Shakespeare's History Plays present a number of challenges to the modern reader. First of all, the details of the historical events they portray are generally not familiar to many readers. Second, they contain a broad and confusing cast of characters. Making those characters even more challenging is a result of their names and titles changing as well as many characters having names of ancestors that had appeared in the earlier plays. Also, most of the characters are related to each other in one way or another. Third, the alliances of the characters shift frequently during the plays until it becomes increasingly difficult to remember whose side they are on. I admit to periods of confusion while reading the plays.

Peter Saccio's book tries to provide help to modern readers of the History plays. He also helps by providing a comparison between Shakespeare's version of events and the version understood by modern historians. Ironically, he concludes that Shakespeare's version of the events was pretty realistic albeit sometimes rearranged and simplified for dramatic effect.

This book should therefore be very useful to people wanting to better understand their Shakespeare. Unfortunately, Saccio's writing style left me confused about the nobles appearing in the plays. His appendixes with choronology and lists of characters were, however, useful. ( )

Wait, who's the heir, why is Buckingham supporting Surrey against the king? Did it all happen the way Shakespeare said it did? This book clarifies the sequence of events, the characters and motivations behind the parts of English history that Shakespeare tuned into drama. The reader will learn that the playwright frequently moved events, such as the birth or deaths of characters, invented characters or eliminated actual persons for dramatic effect. This is a second edition and contains a foreword and afterword explaining changes in Shakespearean scholarship and in the study of English history. Contains maps, bibliography and genealogies. ( )

My summer project was to read each of Shakespeare's ten history plays along with their respective chapters in this book. I failed, in that I just couldn't be assed to read King John. Screw that play, I hear it sucks. It doesn't even talk about the Magna Carta, wtf?

Anyway...the idea was to say hi to Shakespeare, and also to get a grasp on 15th-century English history. Saccio's book goes through the
latter, alerting you when Shakespeare's being particularly accurate (Richard II) and when he's totally making shit up (Henry VI).

It also attempts to make sense of the bedlam of nobles who spend all ten plays jockeying with and betraying each other. That's a particularly tall order; anyone who's read one of Shakespeare's histories knows that there are several dozen Buckinghams, Gloucesters, etc. per play and you never have any idea what they're sucking up or bitching about. You skimmed the scenes featuring lots of nobles talking, didn't you? Of course you did. Everyone did.

Saccio succeeds pretty admirably, though. I found the book engaging, and when I subsequently read each play I found that I got more out of it because I more or less understood each player's position and back story.

I now have a much deeper love for Shakespeare's later tetralogy - Richard II, Henry IV 1 & 2, and Henry V. Seriously man, that shit is awesome. I have even less love for Henry VI 1-3; those plays legitimately suck, with the sole exception that it's sortof fun reading Shakespeare's enthusiastically brutal character assassination of Joan of Arc. Richard III stands up and retains its position as one of my favorites. And no one should ever read Henry VIII.

So: dorktastic project, cool book; I had fun. I give it the thumbs up. ( )