| The dissertation examines the relation between the humanist idea of exemplary history and Shakespeare's two historical tetralogies. The introduction discusses the premises of exemplary history: the moral value of historical example, the educational uses of eloquence, and the association of knowledge and virtue. Emphasized are the various challenges to these humanist assumptions: the critique of eloquence; the dissociation of history and morality, knowledge and virtue; and the sense of mutability that worked against a feeling of kinship with the past. Shakespeare's history plays, it is argued, are a part of the growing criticism of the assumptions of humanist historiography, assumptions that were reflected in the education practice of his time. In particular, the plays question the possibility of preserving the values of the past through the conscious imitation of historical models.;The second tetralogy examines the implications of the myth-making tendencies of moral historians. Chapters on these plays discuss the dramatization of the human impulse to mythologize the past, in personal memory and in historical legend. Henry IV, Part One, Henry IV, Part Two, and Henry V present the development of the historical myth of the exemplary king and hero Henry V. Discussion of those plays emphasizes their contrasting perspectives on the uses of mythic history.;The body of the dissertation focuses on the plays' dramatic examination of humanist attitudes toward history. Discussion of the first tetralogy emphasizes the disintegration of a society based on the humanist historical vision. The imitation of heroic example fails, and the rhetoric that encouraged it is turned to other ends. The tetralogy suggests the moral ambiguity of historical example and of the eloquence that preserves it. Richard III suggests, in addition, limitations in humanist conceptions of the role of individual character and choice in history. |
