Holinshed (or Hollingshead), Raphael (c. 1520–c. 1580)

English historian. He published two volumes of the Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland (1578), which are a mixture of fact and legend. The Chronicles were used as a principal source by Elizabethan dramatists for their plots. Nearly all Shakespeare's English history plays, as well as Macbeth, King Lear, and Cymbeline, are based on Holinshed's work.

Holinshed was probably born in Cheshire. He went to London early in Elizabeth I's reign, and was employed as a translator in Reginald Wolfe's printing office, helping him in the compilation of his Universal History. Wolfe died before the work was completed, and it was left to Holinshed to finish in an abridged form. It appeared as the Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland. A second enlarged edition was published in 1587. The Chronicles like those of Hall basically subscribe to the ‘Tudor myth of history’, advancing the view that Henry VII was a national saviour, restoring peace and order after the anarchy of the Wars of the Roses.