The Merchant of Venice and The Second Tetralogy By Clifford
Stetner Intro: The Comic Emplotment of History and the Ordering
of the Tetralogies The order of composition of Shakespeare’s
history tetralogies develops the metonymic aspect of the comic
emplotment of Tudor history with which the author was engaged
metaphorically in his alternation between comedies and history
plays prior to the Jacobean succession. With the entrance on
stage of Henry VII, the first tetralogy brings the historical
narrative to the onset of the reigning dynasty in the tradition
of the Aeneid and of the Book of Kings in the Old Testament, but
as we are so frequently reminded by authors of the period that
“the end crowns all,” having inherited a formally tragic Richard
III, the conclusion of the first tetralogy merely continues in
the medieval tradition of representation of secular history as
tragedy. A metonymic approach to comic emplotment requires the
cycling back of the chronological narrative to culminate in its
symbolic ideal, th