In Shakespearean scholarship, the Henriad refers to a group of William Shakespeare's history plays depicting the rise of the English kings. It is sometimes used to refer to a group of four plays (a tetralogy), but some sources and scholars use the term to refer to eight plays. In the 19th century, Algernon Charles Swinburne used the term to refer to three plays, but that use is not current.
In one sense, the Henriad refers to: Richard II; Henry IV, Part 1; Henry IV, Part 2; and Henry Vwith the implication that these four plays are Shakespeare's epic, and that Prince Hal, who later becomes Henry V, is the epic hero. (This group may also be referred to as the "second tetralogy" or "second Henriad".)Dobson, Michael. Wells, Stanley. "Henriad". The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare. Oxford University Press (2015) Zarin, Cynthia. "Nine Hours of Shakespeare". The New Yorker Magazine. 15 May 2016
In a more inclusive meaning, the Henriad refers to eight plays: the tetralogy mentioned above, plus four plays that were written earlier, based on the civil wars now known as The Wars of the RosesHenry VI, Part 1; Henry VI, Part 2; Henry VI, Part 3; and Richard III.Skura, Meredith Anne. Shakespeare the Actor and the Purposes of Playing. University of Chicago Press, 1993. p. 131.
The second tetralogy The term Henriad was popularised by Alvin Kernan in his 1969 article, "The Henriad: Shakespeare's Major History Plays" to suggest that the four plays of the second tetralogy (Richard II; Henry IV, Part 1; Henry IV, Part 2; and Henry V), when considered together as a group, or a dramatic tetralogy, have coherence and characteristics that are the primary qualities associated with literary epic: "large-scale heroic action involving many men and many activities tracing the movement of a nation or people through violent change from one condition to another." In this context Kernan sees the four plays as analogous to Homer's Iliad, Virgil's Aeneid, Voltaire's Henriade, and Milton's Paradise Lost. The action of the Henriad follows the dynastic, cultural and psychological journey that England traveled as it left the medieval world with Richard II and moved on to Henry V and the Renaissance. Politically and socially the Henriad represents a "movement from feudalism and hierarchy to the national state and individualism". Kernan similarly discusses the Henriad in psychological, spatial, temporal, and mythical terms. "In mythical terms," he says, "the passage is from a garden world to a fallen world." This group of plays has recurring characters and settings. However, there is no evidence that these plays were written with the intention that they be considered a group.Kernan, Alvin, B. The Henriad: Shakespeare's Major History Plays. The Yale Review, p. 55 (1969)Kernan, Alvin, B. ed. Modern Shakespeare Criticism. Harcourt Brace (1970). pp. 245–75Danson, Lawrence. Shakespeare's Dramatic Genres. Oxford University Press (2000). p. 149Voltaire. The Henriad; a Poem. Published by Sydney Smith (1834)
The character Falstaff is introduced in Henry IV, pt. 1, returns in Henry IV, pt. 2, and dies early in Henry V. Falstaff represents the tavern world, a world which Prince Hal will leave behind.Kernan, Alvin, B. The Henriad: Shakespeare's Major History Plays. The Yale Review, p. 58 (1969) (This group of three plays is occasionally dubbed the "Falstaffiad" by Harold Bloom and others.)Bloom, Harold. Falstaff: Give Me Life. Simon and Schuster. (2017) p. 143. Brustein, Robert. Letters to a Young Actor. 2009. p. 22.
Eight-play Henriad The term Henriad, following after Kernan, acquired an expanded second meaning, which refers to two groups of Shakespearean plays: the tetralogy mentioned above (Richard II; Henry IV, Part 1; Henry IV, Part 2; and Henry V), and also four plays that were written earlier and are based on the historic events and civil wars now known as The Wars of the Roses; Henry VI, Part 1, Henry VI, Part 2, Henry VI, Part 3, and Richard III. In this sense, the eight Henry plays are known as the Henriad, and when divided in two, the group written earlier may be known as the "first Henriad" with the group that was written later known as the "second Henriad".Keyishian, Harry. "The Progress of Revenge in The First Henriad". Pendleton, Thomas A. editor. Henry VI: Critical Essays. Psychology Press, 2001. p. 67-77. Arnold, Oliver. The Third Citizen: Shakespeare's Theater and the Early Modern House of Commons. JHU Press, 2007. p. 76-80.
The two Shakespearean tetralogies share the name Henriad, but only the "second Henriad" has the epic qualities that Kernan had in mind in his use of the term. In this way the two definitions are somewhat contradictory and overlapping. Which meaning is intended can usually be derived by the context.Marino, James J. Owning William Shakespeare: The King's Men and Their Intellectual Property. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011
The eight plays, when considered together, are said to tell a unified story of a significant arc of British history from Richard II to Richard III. These plays cover this history, while going beyond the English chronicle play; they include some of Shakespeare's greatest writing. They are not tragedies, but as history plays they are comparable in terms of dramatic or literary quality and meaning. When considered as a group they contain a narrative pattern: disaster, followed by chaos and a battle of contending forces, followed by the happy ending—the restitution of order. This pattern is repeated in every play, as Britain leaves the medieval world and moves towards the British Renaissance. These plays further express the "Elizabethan world order", or mankind's striving in a world of unity battling chaos, based on the Elizabethan era's philosophies, sense of history, and religion.Tillyard, E. M. W. Shakespeare’s History Plays. Chatto & Windus (1944) pp. 10 - 13, 319-322Calderwood, James. Metadrama in Shakespeare's Henriad: Richard II to Henry V. University of California Press, 1979. p. 1-12Pendleton, Thomas. Henry VI; Critical Essays. The Progress of Revenge, the First Henriad. Routledge, 2001.
The eight-play Henriad is also known as The First Tetralogy and The Second Tetralogy; a terminology that had been in use,Henneman, John Bell. Shakespearean and Other Papers. The University Press (1911) p. 11 & 85. but was made popular by the influential Shakespearean scholar E.M.W. Tillyard in his 1944 book, Shakespeare’s History Plays. The word "tetralogy" is derived from the performance tradition of the Dionysian Festival of ancient Athens, in which a poet was to compose a tetralogy (τετραλογία): three tragedies and one comedic satyr play.Crane, Mary Thomas. "The Shakespearean Tetralogy". Shakespeare Quarterly. Vol. 36, No. 3. Oxford Univ. Press. (1985), pp. 282-299 Tillyard studied these Shakespearean history plays as combined in a dramatic serial form, and analysed how, when combined, the stories, characters, historic chronology, and themes are linked and portrayed. After Tillyard's book, these plays have often been combined in performance, and it would be a very rare occurrence for Henry VI, part 2 or 3, for example, to be performed individually. Tillyard considered each tetralogy linked, and that the characters themselves link the stories together when they tell their own history or explain their titles.Tillyard, E. M. W. Shakespeare’s History Plays. Chatto & Windus (1944)
The theories that consider the eight plays as a group dominated scholarship in the mid 20th century, when the idea was introduced, and have since engendered a great deal of discussion.Hawkins, Sherman. "Structural Pattern in Shakespeare's Histories". Studies in Philology. Vol. 88, No. 1 Univ. North Carolina Press. (1991), pp. 16-45Wilders, John. The Lost Garden; a View of Shakespeare’s English and Roman History Plays. Rownan & Littlefield (1978). pp. vi-xi. Sitwell, Edith. A Notebook on William Shakespeare. Macmillan & Co. Ltd. (1948) P. 185
King John is not included in the Henriad because it is said to have a style that is of a different order than the other history plays. King John has great qualities of poetry, freedom and imagination, and is appreciated as a new direction taken by the author. Henry VIII is not included due to unresolved questions regarding how much of it is coauthored, and what of it is written by Shakespeare.Tillyard, E. M. W. Shakespeare’s History Plays. Chatto & Windus (1944) p. 215-233
Three-play Henriad In Algernon Charles Swinburne's book A Study of Shakespeare (1880), he refers to three plays, Henry IV pt. 1, Henry IV pt. 2, and Henry V, as "our English Henriade", and says the "ripest fruit of historic or national drama, the consummation and the crown of Shakespeare’s labours in that line, must of course be recognised and saluted by all students in the supreme and sovereign trilogy of King Henry IV and King Henry V." They are, according to Swinburne, England's "great national trilogy", and Shakespeare's "perfect triumph in the field of patriotic drama."Swinburne, Algernon Charles. A Study of Shakespeare. Library of Alexandria (1880). p. 154.
H. A. Kennedy writing in 1896 refers to Henry IV pt. 1, Henry IV pt. 2, and Henry V, saying "taken together the three plays form a Henriade, a trilogy, whose central figure is the hero of Agincourt, whose subject is his development from the madcap prince to the conqueror of France".Kennedy, H. A. author."Shakespeare Falstaff & Queen Elizabeth." Knowles, James. editor.The Nineteenth Century, a Monthly Review. (1896) Volume 39. Leonard Scott Publication. p. 319
Authorship Shakespeare is well established as the sole author of the plays of the second Henriad, but there has been speculation regarding possible co-authors of the Henry VI plays of the first Henriad. Since then, the 16th century playwright Christopher Marlowe has been suggested as a possible contributor. Then in 2016 the editors of the New Oxford Shakespeare, led by Gary Taylor, announced that Marlowe and "anonymous" would be listed on their title pages of Henry VI, Parts 2 and 3 as co-author side-by-side with Shakespeare, and that Marlowe, Thomas Nashe and “anonymous" would be listed as the authors of Henry VI, Part 1, with Shakespeare listed only as the adaptor. This is not universally accepted, but it is the first time a major critical edition of Shakespeare's works has listed Marlowe as a co-author.Alberge, Dalya. "Christopher Marlowe credited as one of Shakespeare's co-writers". The Guardian. 23 October 2016.Shakespeare, William. The New Oxford Shakespeare: Modern Critical Edition. Oxford University Press (2016) p. vii. Pollack-Pelzner, Daniel. "The Radical Argument of the New Oxford Shakespeare". The New Yorker Magazine. 19 February 2017.
Literary background The plays that may have influenced, inspired, or provided a tradition for Shakespeare's Henriad plays would include popular morality plays, which contributed to the evolution of British drama. Notable morality plays that focus on British history include John Skelton's Magnificence (1533), David Lyndsay's A Satire of the Three Estates (1552), and John Bale's play King John (c. 1538). Gorboduc (1561) is considered the first Senecan tragedy in the English language, though it is a chronicle play written in blank verse; it has numerous serious speeches, a unified dramatic action, and its violence is kept off-stage.Ward, A.W. editor. "Phyllyp Sparowe”. The Cambridge History of English and American Literature Cambridge University (1907–21) Volume III. Renascence and Reformation.Brockett, Oscar G. History of the Theatre. Pearson, 2014., p. 107