This text traces the changing theatrical and cultural identity of the History plays in the context of postwar social and political conflict, crisis and change. Since the company's inception in the early 1960s, the RSC's commitment to relevance has fostered close relationships between Shakespearean criticism and performance, and between the theatre and its audiences. Through a detailed discussion of key productions, from The War of the Roses in 1963 to The Plantegenets in 1988, Robert Shaughnessy emphasizes the political dimension of contemporary theatrical representations of Shakespeare, and of the Shakespearean modes of history that these plays have been employed to promote; individualist, cyclical, male-dominated, and driven by essentialised, transcendent human nature.