SOURCE: Ribner, Irving. “The Emergence of a Dramatic Genre.” In The English History Play in the Age of Shakespeare, pp. 30-64. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1965.

In this essay, Ribner traces the roots of the Renaissance chronicle plays back to medieval morality plays and the classical tradition of Senecan drama.

To trace the history play to its ultimate source would be, from one point of view, to go back to the very origins of drama itself. For drama is a narrative art, and the earliest subjects for narrative in every civilization have been the heroic achievements of peoples, the exploits of popular heroes, those events which a nation seeks to perpetuate for its own glory. This is true of Homeric legend, of Old Testament narrative, of Germanic heldenlied. The folk legendry of a people is based ultimately upon events which at some time occurred, and many of our...