Stages of History: Shakespeare’s English Chronicles

Stages of History offers a fresh approach to Shakespeare’s English history plays, examining them in the context of a Renaissance world transformed by cultural change, where the study of history took on a new urgency. The author explores the English chronicles in the context of contemporary controversies surrounding the functions of poetry, theatre and history. She focuses on problems in Renaissance historiography which are concerns for today’s criticism - questions of historical authority and causation, of anachronism and nostalgia, and of the historical construction of class and gender. She suggests that the performance of history in Shakespeare’s plays participated - and continues to participate - in contests between opposing theories of history.