"This new treatment of Shakespeare's historical dramas starts out from the social and cultural context in which these 'historical' plays of chivalric antiquity, epic heroism and masculine virtue were produced, and suggests that we need to understand these plays primarily in terms of historical, cultural and sexual difference, and as the celebration and exploration of values that were relatively marginal to central priorities of the late Tudor state.

The plays depict a history clearly and sharply differentiated from their own contemporary present, and therefore understandably remote and alien." "Holderness brings a completely new approach to the corpus of Shakespeare's history plays, reviewing early modern sources in the light of modern theory and modern views informed by rereadings of the past."--BOOK JACKET.