The sacred ideals of England and of kingship, set up at the start ofRichard II and
turned into theatre by Richard at Flint Castle, were betrayed by him in practice. His
usurping successor could not claim these ideals, firm and fair though his rule was.
England is at last led to foreign victory by a king who succeeds by right, and who is
shown to have well studied his people and his role. But the new relationship between
England and her king is based on a providential combination of succession and
success. As the Epilogue points out, Harry of Agincourt was soon succeeded, as King
of France and England, by the infant Henry VI, ‘Whose state so many had the
managing / That they lost France and made his England bleed.’
In both artistic and human terms, Shakespeare’s Histories reach their best in
Henry IV, a play which mixes Henry’s brooding distrust of his wild son with the
comic irresponsibility of Eastcheap to produce a romance outcome: Hal’s apparent
wildness is Henry V’s apprenticeship. The father–son conflict is rehearsed comically
in Part I, with Falstaff as the King, and in near-tragic earnest in Part II.
Shakespeare’s inclusion of all sorts and ranks in his historical representation of
England helped to enrich and universalize his later tragedies, notably King Lear.It
was also the model for the historical novel developed by Walter Scott and his
successors.
Comedy
Shakespeare’s early plays are mostly comedy and History, kinds of play more open
and inclusive than tragedy. Comedy came easily to Shakespeare. Half of his dramatic
output is comic, and his earlier critics, from Jonson to Johnson, preferred his
comedy to his tragedy.
The writing in his earliest surviving play,The Two Gentlemen ofVerona,is already
accomplished. It is a love-comedy with familiar ingredients: a duke, young rivals, a
father called Antonio, a daughter who dresses as a boy to follow her lover, a ring, a
glove, a friar’s cell, comic servants, a song (‘Who is Silvia?’). Plot is stronger in The
Comedy of Errors, based on a Roman comedy by Plautus (c.254–184 BC) which
Shakespeare studied at school, about identical twins with the same name,
Antipholus. Shakespeare is confident enough to give the Antipholus twins identical
twin servants called Dromio, and to manage the complications.
Comedy was easier to write than history: there were prototypes and a repertory
to hand in Roman comedy and medieval romance, and the humanist wit and polish
of Lyly. To write a history, Shakespeare had to turn chronicle into drama, but in
co medy he had a stock of devices already proven on the stage – disguise, mistaken
identity, the contrasting perspectives on love of men and women, parents and chil-
dren, masters and servants. Alternation of perspective, contrast and variety became
a structural principle in all his plays.
In comparison with Two Gentlemen, the Henry VIplays are elementary, though
Richard III, like The Shrew, is a strong stage-play. But nothing in the first Histories
prepares us for the brilliance of Love’s Labour’s Lost and the maturity of A
Midsummer Night’s Dream, plays with much inventiveness of plot. In Love’s Labour’s
Lost the King of Navarre and three friends vow to forswear the company of women
for three years while they pursue wisdom in a ‘little academe’. The Princess of France
and three of her ladies arrive; the men fall in love but daren’t tell each other; the
ladies disguise themselves and make the men look foolish. Their decision to break
their vows and woo the ladies is rationalized by the witty Biron:
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 121