Learning History from Shakespeare

My latest reading project is reading the works of Shakespeare. I am working on the history plays. I have read Richard II, Henry IV, Part 1, and Henry IV, Part 2.

As I was at the Huntington Beach Public Library selecting these plays, I saw a colorfully colored book titled Shakespeare's Kings. The book covers English history from 1377 - 1485 and examines how close the action of the plays is to the events they portray. Being a fan of history, I was very excited to find this book and see it was written by John Julius Norwich, who I am familiar with from his Short History of Byzantium.

With these books I have developed a pattern:

1. Read the play by Shakespeare while taking notes to keep who is who straight. In Richard II, Henry is also called Hereford since he is the Duke of Hereford, cousin since he is Richard II's cousin, and later Lancaster, not to be confused with his father John of Gaunt, the earlier Duke of Lancaster. To ease this confusion, the play calls the character Bolingbroke.


2. Read the sections in Shakespeare's Kings that cover the play. I often consulted Wikipedia to make sure I had the important points correct. For several pages I thought Edward III and the Black Prince were the same person. Big mistake on my part.


3. Read any extra sections about the play. Many of the plays come with essays talking about certain features of the play, key characters, or even selections from Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles, one of the sources Shakespeare used for his history plays.


4. Find images online of the characters and events described in the works. I am putting together a folder of images from the history plays I can use as a screensaver slideshow. If I am going to learn and understand all this history, I want a visual sequence I can use to remember all the important events.


5. After repeating this for a few plays, make a post about them.

After I read a few more Shakespearean plays, I will look into Edward III. It is a pseudo-Shakespearean play but was recently declared to have been written by the noble bard.