Classification Paragraph

Dmytro Drozdovskyi, group # 1

All the dramatic works of William Shakespeare fall under three traditional periods: 1590-1594, 1594-1601, and 1601-1609. However, the history plays of this writer can be also divided into three main groups but not according to their chronology. In fact, the parts of the histories were not created one after another; for example, there was a ten-year chronological distance between Henry VI and Henry VIII. Nevertheless, the history plays belong to three main groups: connected with the Lancaster’s last king, the conflicts with the York dynasty, and the blossom of the Lancaster’s monarch family. The fist type of dramas represents the histories that depict the confrontation with Richard II and the historical battles of this time connected with the White and Red Roses. The second category can be characterized as the one that depicts the last member of the rival house of York as an evil monster, “a depiction disputed by many modern historians, while portraying his usurper, Henry VII in glowing terms.”[1] The last kind of the Shakespearean chronicles ends with an effusive celebration of the birth of Elizabeth. However, “Shakespeare's celebration of Tudor order is less important in these history dramas than the spectacular decline of the medieval world. Moreover, some of Shakespeare's histories—and notably Richard III—point out that this medieval world came to its end when opportunism and ‘machiavellism’ infiltrated its politics.”[2] To conclude, we can underline that all the history dramas of W. Shakespeare explain the British historical reality in the Renaissance period and represents the historical conflicts and mechanisms of finding the compromise to create the glorious image of England. The histories made Shakespeare the greatest humanist of the English Renaissance literature.

[1] Traversi, Derek. Shakespeare: the Young Dramatist and the Poet // The Age of Shakespeare, vol. 2. New York: Penguin Books, 1992. P. 281.
[2] Ibid. P. 282.