ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an extract from an article published in The Critic, September 27, 1884, and was reprinted in November Boughs, Philadelphia, 1888. The English historical plays are not only the most eminent as dramatic performances but form the chief in a complexity of puzzles. It is impossible to grasp the whole cluster of Shakspere’s historical plays, however wide the intervals and different circumstances of their composition, without thinking of them as the result of an essentially controlling plan. According to the author's friend William O’Connor, English plays seem simply and rudely historical in their motive, as aiming to give in the rough a tableau of warring dynasties,—and carry a lurking sense of being in aid of some ulterior design, probably well enough understood in that age.
