Sylvan Barnet, the beloved Tufts University professor and scholar who brought Shakespeare to life for countless students and readers, thought it a mistake to relate the playwright too closely to his age. In his editor’s introduction to The Complete Signet Classic Shakespeare, Barnet writes that the plays should not be “taken too seriously as historical documents,” and that “Shakespeare’s ideas were not commonplace.” But he admits that “a few large ideas of the period do recur,” in particular that of a cosmic “order or degree” in which “everything except God has a superior.” This idea is central to the plays, because “drama is concerned with conflict, with the disruption of order…and its ultimate restoration.”
By “ultimate” Barnet means the ending of a play or series of plays that depict a particular cycle of disruption and restoration, not steady progress in human affairs. That William Shakespeare was not an optimist is evident in his eight English history plays, which begin in 1399 with the usurpation of a legitimate king (Richard II), proceed to the troubled reign of the usurper (Henry IV), capture the brief glory of his son (Henry V), trace the eruption of civil strife under a weak-willed successor (Henry VI), and culminate in 1485 with the death of a bloody-minded tyrant (Richard III). Even when order is restored, the crookedness
