Book Description

Excerpt from Chautauqua Library of English History and Literature, Vol. 3: The Wars of the Roses For the period of English history treated in this volume we are fortunate in possessing an unrivaled interpreter in our great dramatic poet, Shakespeare. A regular sequence of historical plays exhibit to us not only the general character of each successive reign, but nearly the whole chain of leading events, from the days of Richard II. to the death of Richard III. at Bosworth. Following the guidance of such a master mind, we realize for ourselves the men and actions of the period in a way we cannot do in any other epoch. And this is the more important, as the age itself, especially toward the close, is one of the most obscure in English history. During the period of the Wars of the Roses, we have, comparatively speaking, very few contemporary narratives of what took place, and any thing like a general history of the times was not written till a much later date. But the doings of that stormy age - the sad calamities endured by kings - the sudden changes of fortune in great men - the glitter of chivalry and the horrors of civil war - all left a deep impression upon the mind of the nation, which was kept alive by vivid traditions of the past at the time that our great dramatist wrote. Hence, notwithstanding the scantiness of records and the meagerness of ancient chronicles, we have singularly little difficulty in understanding the spirit and character of the times. - Gairdner. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.