This page includes family trees for 8 of Shakespeare's history plays. Click the
buttons below to view them as printable PDF documents.
Notes on the Trees
A few notes may be helpful in using these trees. A shaded box means that the character is dead before the play begins. A bold-faced box means that the character appears in the current play. Each space represents the same character across all eight trees, but there are two characters (Anne Mortimer and Isabella Neville) that are duplicated on the chart because they married across family lines. These duplications are represented by circled numbers.
For the most part, Shakespeare sticks with history as far as the genealogy and chronology are concerned. But where he breaks with history, I generally go with Shakespeare's version, because my goal is to make the plays clearer. So if Shakespeare, say, refers to a character by a title he technically didn't have yet, I use that title in my tree. One major exception to this rule is Edmund Mortimer.
Historically, there were two different men named Edmund Mortimer: Sir Edmund Mortimer; and his nephew Edmund, Earl of March. An Edmund Mortimer appears in both 1H4 and 1H6. Shakespeare seems to have conflated the two into a single character, as he ascribes to this character biographical details from both men in both plays. In my trees, I go with the more historically appropriate choice to put Sir Edmund in 1H4 and the Earl of March in 1H6.
For the most part, Shakespeare sticks with history as far as the genealogy and chronology are concerned. But where he breaks with history, I generally go with Shakespeare's version, because my goal is to make the plays clearer. So if Shakespeare, say, refers to a character by a title he technically didn't have yet, I use that title in my tree. One major exception to this rule is Edmund Mortimer.
Historically, there were two different men named Edmund Mortimer: Sir Edmund Mortimer; and his nephew Edmund, Earl of March. An Edmund Mortimer appears in both 1H4 and 1H6. Shakespeare seems to have conflated the two into a single character, as he ascribes to this character biographical details from both men in both plays. In my trees, I go with the more historically appropriate choice to put Sir Edmund in 1H4 and the Earl of March in 1H6.