Pilgrims of Grace: Henry IV Historicized | Pardon
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The analogies adumbrated by Shakespeare between the reign of Henry IV and the Tudor period indicate that his interpretation of English history is here affected at every level by ideas derived from the major political and cultural experiences of his own time, as well as by notions of historical recurrence long established in western historiography.41 In particular, those analogies intimate that the bitter intestinal divisions of the later period, with their conflicting loyalties and mixed and confused motivations, contributed much to his sense of the tortuous relationship in political affairs between right and wrong, justice and injustice, morality and expediency, freedom and necessity, present and past. Neither the rebellious bishop nor the regicidal King in Henry IV is blameless, but both claim with some sincerity and truth that the strong necessity of the times—the accumulated pressure of events—compelled them to do what they did not...
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