SOURCE: “History, Theatricality, and the ‘Structural Problem’ in the Henry IV Plays,” in Philological Quarterly, Vol. 70, No. 2, 1991, pp. 163-79.

In the essay that follows, Yachnin contends that what is perceived to be a structural problem in Henry IV Parts 1 and 2 (that is, the question of whether the plays should be approached as one ten-act play or two separate five-act plays) ceases to be an issue when the plays are understood to be performance texts, rather than literary texts. As such, the critic maintains, the two plays reveal Shakespeare's critique of Renaissance historiography and demonstrate the ‘open-ended’ character of historical change.

The question of whether Shakespeare's Henry IV plays constitute one ten-act play or two separate plays of five acts each is one of those embarrassments literary criticism has brought on itself by its investment in the notion of organic form.¹ The fact that the two plays were never...