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Updated: June 24, 2025
Raphael Holinshed had charge of the histories of England, Scotland, and Ireland, the only part of the work ever published; and these were issued in 1577, and have since been known as "Holinshed's Chronicles." From them Shakespeare drew most of the material for his historical plays.
In Pitscottie's "Chronicles of Scotland," and in Holinshed's "Scottish Chronicle," at the end of the reign of James II. there is a story of a brigand who is said to have lived in a den called Feruiden, or Ferride's Den, in Angus, who was burnt along with his wife and family for cannibalism, the youngest daughter alone was spared as she was but a twelvemonth old.
He wrote a racy style with a strong individual as well as Elizabethan flavor; and his personal comment upon the manners of his time serves as a piquant sauce to the solid meat of his historical information. These references are to the first two editions of Holinshed's Chronicles. The modernization of the spelling, etc., follows that of Mr. L. Wilkington, whose notes are signed W.
Reading men perused Hall's and Holinshed's huge black-letter folios in Queen Elizabeth's time with as much interest as they do Macaulay's or Prescott's elegant octavos in the reign of her successor, Victoria. Shakespeare drew again and again upon the former for the material of his historical plays; and in writing "Henry VIII.," he adopted often the very language of the Chronicler.
In 1558, however, the body of Cardinal Pole lay here for a night in state, and we are able to give an eye-witness's account, written by Francis Thynne, afterwards Lancaster Herald, and published in Holinshed's Chronicles in 1587.
It is enough to allude to the lying and scurrilous abuse which such writers as Robert Fabyan, in his chronicles on the history of England and of France, published in 1516, heaped upon Joan of Arc. Hall's and Holinshed's chronicles, from which the author of the First Part of King Henry VI. borrowed so largely, sinned as deeply.
But with all his gifts, the fact remains that he never found the inspiration to write an original play. He furbished up old plays, and adapted popular stories, and chapters of history from Holinshed's Chronicle and Plutarch's biographies, to the stage.
The play can be traced to its source, whether that source be a novellino of Masuccio, or Holinshed's "Chronicles," or Plutarch's Lives in North's translation, from which some passages are copied in extenso. The poet himself would seem to have had but little consciousness of the worth of his own work. In his time plays were not published.
They all delighted in ingenuities of phrase, in neat turns and conceits; it was a compliment then to be called a "conceited" writer. Of all the guides to Shakespeare's time, there is none more profitable or entertaining than William Harrison, who wrote for Holinshed's chronicle "The Description of England," as it fell under his eyes from 1577 to 1587.
Ibid. p. 327. Alas! how soon he tired of the great and coveted prize. Hooker, Suppl. to Holinshed's Chronicle, p. 183. Some Considerations for the Promoting of Agriculture and Employing the Poor, addressed to Members of the House of Commons, by R.L. V.M. Haliday Collection of pamphlets in the Library of the Royal Irish Academy, Vol. 54. Short View of the State of Ireland.
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