History (theatrical genre)

For other meanings see History (disambiguation).

History is one of the three main genres in Western theatre, alongside tragedy and comedy. A play in this genre is known as a history play and is set in the past, often the medieval or early modern past. The best known examples of the genre are the history plays written by William Shakespeare, but it also appears elsewhere in British and Western literature, such as Thomas Heywood's Edward IV, Schiller's Mary Stuart or the Dutch genre Gijsbrecht van Aemstel.