ABSTRACT
The most common assumption that underpins criticism interested in the early modern performance of Shakespeare's histories is that among Shakespeare's contemporaries there existed "a widespread habit of scrutinising the past for analogues of the present". It is frequently assumed, therefore, that audiences at Shakespeare's plays were keenly attuned to the topical meaning of the historical subject matter represented on stage, and thus that they habitually conceived of the plays as comments on contemporary political issues. Topicality is a critical term for describing the relations between a play and its contemporary extradramatic context. Reading for such topical references is a method of new historicism, but it was also the dominant way of perceiving history in the early modern period. In recent years, it has also become increasingly clear that a supposed rise in patriotism and a belief in the didactic function of history cannot sufficiently explain the enormous interest in history plays.
