Rating: 
Summary: An Absorbing History, but Not to be Confused With the Plays
Review: This book tells the story - long, confusing, but connected - of the English kings of the late Middle Ages, from the downfall and death of Edward II in 1327 and the accession of his son Edward III. His successor Richard II was deposed and killed by the Lancastrian Henry IV. Then followed his son Henry V and a great time for England against France in their ongoing Hundred-Years War. His son Henry VI was so ineffectual he set off the long bizarre dynastic scuffle called the Wars of the Roses, from which the Yorkist Edward IV finally emerged. He had his own middle brother, George, killed, but his youngest brother, the infamous Richard of Gloucester, slaughtered his way to the throne, holding it for a tenuous two years as Richard III, until the resurgent Lancastrians finally got rid of him and the whole bloody Middle Ages, and put Henry VII (the first Tudor) on the throne in 1485 - the first decent ruler poor England had seen in a century and a half.This was the period that Shakespeare chose for his history plays. To the Elizabethans these events were still reasonably current (as our Civil War is to us), and yet enough removed - and of a different dynasty - to be safe in the playing. (Not quite: Elizabeth's (former) favorite Essex paid for a special performance of Richard II, which concerns the deposing of a legitimate monarch, and soon after he was proclaimed a traitor.) The politically savvy playwright wanted to walk the fine line between telling the ripping good yarn of these brutal yet colorful fellows, while somehow not tarnishing the gloss of the monarchy itself. But Shakespeare was no historian. He has modified the story to suit political and dramatic exigencies, and often, it appears, by mistake. The dynastic interweavings are confusing, and his sources had gaps and contradictions, so sometimes he misplaces characters and events. More often, though, he has to tell a long story in a short time, and give it some push. Thus the compression and conflation of events, the exaggeration of character. Ok, so maybe watching the plays is not the best way to learn English history. Certainly, Norwich brings this home. He gently but relentlessly documents Will's departures from the actual history, and they are legion. Every once in a while, in this book, he devotes a chapter to the particular play that "covers" the material he has discussed to that point. Basically, each of these chapters goes through the play at hand - I Henry IV, say - and shows how it deviates from or hews to the truth. After a few of these chapters, I just skipped them: the tale Norwich tells in his history sections is great fun, but the Shakespeare chapters simply drive home the point that the plays are at best approximations to the actual. Fair enough: I'm convinced. I still want to watch the plays: they contain cultural and emotional truth after all, besides being, many of them, great plays. So, read this book for the history, rather than the Shakespeare criticism. And though the plays are not good history, reading a good popular history is not irrelevant to enjoying them: after all, they were written for a public that already had a better than nodding acquaintance with the events they portray. And so should you.
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