My assignment for my blog post this week was to analyze the play I just read for ELA, Henry V by Shakespeare, and then explain the category of play it fell into, history, and discuss in what ways it did and did not follow archetypes common to this type of play.
Plays are as a general rule divided into two categories: tragedies and comedies. These two categories are the ones I've always known about, so when I found out there was a third type, historical, I was a bit confused. When I went to research this play type, though, what I first saw didn't clear anything up, it actually confused me more. Oddly, almost every search result on Google for "characteristics of history plays" had Shakespeare's name in the title.
Upon further investigation, what I came to find out is that creating classifying plays as historical as supposed to comic or tragic is a very Shakespearean thing. As in, he was one of the biggest advocates for the creation of the label, and not many people recognize it as a category unless they are specifically analyzing his plays. It is generally held that historic plays are more of a mutation of tragedies than their own separate category, despite the fact that after branching off, many histories came to resemble comedies more than tragedies. The reason Shakespeare's plays specifically are often broken up into three categories is that he had a very large number of plays about history that shared common themes and often contained many elements from both other categories, or very few elements from either.
With that out of the way, let's look at the elements that define a Shakespearean historical play. The first is a focus on royalty in history. Almost all his historical plays, Henry V included, center around English royal families in the 14th and 15th centuries (Shakespeare is from the 16th), and touch on commom subjects including rightful lineage to the tutor throne, the sin of taking that throne without a rightful claim, and the moral questions monarchs must face as a result of being so powerful. A notable exception is Julius Caesar, which is not about English royalty, and for that very reason there's lots of debate on whethere it can really be called one of Shakespeare's historical plays or just a tragedy.
Another common theme of Shakespearean historical plays is civil war. While there isn't a civil war per se if you count a civil war as multiple parties in one country waging war, the case that could be made is that the play is set in one country, and the Dauphin and his government are just wrong to try to make Henry's land into a separate country.
Overall, it's a very interesting play, and though the idea of a historical play didn't sound that interesting at first, it ended up being a really cool story.
With that out of the way, let's look at the elements that define a Shakespearean historical play. The first is a focus on royalty in history. Almost all his historical plays, Henry V included, center around English royal families in the 14th and 15th centuries (Shakespeare is from the 16th), and touch on commom subjects including rightful lineage to the tutor throne, the sin of taking that throne without a rightful claim, and the moral questions monarchs must face as a result of being so powerful. A notable exception is Julius Caesar, which is not about English royalty, and for that very reason there's lots of debate on whethere it can really be called one of Shakespeare's historical plays or just a tragedy.
Another common theme of Shakespearean historical plays is civil war. While there isn't a civil war per se if you count a civil war as multiple parties in one country waging war, the case that could be made is that the play is set in one country, and the Dauphin and his government are just wrong to try to make Henry's land into a separate country.
Overall, it's a very interesting play, and though the idea of a historical play didn't sound that interesting at first, it ended up being a really cool story.
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