How well did Shakespeare know history?
As Shakespeare’s history plays are performed in their entirety by the RSC, Shakespeare aficionado Steve Tomkins offers his own assessment of their meaning and significance. Romeo and Juliet is one of the most famous love stories of all, its popularity enhanced by modern revivals on film and stage. Macbeth, Hamlet, King Lear and Othello are among Shakespeare’s other high-profile works, fixtures on school reading lists and often being reinvented. But his history plays are less well known, although a unique staging of them by the Royal Shakespeare Company hopes to address that. Over four days, they are being performed in their entirety, in the order they were written, first in Stratford-upon-Avon and then in London. They offer an Elizabethan perspective on the Middle Ages, but is it an accurate one? Which plays belong to Shakespeare’s history cycle? The cycle starts with Richard II, followed by Henry IV parts 1 and 2. Next we have Henry V and then – not unpredictably – Henry VI which come
