Approaches to Teaching Shakespeare's English History Plays ed. by Laurie Ellinghausen (review)

Every year William Shakespeare–related scholarship generates articles and books at a pace too dizzying even for specialists. This volume, devoted to a specific sub-genre—English history plays—features thirty-one contributors who have taught the plays in diverse colleges and universities in the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada. With such a cornucopia of opinions, how merciful of the editor Laurie Ellinghausen to devote the first thirty pages of the book to give us an overview of the field. This is by far the most informative and readable section of the book, in which Ellinghausen reviews all major critical editions and multimedia adaptations of the plays available in the great Shakespeare marketplace.

I do wish, however, that the book had made it abundantly clear that Shakespeare's English history plays are not necessarily a good way to learn about English history. There is much to be said about how the plays have distorted history to perpetuate the official state and church propaganda, as scholars such as Stephen Greenblatt, David Kastan, Leonard Tennenhouse, and David Womersley have reminded us. Ellinghausen herself claims that the plays show us how 'commoners, and the working classes also challenge official narratives of history' and goes on to cite 'Jack Cade's rebellion' as one of the instances (p. 14). But as Richard Helgerson has shown in his acclaimed Forms of Nationhood (University of Chicago Press, 1992), Shakespeare's 2 Henry VI also ridicules the supposedly revolutionary working classes as populist fools and buffoons.

Glenn Odom offers a useful survey of primary sources that Shakespeare draws upon in his history plays. M. G. Aune mentions how students can be encouraged to compare King John with various primary sources (available online) to assess Shakespeare's dramatic choices. William A. Oram and Howard Nenner review Shakespeare's political contexts to analyse the character of Richard III. Jonathan Hart focuses on political rhetoric in various history plays. Mary Janell Metzger reads Montaigne to interpret Richard III as a sceptical text. David J. Baker focuses on British cartography and ethnic diversity. Barbara Sebek studies how the plays imagine the world beyond Britain to develop a global consciousness. Phyllis Rackin offers illuminating analyses of various female characters. Maya Mathur relies on film and television adaptations to teach the Henry IV plays. Ruben Espinosa draws attention to non-English strangers in Henry V. Like many other contributors in this collection Hugh Macrae Richmond writes about using internet sources to teach Shakespeare. Some contentions aside, the book is a rich pedagogical resource.