Critical Essay | Critical Essay by David M. Bergeron

Critical Essay by David M. Bergeron

SOURCE: "Shakespeare Makes History: 2 Henry IV" in Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, Vol. 31, No. 2, Spring, 1991, pp. 231-45.

In the following analysis of Henry IV, Part Two, Bergeron maintains that Falstaff serves as the means by which Shakespeare explores the concept of "ahistory."

In the tavern scene in 1 Henry IV, Falstaff asks somewhat incredulously: "Is not the truth the truth?"¹ Shakespeare explores the province of history by wrestling with Falstaff s question, raising doubts about the very purposes of history that some critics have assumed define the history play. Nowhere is the evidence of making history more apparent than in 2 Henry TV, In Act IV the Archbishop of York says of King Henry: he will "keep no tell-tale to his memory / That may repeat and history his loss / To new remembrance" (IV.i.202-204).² Shakespeare uses "history" as a verb only this one time in...
(read more)