Michael Hattaway was educated in New Zealand and at Cambridge. He has taught at the Universities of Kent, British Columbia, Massachusetts, and Sheffield. He is the author of Elizabethan Popular Theatre (1982) and Hamlet:The Critics Debate (1987) and is the editor of A Companion to English Renaissance Literature and Culture (2000); with A. R. Braunmuller, of The Cambridge Companion to English Renaissance Drama (1990), and, with Derek Roper and Boika Sokolova, of Shakespeare in the New Europe (1994). For the New Mermaids he has edited Beaumont's The Knight of the Burning Pestle, for the New Cambridge Shakespeare 1-3 Henry VI and As You Like It, and for the Revels Series Jonson's The New Inn.

• Part I. Contexts: 1. The Shakespearean history play Michael Hattaway; 2. Shakespeare and the early modern history play A. J. Hoenselaars; 3. Pageants, masques, and history David M. Bergeron; 4. Elizabethan historiography and Shakespeare's sources Dominique Goy-Blanquet; 5. Women's roles in the Elizabethan history plays Phyllis Rackin; Part II. The Plays: 6. Plantagenets, Yorkists, Lancastrians, and Tudors: Edward III, 1–3 Henry VI, Richard III Janis Lull; 7. Historical legacy and fiction: the poetical reinvention of King Richard III Marie-Hélène Besnault and Michel Bitot; 8. King John: changing perspectives A. J. Piesse; 9. Richard II: Shakespeare and the languages of the stage Robyn Bolam; 10. Henry IV Parts one and two James C. Bulman; 11. King Henry V: 'The quick forge and working house of thought' Pamela Mason; 12. Shakespeare's ancient Rome: difference and identity Robert S. Miola; 13. Shakespeare's other historical plays R. A. Foakes; 14. Theatrical afterlives Stuart Hampton-Reeves; Part III. Reference Material: Recurrent characters; Family Trees: 1. The Early Plantagenets; 2. The House of Lancaster; 3. The House of York; Bibliography and further reading.

'Its compendiousness and the high quality of essays dealing with virtually every aspect of Shakespeare and history make it relevant to anyone anywhere interested in Shakespeare's history plays.' Around the Globe