they do so in the process of depicting something that happened: the
defeat of the Persians at Salamis, the murder of Caesar. This is perfectly
true, but as a definition of a history play, it still leaves a great deal to be
desired, because it covers all sorts of plays that we wouldn’t think of as
‘history plays’. Many playwrights use stories, perhaps from newspapers or
from their own experience, as a basis for theirfictional writing. Georg
Büchner’sunfinishedWoyzeck, for example, was inspired by a story in a
newspaper; but it is clearly an imaginative,fictionalised account of the
events and we wouldn’t call it a history play. Others use legends or reli-
gious stories, which may or may not have a basis in truth: for example,
the Greek tragedies, based on Homeric myths, or the mediaeval miracle
plays, based on stories in the Bible. The line between myth and history
can be hard to draw; hence Nietzsche’s remark that‘it is the fate of every
myth to creep gradually into the narrow confines of an allegedly historical
reality’.^8 Nonetheless, mythical and religious plays are not normally
considered history plays.
A third feature of the history play is that the events depicted by history
plays must be more than just‘real’; they must be public. SupposeThe
Glass Menagerie, which Tennessee Williams describes as a‘memory play’,
depicts real events from his past; even so, it is not a history play, because
those events are known only to Williams (and a few others).^9 We do not
have independent access to them, or independent reason to believe that
they took place. Thus, the spectator at the history play typically knows
that it is a history play, and this has a certain influence on how she
understands what she sees.^10
Furthermore, the history play requires something of its author: a respon-
sible engagement with the sources. SupposeJulius Caesarwas written after
Shakespeare had heard only the barest details of Caesar’s death; by
pure coincidence, he happened to get much of it right. Knowing this, we
would be reluctant, I think, to call it a history play.^11 As it happens, we
know that Shakespeare did engage closely with his sources, especially
Plutarch, perhaps Suetonius and others. Pushkin and Büchner also work
closely with source materials: Pushkin was, in fact, an accomplished
historian; we shall discuss Büchner presently. To take a more recent
example: Michael Frayn published, together with the play text of his
history play,Democracy, a detailed account of his sources, which gives an
idea of the amount of research that can go into a history play.^12 To think
that the playwright has engaged carefully with the sources and that the
play depicts a real event does not equate to thinking that all of the words
uttered by historical characters were in fact uttered by the corresponding
characters; in fact, it seems consistent with some history plays to think
thatnoneof the historicalfigures said what the characters are depicted as
saying.^13
78 From the World to the Stage