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Abstract
Within the large collection of plays written in the Low Countries between c. 1400 and 1620 a subgenre of ‘history plays’ does not exist, even though a number of texts refer to historical events or have their action take place in a distant past. In this essay we will concentrate on three different time frames so as to investigate whether any developments in the use of history has taken place. The earliest collection of secular plays in the Low Countries, composed by the end of the fourteenth century, includes four abele spelen, three of which deal with chivalric matter with a (pseudo)-historical background. The plays of Esmoreit and Gloriant deserve our special attention. Next we will focus on a Brussels collection of plays, written between 1480 and 1520, in which history is employed for political and dynastic reasons. Finally we will study two plays from Jacob Duym’s Spieghelboeck (1600). One of them focuses on the English king Edward iii and his relationship with the countess of Salisbury. The other play relates to the story of the women of Weinsberg, in the southwest of present-day Germany, who, in 1140, managed to free their husbands from their town besieged by the Hohenstaufen king, Conrad iii.