Now that we have our guiding question, the chapter proceeds as follows:
first, I give some defining features of a history play. Second, with this in
mind, we can look at some possible answers to the question.
What is a history play?
As we have seen, the notion of a play that depicts real historical events
goes back to the very beginning of theatre as we know it. In relation to
Aeschylus’play, I have already mentioned two criteria that are important,
but certainly not exhaustive: the play uses proper names, which refer to
real people and real places, and the play depicts real events.
As to thefirst–the use of proper names–it is true that plays like
Julius Caesarrefer to real people and real places (Atossa, Mary Stuart,
Richard of York, St Albans). Of course,referringto somebody or some-
thing is not the same as saying something true about them. If I say
‘Julius Caesar was not a Roman’then I am saying something false; but I
am saying something falseabout Caesarin virtue of using his name to
refer to him. So the reference to real people and places in history plays is
independent of whether what is said about them is true (and independent
of whether what they do on stage is what they really did). But the use of
proper names referring to real historical people or places is not all it takes
to be a history play. After all,Hamlet(at least sometimes) does that–
Horatio, for example, speaks of Rome. It isn’t enough, then, just to use a
historical name. Nor is using historicalfigures as characters a distinctive
feature of history plays: plenty of playwrights depict meetings between
famous people that never took place, or that imaginativelyfill in the
details of real meetings.^7 Note, too, that it would be far too strong to say
that history plays useonlyreal people and real places: that is false, at least
for the major historical playwrights of the Western canon, who are per-
fectly happy to make up characters when it suits them.
Second, history plays depict events that really happened: Brutus did
stab Caesar. Other examples might be: a battle, a particular period or
occasion in a famous person’s life, a meeting between historicalfigures.
To say that the event‘took place’is certainly not to say that it took place
in just the way depicted on stage, that everything happened in this way,
or that every scene has a real, historical counterpart (indeed, I shall be
arguing against precisely this view). Thus, defining history plays in terms
of‘events that really happened’does not give us an answer to our guiding
question. Our companion, we may safely assume, knows full well that
Caesar was stabbed by Brutus: she wants to know if it happenedlike that
(i.e. in relation to the performance we just saw). Historical playwrights
make up characters, meetings and conversations–including supernatural
ones (as inThe PersiansorJulius Caesar); all we are saying (here) is that
History in the making 77