The Shakespearean Tetralogy

Abstract

S HAKESPEAREAN CRITICS TODAY ROUTINELY REFER to the history plays as comprising tetralogies, and, despite the occasional addition of an apologetic so-called, seem generally comfortable with the idea that these plays are to be considered as sequences.1 In the late 1940s and early 1950s there was a flurry of critical discussion about the connections among Shakespeare's history plays, and a consensus of sorts seems to have been reached.2 The issue of whether Shakespeare planned to write two integrated sequences of four (or, indeed, one sequence of eight) history plays was the main point of contention,