ABSTRACT
The fall of language creates problems for the characters in the plays and their assertions of authority for their words in representing the world, kingship, and god as they are caught in contradiction and self-trapping images. Irony of words, theater, and structure reveal that there is a movement in the first tetralogy toward the problem play because these history plays call attention to the difficult relation between drama and history. As irony invites serial qualification and the tension between synchrony and diachrony, overview and participation, and as history in the drama demands sequels and balances precariously between stability and instability, shape and the questioning of shape, the Second Tetralogy interrogates form while it represents it. The plays of the second tetralogy have a care and complexity that express the world better than mortals. The chapter also presents some closing thoughts on the key concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book.
