IN HER BOOK John Ford's Political Theatre, Lisa Hopkins suggests that if there is “one political lesson which is indisputably to be learned from Perkin Warbeck” (John Ford's unfashionable history play of the early 1630s), it is that “the fortunes of the King and the fortunes of his nobles are indissolubly interconnected, and both sides will benefit if the relationship between them is as close and as cordial as possible.” Chronicle history plays, like Ford's play, though highly fashionable in late-Elizabethan theatre, had long since lost their cachet when Ford came to write Perkin Warbeck. Nevertheless, the lesson that Ford's play tries to teach its audience was very much in vogue during the reign of Charles I, not least during his Personal Rule, which began in 1629. Ford's Perkin Warbeck dramatizes the history of the young man from Flanders who claimed to be Richard, Duke of York, one of the Princes in the Tower alleged to have been murdered by Richard III. Perkin presents himself as the rightful heir returned to claim the throne from Henry VII. It is, however, not Henry but the King of Scotland, James IV, who has to learn the aforementioned political lesson of the play. The significance of this point is made more manifest when it is noted that both Henry VII and James IV were the kings through which James I and VI, Charles's father, claimed the thrones of England and Scotland respectively. And it has been observed that “implicit in the play is the plea that King Charles follow the path of his Tudor rather than his Stuart forebear”: Charles, like Henry VII, should place greater importance on a close and cordial relationship between himself and the ancient nobility of his kingdoms than he appears to do at the present time.

Significantly, the concerns of Ford's politically interested history play resonate with those of a lesser-known play, The Variety, a city comedy by William Cavendish, Earl of Newcastle.