This Is Shakespeare

by Emma Smith

That is to say, they are plays about late-sixteenth-century politics, rather than the politics of their own period. Play after play, by Shakespeare and by others, obsesses on moments of transfer, showing weak or embattled kings challenged by rivals, a vacant throne, civil war, the intrigue of noblemen and advisers; no history play ever depicts the long and relatively settled reign of an established monarch. While Elizabeth had made discussion of her succession a crime punishable by death, plays and other texts on historical subjects enabled the asking of otherwise censored questions about what might happen at the end of her long reign. By the mid-1590s she was into her sixties: everyone was asking, in whispers, who would rule next.