Overview

Shakespeare's History Plays are central to his dramatic achievement. Often seen as political dramas, they mix heroic, comic, and tragic modes. In recent years they have stimulated intensely contested interpretations because of their treatment of English and national identities and of gender issues. Beginning in the 1980s, New Historicist and cultural materialist readings swept away an earlier humanist consensus. Psychoanalytic readings have been followed by a highly productive recent wave of feminist, gender-based, and post-colonial criticism. R.J.C. Watt provides an up-to-date critical anthology representing the best work from each of these theoretical perspectives. His introduction outlines the changing debate which has now become one of the liveliest areas of Shakespeare criticism.