Like the 1984 International Shakespeare Conference at Stratford-upon-Avon (where some papers in this Survey were given), that of the Shakespeare Gesellschaft West for 1982 was devoted to Shakespeare and History. It seems appropriate, then, to begin with its Jahrbuch, which contains special contributions from historians. Two of these are of great interest. G. R. Elton asks how far recent work on the fifteenth century has modified the image offered in Shakespeare’s two tetralogies. The study of local records has shown, for instance, the fictitiousness of the image of an England ravaged by the Wars of the Roses: the struggle of a couple of claimants to the throne was not the whole history of England. This lively lecture (the Jahrbuch, more than the Survey, preserves the speaking voice) does however concede to Shakespeare an acute insight into the psychology of social types (such as Hotspur, whom he sees as a characteristic product of the feudal nobility) and a sense of concreteness and detail aspired to by, but lacking in, many historians.