What the plays have in common include: kings and courtiers; power politics around the royal court; ideas about what was ideal in a king—and what was not—and the health (or otherwise) of the kingdom as a whole. But they also encompass recognisable—and convincing—versions of familar types, high and low, right down to everyday characters in the Elizabethan townscape or countryside. Familiar anyway to patrons of the Globe theatre who paid their pennies to see the world, high and low, portrayed on a stage, as the promise was.
In other words, what the History Plays really have in common is the masterly dramatic skill and intelligence of Shakespeare himself.
kings and courtiers; power politics around the royal court; ideas about what was ideal in a king—and what was not—and the health (or otherwise) of the kingdom as a whole.
