Commentary

• Shakespeare’s History Plays

  - E. M. W. Tillyard, Shakespeare’s History Plays (London: Chatto & Windus, 1944)
  Summary from the Publisher: This is an appraisal of each history play which shows how Shakespeare drew both on learned sources and popular drama to create something uniquely his own. He examines the myths surrounding the Tudors and Elizabethan beliefs about… More

• Richard II

  - Allan Bloom, “Richard II,” in Giants and Dwarfs: Essays 1960-1990 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990), 83-93
  Excerpt: “Shakespeare not only presents us with the spectacle of a man becoming a god (Julius Caesar) but in Richard II also permits us to witness a god becoming a man. As a consequence of what one might call political logic, Richard was thought to be,… More