ABSTRACT
This chapter proposes an alternative reading of three plays written in the 1590s, Sir John Oldcastle, Thomas Lord Cromwell, and more briefly, The Book of Sir Thomas More – a reading which goes beyond the conventional limitations of a Shakespeare-centred approach focused on the origins of Falstaff in 2 Henry IV and Henry V, or on Shakespeare's attitudes in his second tetralogy towards plebeians. It shows that the plays achieve their forms of representation in surprisingly complex ways, steering an historically-sensitive course between the subject matter and its relevance to the troubled final decade of the reign of Elizabeth. The chapter discusses Gordon Alexander McMullan's insight about Henry VIII to other texts, arguing, as he does, that the historical drama 'plays with epochs, simultaneously differentiating between and identifying Henrician and periods, in order to outline a complex underlying politics'. It demonstrates in what follows that the plays do present a complex and at times thoughtful account of their twofold historicity.
