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Title: | The Use of HoIinshed's Chronicles in Three Tudor Historical Dramas |
Authors: | Lisk, Ruth Maryann |
Advisor: | Vince, R. W. |
Department: | English |
Keywords: | English Language and Literature;English Language and Literature |
Publication Date: | Oct-1971 |
Abstract: | |
Description: | <p>The second edition of Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles of England Scotland and Ireland has long been acknowledged as the primary source for Shakespeare's history play. Works like W. G. Boswell-Stone's Shakespeare's Holinshed (1896) and A. and J. Nicolls' Holinshed as Used in Shakespeare's Plays have made relevant passages from Holinshed easily available to the interested student. It seems to me, however, that the existing appraisals of the Chronicles are rather too cursory, in that they acknowledge the work's importance without discussing its exact nature and treat it from an exclusively literary rather than a historical view pointe Moreover, very little attention has been paid to its influence upon the non-Shakespearan historical drama of the early 1590's. Apart from Irving Ribner's influential book The English History Play in the Age of Shakespeare (1956) recent published work on these plays bas concentrated on their role as interesting preludes to the greater work of Shakespeare, rather than as significant contributions in their own right. Work on the two anonymous plays Thomas of Woodstock and the Troublesome Raigne of King John has indeed been scant, aside from their inclusion in source studies of Shakespeare's Richard II and King John. Marlowe's Edward II has fared considerably better as the work of an outstanding dramatist, but the emphasis here has been on its significance to the Marlowe canon and to Shakespeare's Second Tetralogy. In all three cases discussion of the use of Holinshed has usually been confined to the statement that his work provided most of the necessary material.</p> <p>In the following chapters I will attempt to redress the balance somewhat by offering a detailed comparison between Holinshed and the three plays I have mentioned. Chapter One places the Chronicles within the context of Tudor historical thought by way of a brief summary of the basic principles of sixteenth-century historiography and their influence upon Holinshed and his contemporaries. Chapters two through Four will compare each of the plays with the Chronicles in an attempt to determine the dramatist's approach to his source material and the degree to which Holinshed's interpretation may have influenced that approach. Finally, Chapter Five will offer my conclusions as to the existence of any common influence of Holinshed's work upon the plays I have discussed and the advantages or tho Chronicles as a source for the historical drama.</p> <p>I have tried as far as possible to use facsimile editions of my primary texts. All quotations from the Chronicles are taken from Volume Two of the 1965 facsimile by AMS Press of an edition printed in London in 1807. For Thomas of Woodstock and Edward II I have used the Malone Society Reprints of 1929 and 1925 respectively, while for The Troublesome Raigne of King John I have u.sed Geoffrey Bullougb's 1962 edition in the fourth volume of his Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962).</p> |
URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/11375/9986 |
Identifier: | opendissertations/5057 6078 2083033 |
Appears in Collections: | Open Access Dissertations and Theses |
Files in This Item:
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fulltext.pdf | 31.56 MB | Adobe PDF | View/Open |
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