SOURCE: Palmer, Barbara D. “‘Ciphers to This Great Accompt’: Civic Pageantry in the Second Tetralogy.” In Pageantry in the Shakespearean Theater, edited by David M. Bergeron, pp. 114-29. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1985.

In the following essay, Palmer points out the subtlety of Shakespeare's depiction of pageantry and ceremony as political tools in Richard II, Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2, and Henry V.

A single definition of pageantry in Shakespeare's plays is elusive at worst and probably unprofitably reductive at best, but the diversity of forms that scholars have called pageantry does make discussion confusing. As Robert Withington observed in his pioneering study, “We have in pageant a term which is extremely elastic,”¹ stretching to include tableaux vivants; emblematic representation; acrobats, waits, and minstrels; tournaments and jousts; royal, civic, and ecclesiastical ceremonies; masques, interludes, and allegories; dancing, from morris to bear; and any procession slightly more orderly than Wat...