History Play

History is one of the three main genres of Western theatre alongside tragedy and comedy, though it took its modern form thousands of years after the other two and is often treated as a subset of tragedy. A play in this genre, a history play, is based on a historical narrative, often set in the medieval or early modern past, and the genre emerged as distinct from tragedy in Renaissance England. Its best known examples are the history plays of William Shakespeare, which still serve to define the genre, alongside other Western examples such as Thomas Heywood's Edward IV, Schiller's Mary Stuart and Joost van den Vondel's Gijsbrecht van Aemstel.