Absorbing national history into crafted play with characteristic ingenuity, Shakespeare exposes the idiosyncratic quality of historical construction. To substantiate the narrative bulk of 1 King Henry IV, Shakespeare used the Holinshed Chronicles, an ambitious record of English history published in the late sixteenth century. Departing from the Chronicle’s narrowed occupation with succession, war and insurrection — cue Marx: “the ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas” — the play includes a distinctive breadth that initiates an interrogation of the historical subject.
Exploratory Shakespeare
English 15 Summer 2015
