This New Casebook on Shakespeare's second historical tetralogy (Richard II, Henry IV Parts I and II and Henry V) is an anthropology of contemporary criticism, all produced within the last twenty years, most within the last ten. It aims to problematise rather than merely reflect traditional methods and assumptions. Most of the essays deal with the historical plays as interconnected elements via the theoretical perspectives of New Historicism, feminism, psychoanalysis, deconstruction and Marxism. Other essays on individual plays represent a further range of critical methods and theoretical approaches, including linguistics, anthropology, social history, textual and bibliographical studies and cultural materialism.
