SOURCE: Armstrong, William A. Introduction to Elizabethan History Plays, pp. vii-xv. London: Oxford University Press, 1965.

In the following the introduction to a collection of early English chronicle plays, Armstrong details the importance of John Bale's Kynge Johan as one of the first chronicle plays, then discusses later works in the genre, including Edward III, Woodstock, John Ford's Perkin Warbeck, and Robert Davenport's King John and Matilda.

Great enterprises often have unexpected origins. The creative process which culminated in Shakespeare's history plays was probably set in motion by William Tyndale's terse but pointed criticism of Catholic chroniclers in The Obedience of a Christian Man (1528): ‘Consider the story of King John, where I doubt not but they have put the best and fairest for themselves, and the worst of King John: for I suppose they make the chronicles themselves.’ This hint no doubt prompted John Bale to rehabilitate John by...