king is grieved first by the opposition of some rebels led by the Percy family, notably Henry Hotpur, son of the Earl of Northumberland, and secondly by the dissolute conduct of his own son, who wastes his life in taverns instead of emulating Hotspur in a career of military honour. Hal’s tavern companion is Sir John Falstaff one of the greatest of Shakespeare’s comic characters.

In this chronicle Shakespeare shows the unavoidable defeat of feudals in the combat with the royal power. However, Hotspur is shown in positive regard. We sympathize with his faithfulness to his ideals, with his courage and bravery.

The important role in the play is given to Prince Harry. Shakespeare presented him as a merry fellow, who wastes his time on adventures in the company of Falstaff. His character is many-sided. He is resolute and brave in battles, lively and easy-going with common people, clever in state affairs.

Shakespeare stresses Henry’s democratic manner when he describes him as he talks to his soldiers; he chats with them. He is brave and modest too. His strength founded on the support of the masses, he wins his victories over France.

The most remarkable features of Shakespeare’s chronicles is that it is not only individuals who are active in them, as with Marlowe, for whom only Tamburlaine acts. While with Marlowe the army is only a pale appendix to the titanic figure of the Victor, with Shakespeare the French are defeated not solely by Henry V but the entire English army: the battle of Agincourt was won not only by a little group of well-born heroes but by the English soldiers. The English Yeomanry conquered the disintegrated feudal nobility of France. Henry’s soldiers come from various national groups. Williams and Bates are English, Fluellin is Welsh, Macmorris is Irish and Samy is Scotch. They talk English in their own ways. Fluellin speaks in prose and pistol, a remnant of the dying feudal forces, in verse.

The chronicles impress us with the versability of Shakespeare's genius. It is in these chronicles that his ability to depict the great variety of real life grew up and matured. he displays a panoramic picture of royal palaces, taverns, battlefields and other scenes from real life.

The essence of Shakespeare’s combination of the tragic with the comic, his mastery of which is so well displayed in the comedies, was first developed in the chronicles. the best of this kind is Henry IV, Part II, in which we find the sorrowful Lord Northumberland, who laments the death of his son, and a gay scene in the garden of Justice Shallow, with the jokes of Falstaff for good measure. Sir John Falstaff, who appears in Henry IV and in Henry V and later in the “Merry Wives of Windsor”, is one of the liveliest figures in Shakespeare’s chronicles. He has been often compared to Don Quixote. Falstaff is not only a piece of a decaying world, he personifies much of what is typical for the epoch of the Renaissance, the living protest against medieval asceticism as well as against the hypocritical self-restriction of the Puritans. One of the earlier-commentators called Falstaff the resurrected Baechus.

Lecture 6.