The Author: Sonja Fielitz is Professor of English Literature at the University of Marburg. She studied English, Latin, and German at the University of Munich. Her research and teaching focuses mainly on Shakespeare and Early Modern Literature as well as eighteenth-century British literature, modern drama, and children’s literature. She has taught English Literature also at the Universities of Göttingen and Münster.

• Contents: Sonja Fielitz: Introduction: Putting ‘Theorrhoea’ to the (Historical) Test – Erich Poppe: Literature as History / History as Literature: A View from Medieval Ireland – Monika Rener: The King Can Do Wrong: William of Malmesbury’s Gesta Regum Anglorum – Wolfram R. Keller/Astrid Lohöfer/Christian Pauls: What’s at Stake: Jeanne d’Arc between Historiography and Propaganda – Paul J.C.M. Franssen: The Life and Opinions of William Shakespeare, Gentleman: Biography between Fact and Fiction – Paul Edmondson: Richard II in History and Performance – Frauke Reitemeier: «Lesser than Macbeth, and greater»: A ‘Stuart Myth’ Case Study – Marga Munkelt/Beatrix Busse: Aspects of Governance in Shakespeare’s: Edward the Third: The Quest for Personal and Political Identity – Claudia Küster: Constructing Royal Identity in Tudor and Early Stuart Drama: Two Case Studies in Panegyric Literature – Martin Kuester: Of Israelites, Trojans, and Druids: Milton’s History of Britain between Mythology, Republican Historiography, and Postmodern Historiographic Metafiction – Claudia Fenske: Dryden’s The Conquest of Granada: Facts and Fiction – Patricia Plummer: Cruel Sultans, Fair Captives: The Influence of Richard Knolles’s Generall Historie of the Turkes (1603) on Eighteenth-Century English Drama – Jessika Wichner: Frederick Pilon’s Farce Aerostation, or, The Templar’s Stratagem: The Balloon Conquers the Skies and Literature – Sonja Fielitz: Factual and Fictional Newtons: The Construction of a British National Hero.