SOURCE: “Truth and Art in History Plays,” in Shakespeare Survey: An Annual Survey of Shakespeare Studies and Production, Vol. 42, 1989, pp. 15-24.

In the following essay, Hunter studies the way in which Elizabethans viewed the treatment of history in history plays.

Since the First Folio says that Shakespeare wrote history plays I think there is a great deal to be said for assuming not only that he did so but did so in the plays thus designated and no others; let evidence precede definition. It is true of course that the evidence available is mixed; Elizabethan generic vocabulary is notoriously spongy: contemporary title pages give us such hybrids as The Tragedy of Richard II, The Tragedy of Richard III, The History of Troilus and Cressida, The True Chronicle History of King Lear, A Pleasant Conceited History called The Taming of a Shrew. The Folio's generic divisions seem to belong...