SOURCE: Tennenhouse, Leonard. “Strategies of State and Political Plays: A Midsummer Night's Dream, Henry IV, Henry V, Henry VIII.” In Political Shakespeare: New Essays in Cultural Materialism, edited by Jonathan Dollimore and Alan Sinfield, pp. 109-28. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985.

In this essay, Tennenhouse traces changes in Shakespeare's plays concurrent with the movement from Elizabethan to Jacobean politics.

I

For over fifty years traditional literary criticism has read Shakespeare's history plays in one of three ways: as overt political texts that can be interpreted by reference to the historical source material; as dramatic entertainments to be compared aesthetically with examples from the more familiar genres of comedy, tragedy or romance; or as part of a process of personal development which accompanied his youthful comedies and prepared him for the grand metaphysical tragedies and the mature vision of his lyrical romances.¹ Each of these positions testifies to a belief...