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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? Shakespeare’s 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.
Chapter 1. Shakespeare and War: Honour at the Stake
Patrick Gray
Chapter 2. Shakespeare in Sarajevo: Theatrical and Cinematic Encounters with the Balkans War
Sara Soncini
Chapter 3. John of Lancaster’s Negotiation with the Rebels in 2 Henry IV: Fifteenth-Century Northern England as Sixteenth-Century Ireland
Jane Yeang Chui Wong
Chapter 4. Shakespeare’s Unjust Wars
Franziska Quabeck
Chapter 5. Sine Dolore: Relative Painlessness in Shakespeare’s Laughter at War
Daniel Derrin
Chapter 6. The Better Part of Stolen Valour: Counterfeits, Comedy and the Supreme Court
David Currell
Chapter 7. Hamletism in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-39
Jesús Tronch
Chapter 8. Where Character Is King: Gregory Doran’s Henriad
Alice Dailey