Chronology of the Histories

[Vronaqueen]

I'm an avid Shakespeare fan, probably as bad as they get, but I've always shied away from the histories because I could never figure out which came first and ideally, I would want to read them in order. Could someone give me a tip on how to start this?

[Admin]

http://www.muc.muohio.edu/~shakespeare/guides/history.html

[Vronaqueen]

I want to know in which order I should read the plays, with all the sequels and King's it's hard to get them straight

[sam]

Shakespeare wrote 1 henry vi first,(somewher around 1591) many critics believe that he revised some other play that was kicking around. And he kept going with this war of the roses stuff till Richard the third killed them all and was then killed himself. Part 1 is fairly indepent in itself, but 2 and 3 henry vi seem to contain the same story line. Richard iii stands on its own.

1595 S wrote Richard ii and year later he started 1 henry iv and continued it with 2 henry iv and then henry v. the latter three he wrote one after the other and was clearly he was continuing the story, but Richard ii was meant to stand on it's own. In Richard ii Hotspur is a contemporary of Bollingbroke, who becomes Henry iv, but in the Henry iv plays Hotspur is made a contemporay of prince Hal to help with some thematic contrasts.

king john comes between the two tetralogies and henry viii comes near the end of Shakespeare's career.

sorry for so many words

sam

[Blackadder]

Or did you mean that you wanted to read them in the order they come in historically (meaning English history), and not the order they were written in?

If the first, it goes:

Richard II
Henry IV, parts 1 and 2
Henry V

Henry VI, parts 1, 2, 3
Richard III

The plays are grouped by tetrologies. And it is true that the last four plays were written before the first four.

Two other history plays about kings are King John and Henry VIII.

Here's a link to a site with a chronology of Shakespeare's plays:
http://www.shakespeare-online.com/keydates/playchron.asp