| The English history play of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries is a problematic genre whose diversity can be more fully understood by examining the nexus of "history" and "play." While "history" has been the focus of many previous discussions, "play" serves as an organizing concept in this study. "Play" encompasses broad possibilities of action and meaning that illuminate the performative and interactive qualities of drama and history, of the stage as a place for both politics and entertainment. Combining play and game theories from political, anthropological, theatrical, and linguistic spheres opens avenues to recognize the history plays as complex forms and representations of "play" as well as "history.".;This study examines and compares political and non-political play in a selection of histories. Role-playing and game-playing illuminate similar portrayals of kingship, power, and authority in Marlowe's Edward II and Ford's Perkin Warbeck, two plays which dramatize the instability of political relationships through competitive and cooperative action and dialogue. Games and rituals alternate and frame one another in The Troublesome Reign and Edward III, indicating how dramatic structure as well as historic topics determine the political attitudes presented on stage. In Shakespeare's 1 Henry IV, the alternation between political and holiday realms exposes the paradoxes of play and reveals Hal's flexibility as the key to his success as the most "playful" player. The doubleness of play is also apparent in the disguise motif which recurs in a number of history plays. The shifting identities of kings, subjects, rebels, and fools on stage reflect the ambiguous functions and expectations of the genre and the theatre itself. When "playhouse" and "gamehouse" identify the theatrical forum for history, and the dramatists approach history often by disguising it or transforming it with fiction, legend, and myth, then there is a need for a double vision, for a consciousness that what was staged four centuries ago and is being read and reproduced today is "history + play," a genre based on two disparate but necessarily integrated concepts. |
