In the Late Elizabethan Period, factionalism complicated the notion of, especially, male friendship. The scarcity of
financial resources of the royal patronage, the arbitrary distribution of favours, and bottom-up pressures of patronees
further problematized a healthy relationship among patrons and patronees and among friends. The horizontal and
vertical social relations were to be conducted within theatricality; by performing a certain social role, while keeping
one’s real ideas as confidential as possible. Deception and hypocrisy were necessary in order to survive verbal and
non-verbal means of factionalism, which targeted, especially one’s reputation. This, however, problematized the
perception of the reality of social behaviour. Friendship should be about sincerity. Yet, that sincerity was usually nonexistent in the overall pattern of Late Elizabethan theatrical behaviour that lacked demarcated lines between essence
and appearance in a clear-cut way. Advice literature, therefore, urged a thorough
analysis of the behaviours of friends to instrumentalise them in utilitarian ways. One ought to be careful in choosing
friends and reject double-dealers and flatterers. The problems to meet practice and theory led to many shifts of allegiance, double-dealings, and the lack to
differentiate between advice and flattery. In Shakespeare’s Elizabethan history plays, the reign of King John, the
Hundred Years War, and the Wars of the Roses found in chronicles provided several conflicting sets of values about
the notions of friendships that were adapted to contemporary phenomena in the Post-Armada Period. Whether seen as
plays or read in quarto versions, the plays reinforced the perception of friendship as performance liable to be a matter
of appearance rather than essence. Therefore, this article will analyse the notions of friendships in the Late Elizabethan
Period in Shakespeare’s history plays and illustrate how factionalism problematized those notions.