Much has been written on Shakespeare's history plays but very little on the overall form, whether it depends on the historical accuracy of the drama, the relationship with the audience, or the underlying political ideology. Defining the history play as one where the dramatic focus is on the historical practice in action rather than merely on the individual characters involved, the book traverses 400 years of drama, from the early modern period to the present day. Threaded through this span is a consideration of the changing understanding of history itself through time and the ways in which playwrights have engaged with both the history of their own time, and the history of other times and cultures as it reflects their own.

Beginning with Shakespeare, his contemporaries Marlowe and Jonson, and the neocclassical Racine, it then covers the long 19th century, considering plays by Goethe and Schiller, so influenced by Shakespeare, taking in Buchner, Ibsen and Schiller. The final part explores the 20th and 21st centuries. It examines the radical innovations of Shaw and Brecht, Miller's The Crucible, Churchill's early play Light Shining in Buckinghamshire through to works by Tony Kushner and Lucy Kirkwood.