How does Shakespeare represent war? This volume reviews scholarship to date on the question and introduces new perspectives, looking at contemporary conflict through the lens of the past. Through his haunting depiction of historical bloodshed, including the Trojan War, the fall of the Roman Republic, and the Wars of the Roses, Shakespeare illuminates more recent political violence, ranging from the British occupation of Ireland to the Spanish Civil War, the Balkans War, and the past several decades of U. S. military engagement in Iraq and Afghanistan. Can a war be just? What is the relation between the ruler and the ruled? What motivates ethnic violence? Shakespeares plays serve as the frame for careful explorations of perennial problems of human co-existence: the politics of honor, the ethics of diplomacy, the responsibility of non-combatants, and the tension between idealism and Realpolitik.
| Introduction: Shakespeare and the Ethics of War Honour at the Stake |
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1 | (25) |
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Chapter 1 Shakespeare in Sarajevo |
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26 | (20) |
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Theatrical and Cinematic Encounters with the Balkans War |
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Chapter 2 John of Lancaster's Negotiation with the Rebels in 2 Henry IV |
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46 | (22) |
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Fifteenth-Century Northern England as Sixteenth-Century Ireland |
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Chapter 3 Shakespeare's Unjust Wars |
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68 | (15) |
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83 | (18) |
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Relative Painlessness in Shakespeare's Laughter at War |
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Chapter 5 The Better Part of Stolen Valour |
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101 | (17) |
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Counterfeits, Comedy and the Supreme Court |
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Chapter 6 Hamletism in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-39 |
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118 | (19) |
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Chapter 7 Where Character Is King |
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137 | (21) |
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| Index |
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158 | |
Patrick Gray is Associate Professor of English Studies at Durham University. He is the author of Shakespeare and the Fall of the Roman Republic (Edinburgh University Press, 2018), co-editor with Lars Engle and William M. Hamlin of Shakespeare and Montaigne (Edinburgh University Press, 2020), and co-editor with John D. Cox of Shakespeare and Renaissance Ethics (Cambridge University Press, 2014). His essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Textual Practice, Shakespeare Survey, Shakespeare Jahrbuch, Comparative Drama and The Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies.
