Searching for words or names is a familiar phenomenon affecting many people who struggle to find the descriptive noun for familiar everyday objects and experiences. What was the name of that actor? What is that restaurant that serves vegetable curry? What is that thing I use on my teeth every night? Oh yes, it’s dental floss.

Every chronicle play is a reduction of history. In a great chronicle play, this reduction means compression of events, intensity, selection — an artistic vision of history; Marlowe’s Edward II concentrates 24 years (1307-1330) into five credible acts. The Lion in Winter is another sort of reduction: It diminishes a struggle for the English crown into situation comedy.