An Age of Kings is a fifteen-part serial adaptation of the eight sequential history plays of William Shakespeare, produced and broadcast in Britain by the BBC in 1960. The United States broadcast of the series the following year was hosted by University of Southern California professor Frank Baxter, who provided an introduction for each episode specifically tailored for the American audience. At the time, the show was the most ambitious Shakespearean television adaptation ever made, and was a critical and commercial success in both the UK and the US. Performed live, all episodes were telerecorded during their original broadcast.

In the First Folio, the plays of William Shakespeare were grouped into three categories: comedies, histories, and tragedies. The histories—along with those of contemporary Renaissance playwrights—help define the genre of history plays. The Shakespearean histories are biographies of English kings of the previous four centuries and include the standalones King John, Edward III and Henry VIII as well as a continuous sequence of eight plays. These last are considered to have been composed in two cycles. The so-called first tetralogy, apparently written in the early 1590s, covers the Wars of the Roses saga and includes Henry VI, Parts I, II & III and Richard III. The second tetralogy, finished in 1599 and including Richard II, Henry IV, Parts I & II and Henry V, is frequently called the Henriad after its protagonist Prince Hal, the future Henry V.