The Shape of Time: Form and Value in the Shakespearean History Play

The Shape of Time: Form and Value in the Shakespearean History Play David Scott Kastan In spite of the anomalous presence of Cymbeline among the tragedies in the First Folio, there is little doubt that John Heminges and Henry Condell conceived of comedy and tragedy in ways very similar to the majority of their contemporaries. Individual differences among these plays are subordinated to a commonplace generic sense of comedy’s movement from con­ fusion to happiness and of tragedy’s from prosperity to dis­ aster. The third of the Folio’s classifications, however, poses more vexing problems. For the two editors of the volume the ten plays called “histories” are seemingly linked by their com­ mon origin in English (rather than legendary or classical) history, but this principle of arrangement does not reveal a sense of genre comparable to that which informs the grouping of the two other dramatic modes. Although Heminges and Condell provide no clear guidelines to the generic nature of the histories, scholars, following the lead of the 1623 Folio, have usually assumed that the history play was a distinct and artistically significant genre that Shake­ speare’s unique genius had elevated to new heights. Yet this seemingly unobjectionable view is not precisely confirmed by other existing contemporary evidence. The quartos of 3 Henry VI, Richard II, and Richard III that had appeared prior to the publication of the First Folio label the plays tragedies, while Francis Meres, praising Shakespeare “for Tragedy,” indiscrim­ inately cites “his Richard the 2, Richard the 3, Henry the 4, King Iohn, Titus Andronicus, and his Romeo and IulietJ’l The evidence suggests that radical definition of history and tragedy 259 260 Comparative Drama had not yet been achieved and raises questions about the very existence of the history play as a legitimate dramatic genre. But, understandably, the authority of the Folio is not easily ignored, and repeatedly attempts have been made to isolate the history play as a determinate dramatic form by reference to this oft-times confusing dramatic nomenclature. Even while acknowledging the irregularities of Elizabethan terminology, John Elliott finds it significant “that the first use of the word ‘history’ as a specifically theatrical designation occurs on the title-page of Quarto 1 Henry IV, a play which resists classifica­ tion either as tragedy or comedy . . . .”2 Such an indication of generic self-awareness would indeed be revealing, but unfortu­ nately Elliott’s statement is inaccurate. Allardyce Nicoli has pointed to an earlier claimant—the manifestly unhistorical Taming of a Shrew, called on its 1594 title-page A Pleasant Conceited Histories And while this suggests something of the maddeningly inconclusive usage of the term, Taming of a Shrew is itself incorrectly identified as the first of the Elizabethan plays to be generically labeled a “history.” At least three earlier plays have the basis of a prior claim: Alexander Neville’s translation of Seneca’s Oedipus was entered in the Stationers’ Register in 1563 as the lamentable history of the Prynnce Oedipus, but when published it was as a “tragedie”; the head-title and run­ ning-titles of Jacob and Esau (1568) read “The Historie of Iacob and Esau,” though its title-page calls the play A Newe mery and wittie Comedie or Enterlude; and, in fact, the first title-page to use “history” as a generic label is George Whet­ stone’s Right Excellent and famous Historye, of Promos and Cassandra (1578). Any effort to discover a sense of an emerg­ ing genre by reference to the earliest uses of the term “history” must, then, collapse in the face of the imprecision of Elizabethan title-page practice. Seneca’s Oedipus is a tragedy of fortune; Jacob and Esau, in spite of the unique historicity of its biblical source, is too close to a classical “regular” comedy to be con­ sidered an incipient history play; and the two parts of Promos and Cassandra, derived from a novella by Cintino, are more accurately described by Whetstone in his dedication as “two Comedies.” If the earliest examples of the use of “history” as a dramatic designation do not reveal a consistent sense of genre, no more regular practice can be discovered as Elizabeth...