Fictional history or historical fiction: A comparison between historical women of Shakespeare and Philippa Gregory

The objectivity of history writing has always been a topic of discussion. The perspectives of historical works must be analysed in the face of the period in which they were written. This dissertation examines Shakespeare as a sixteenth-century dramatist of history plays and Philippa Gregory as a contemporary writer of historical fictions. They worked on the same periods and dealt with the same characters; however, they adopted different atittudes. In Shakespeare's time, historiography was defined by masculine virtues while Gregory today reveals the often neglected roles of women in the stage of history. The Introduction provides a general frame of Shakespeare's and Gregory's respective handling of historiography. The Introduction is followed by four different chapters about four female characters mutually handled by Shakespeare and Gregory in their works: Anne Boleyn, Anne Neville, Katherine of Aragon and Margaret of Anjou. The chapters provide a historical background of the characters and an analysis of how they were approached by Shakespeare and Gregory, evaluating the consistency of their attitudes with the historical facts. This study is based upon close reading of 1, 2, 3 Henry VI, Richard III, and Henry VIII plays by Shakespeare as well as The Other Boleyn Girl, The Constant Princess, The Lady of the Rivers by Gregory, and a comprehensive analysis of the BBC series White Queen inspired by Gregory's works The White Queen, The Red Queen and The Kingmaker's Daughter. Keywords: Shakespeare, Gregory, Historiography, Female rulers, Historical fiction