BASC70178 - Shakespeare’s Henriad: Richard II, Henry IV Parts 1 and 2, Henry V
Course Description
Shakespeare’s Henriad comprises four of his history plays. It portrays the forced deposal of Richard II by his cousin and successor, Henry IV, of Henry IV’s struggles to overcome a series of armed rebellions, of Henry V’s wayward youth, his improbable rise to the throne, his victory at the battle of Agincourt and his marriage to Catherine of Valois, which made him heir apparent to King Charles VI of France.
Shakespeare wrote the Henriad over the course of the 1590s, a decade during which history plays in general – and English histories in particular – were extremely popular in England, largely due to Shakespeare’s own efforts. Well aware of their power to disseminate versions of English history to a wide audience, Queen Elizabeth and her supporters took a keen interest in these plays, and some scholars have read into the Henriad nationalist, royalist or pro-Tudor themes that would have kept Shakespeare on the queen’s good side.
But like all of Shakespeare’s works, the Henriad is too rich and complex to be understood as propaganda. Although Shakespeare was surely reflecting on contemporary politics and the Tudor queen as he wrote about the three Plantagenet kings who had ruled roughly two centuries earlier, the plays have no clear ideological center. They are interested in timeless questions about the sources of legitimate authority, both real and perceived, about the tensions between the public and personal lives of rulers, and about the moral flexibility that hangs about power. Along with these questions, we’ll pay close attention to Shakespeare’s gorgeous poetry and his dazzlingly vivid characters, who have their moments of tragedy, comedy and triumph over the course of the four plays.
Course Outline
Course Texts:
King Richard II. Edited by Charles R. Forker. Arden Shakespeare: Third Series. 2002. ISBN 978-1903436332.
King Henry IV, Part 1. Edited by David Scott Kastan. Arden Shakespeare: Third Series. 2002. ISBN 978- 1904271352.
King Henry IV, Part 2. Edited by James C. Bulman. Arden Shakespeare: Third Series. 2016. ISBN 978-1904271376.
King Henry V. Edited by T.W. Craik. Arden Shakespeare: Third Series. 1995. ISBN 978-1904271086.
Notes
Online registration deadline: Thursday, December 29 at 5 pm CT