ABSTRACT

Shakespeare's first tetralogy was a great popular success on the Elizabethan stage and helped to cement his reputation as a player among playwrights. In short, the theatre was not simply a public space which had political significance during the second reign' of Elizabeth I, but one which appears to have attracted an audience precisely because it dealt with political issues and problems that may not have been addressed elsewhere. Julius Caesar triumphs through merit, what the republic was supposed to value and promote, but ends the republic in doing so, hurtling Rome into a brave new political world. The obvious precursors of the tetralogy, Christopher Marlowe's Tamburlaine, Massacre at Paris and Edward II, as well as Lodge's Wounds of Civil War, do, of course, show conflict and destruction. The political relevance of the Henry VI plays and Richard III is easy to understand in the 1590s.