The First And Second Parts Of King Edward Iv

Yet the playwright produced a text which was at once generically complex (the play blurs the distinction between chronicle history and 'domestic' tragedy), brilliantly assured in its dramatic craftsmanship, and politically explosive. The play depicts the streets and houses in which its original spectators lived and worked with a precision unprecedented in English writing. But this vividly realised London is under assault, first from rebels outside its walls, and subsequently (and more seriously) from the predations of two monarchs."