Shakespeare’s Richard II, Henry V, and 1, 2, and 3 Henry VI might be thought to be nostalgic simply because they are history plays, reimagining and restaging a past that is, by definition, lost. Loss is certainly one of their central concerns: the loss of France, of land, of friends and family, and of identity, especially kingly identity. Versions of a lost and longed-for Eden can be found in all of these plays, and the heroes of the past are always greater than the protagonists (and actors, and audiences) of today. But as history plays, their nostalgia is also aesthetic, both cultivating and fulfilling a desire for a consistent, coherent vocabulary of symbols, discernible, stable points of origin, intelligible relationships of cause and effect, and even readily comprehensible design choices: the histories very often come to us in red and white, blue and gold. Perhaps above all, the histories feed our nostalgia for a past that is vivid, fixed, and whole, and therefore able to be understood.