Shakespeares Ideas: More Things in Heaven and Earth (Blackwell Great Minds)

David Bevington has been a vital influence on our understanding of English Renaissance drama and Shakespeare for over forty years. This mandate immediately begs the question: Not surprisingly, the book is a solid introduction to both. But which characters do we consider and at what point in their dramatized lives? He organizes his discussion into six main sections, each focusing on what he considers to have been significant issues for Shakespeare and his surrounding culture: Bevington lays bare the intellectual issues at stake and the risks inherent in the decisions that theatre practitioners must necessarily make.

He reminds the reader of the basics: Further, our assumptions about Shakespeare have real consequences for theatrical productions. The women at their best willingly enter into a balanced and mutually beneficial companionship with men, while also accepting the norms of a patriarchal world to the extent at least of granting that men are to be lords and masters in their households.

Generally, indeed, young men and women in the romantic comedies find comfort and safety in acceding to established codes of sexual behaviour. At the same time, Shakespeare finds equal worth and intellectual stimulation in loving relationships between two men or between two women, where shared friendship is everything and sex is at least nominally not involved.

Sexual desire is very insistent but it can too easily become degraded, so that it needs to be relegated to a lesser status in the hierarchy of values. The struggle to control sexual feelings is rife with peril, but in a strong relationship it can add immeasurably to the complex bonds of love.

In the more fraught relationships that Shakespeare begins to explore around , the dark side of human sexuality exerts itself in ways that can be terrifying. He also wrote Titus Andronicus some time around and Romeo and Juliet in mid decade, but even these seeming exceptions tend to confirm the pattern of two predominant genres, since Romeo and Juliet incorporates many of the ideas on sexuality and gender we explored in the previous chapter, while Titus Andronicus is a fanciful history play with a deep interest in the tragic consequences of civil conflict.

Throughout the s, then, Shakespeare was committed chiefly to two prevailing genres. One possible answer is that the two genres appealed to him in different but related ways as exploring the dilemmas of human existence from a relatively youthful and hopeful perspective. The comedies look at problems and potentials of sexuality and gender. The English history plays examine political conflict in an attempt to understand its origins and mode of operations. Politics and Political Theory 43 an examination are full of potential significance for an English people only recently having emerged from a prolonged period of civil and religious conflict into the beginnings of modern nationhood.

As he approaches manhood in the Henry IV plays, Prince Henry, or Hal, is a young man facing the challenge of succeeding his father as king. The political and philosophical consequences of such a rite de passage are those a young author might well want to sort out on his way to encountering the darker philosophical issues that will confront him in later years. Yet problems and ambiguities are also manifest. Whether he takes sides in the debates is often unclear. What is clear is that he genuinely tries to represent the contending issues fairly and with extraordinary insight.

Shakespeare is not a political theorist as such, but his analytical skills are formidable, and so is his ability as a dramatist to bring issues alive on stage through the words and actions of unforgettably vivid characters. The result is both instructive and entertaining for his audiences.

The plays are supportive of values about which his own generation of English people cared deeply, whatever their varying political persuasions, and they are values that interest us today despite the passage of roughly four hundred years. Let us take as a central example the representation of political conflict in Richard II c.

The subject is civil war, at a time in the early fifteenth century when England stood on the verge of an entire century of civil strife. They generally viewed it as a trial of fire out of which England, like the legendary phoenix, finally arose in a mystical rebirth from its own ashes.

Painful though the war was, it led to the making of the early modern English nation. Politics and Political Theory What had led to that prolonged civil conflict, and who was at fault? In Richard II, Shakespeare distributes the responsibility with notable evenhandedness. Richard is a weak and irresponsible monarch, but he is indubitably the legitimate king of England, and he carries that office with regal charisma. Having inherited the throne at a hazardously early age historically, Richard was ten when his father, Edward the Black Prince, died in battle in , Richard has found himself surrounded by powerful and ambitious uncles.

This incident is not reported in Richard II, but the consequences hang heavy over the play, for when Woodstock is killed at Calais while in the custody of Thomas Mowbray, the Duke of Norfolk, Richard is widely suspected of having suborned Mowbray to do away with a troublesome uncle. Whether Richard did so or not, his political opponents have no doubt of his guilt.

With that challenge, political conflict intensifies, for Richard must now preside over a trial by combat in which Mowbray is manifestly a stalking-horse for Richard himself. No love is lost between Richard and his eldest cousin, Bolingbroke, the son and heir of John of Gaunt. He banishes Mowbray forever, but accedes to political pressure in sentencing Bolingbroke to ten years of banishment and then reducing the number to six 1.

The responses of various members of the royal family to the aborted trial and banishment are interestingly varied. As the Duchess of Gloucester insists to her brother-in-law, Ah, Gaunt, his blood was thine! That bed, that womb, That metal, that self mold that fashioned thee, Made him a man; and though thou livest and breathest, Yet art thou slain in him.

Still, the code of revenge has its own ethical rationale, and it is one that appeals strongly to those whose kinsfolk have been wronged. The desire for revenge and counter-revenge becomes a driving force of civil war in the fifteenth century, a force that Shakespeare sees in almost apocalyptic terms. He is very clear that vengeance must proceed only through the direct intervention of God Almighty, the great judge of all things: Politics and Political Theory Gaunt refuses to pass judgement as to the rightness or wrongness of that action and disclaims any argument that he should act personally against Richard.

At least two great political commonplaces unite in this speech: The first posits that a duly constituted monarch is the head, on earth, of a divinely ordered hierarchy that derives its authority from its having been created by God in His own image. Royal authority, in this view, is not derived in any way from social contract or the consent of the governed; it is the finest representation we have on earth of a dispensation handed down to us from above.

As Gaunt says earlier in the same scene: One can argue, to be sure, that the doctrines of divine right and passive obedience were evolved by governing elites over the ages as a kind of mythology aimed at preserving the status quo. This is an interpretation with which John of Gaunt would disagree. Politics and Political Theory 47 Shakespeare? Do his history plays invite, or at least allow, such a sceptical and secular view of history? It is also set in debate with contrary views, not least of all by the political reasoning or manoeuvring, at any rate of his own son, Henry Bolingbroke.

The sympathetic side of John of Gaunt is to be found, first of all, in his magnificent rhetoric, for which Shakespeare of course deserves the credit. It characterizes Gaunt as a genuine patriot, caring more for his country than for his own life. It shows his noble integrity and commitment to the highest traditions of public service.

No less appealing is his insistent belief that a royal counselor like himself, though denied the option of threatening the king with force, is under a sacred obligation to offer unsparing and honest advice to the throne, even if at the expense of his own political well-being. For Gaunt, honest counseling is the concomitant of the doctrine of passive obedience: We never hear him defending or attacking the idea of the divine right of kings. He is a pragmatist, responding to the immediate present and never tipping his hand as to long-range plans.

Politics and Political Theory the death of Thomas of Woodstock. He undertakes this as a sacred crusade, staking his life on the honour of his cause. To be sure, Shakespeare speaks well of Mowbray too, with a generosity toward both sides that is characteristic. Bolingbroke has also gone into banishment, according to the sentence imposed, but soon we learn things about him that invite us to wonder about his unstated aims.

Bolingbroke claims that he has returned to England for no other reason than to take possession of his inheritance. When asked by his uncle York why he has dared to violate the terms of his banishment, and, more seriously, to return with military might against King Richard, Bolingbroke has his answer, plain and simple: Northumberland supports this contention: Politics and Political Theory 49 wonder too if Bolingbroke can really believe that he can oppose the crown militarily without momentous consequences. The Duke of York is a swing figure in this conflict. His political persuasions appear to be essentially those of his brother Gaunt: Gaunt expends his last breath attempting to drum some sense into his irresponsible nephew-king.

York cannot remain still; he must explain to Richard why this unlawful act on the part of the King undoes the very basis on which medieval kingship itself is founded: Is not Gaunt dead? And doth not Hereford live? Was not Gaunt just? And is not Harry true? Did not the one deserve to have an heir? Is not his heir a well-deserving son? York argues logically and on the basis of coherent political theory. Similarly, if the concepts of divine right of kings and passive obedience are to be held sacred and inviolable, any use of military force against a king to oblige him to give back what he has taken, no matter how unwise that taking may have been, amounts to an attack on the entire structure of medieval kingship.

Politics and Political Theory York, as he understands English law, is in the right on both counts. He is right also to understand that other peers share his deep concern and will not tolerate what Richard has done, even though their resistance will necessarily place them in opposition to divinely sanctioned concepts of orderly rule. What is York himself to do? His problem is that his theories of divine right and passive obedience work well to keep a society in proper order under most circumstances, but are essentially defenceless against the extraordinary events that are now taking place.

No higher appeals are possible in a kingdom governed by principles of divine right; the King is the ultimate judge. If he breaks the law, no proper recourse is available to his subjects other than the passive obedience that Gaunt has spelled out so clearly: But what if subjects are not willing to wait? Bolingbroke clearly is not. He makes no attempt to theorize in response to ideas of passive obedience; he simply acts, justifying his actions on the narrowest grounds possible of wanting back the dukedom that was unjustly and illegally taken from him.

York has no practical choice but to go along with the new order of things. Expediency is often an inglorious stance to take, and York does look a little ridiculous. Is he not inconsistent to trumpet the doctrine of divine right and then cave in to what he knows is a morally indefensible position? Yet York can also be said to exemplify a kind of pragmatism that may be able to save England for another day, at least in the short term.

The consequences that York has worried about do in fact take place. However much Bolingbroke may insist that his return to England has been solely for the purpose of recovering his dukedom, he must in effect take King Richard hostage if he is to achieve his aim. Politics and Political Theory 51 up with Richard and surrounds him in this fortress. Bolingbroke makes a great show of submission to Richard as his king, but Bolingbroke enters the negotiations with a non-negotiable demand.

If, and only if, that condition is met will Bolingbroke offer tokens of fealty. Bolingbroke insists that this is the last thing he could wish to have happen, but if Richard gives him no alternative, then military destruction will follow. Richard is as prescient as Bolingbroke is stubbornly unwilling to face the larger issues.

What is a king when he must obey a subject? The whole theory of kingship collapses under the weight of absurd self-contradiction. Richard plays his own role in his trial as both protagonist and victim in a mockery of justice; he knows that he has no choice but to resign as king, but he will not do so without showing everyone what a shabby business this is. He invents a ceremony of divesting a king of his sacred crown and sceptre in a way that dramatizes the blasphemous nature of the event.

He prophesies his own death, knowing what Bolingbroke should know but cannot acknowledge, that a deposed king is sure to be such a rallying point for opposition to the new regime that his elimination will become a political necessity. King Henry, as he is now known, squirms at the prospect of such a political murder.

Then, when a certain Sir Pierce of Exton acts on cue and dispatches the wretched Richard in Pomfret Castle, King Henry responds with pious protestation. Politics and Political Theory Exton, much in the way that Bolingbroke and Mowbray had earlier been banished by Richard. Yet when the King compares Exton to Cain, the first murderer in human history Genesis 4: Conversely, Richard looks better and better in our eyes as his fortunes decline.

However foolishly and unjustly he has behaved as king, his attempts at thoughtful and honest self-understanding emerge in his nightmare of captivity. In pondering these lessons from the Gospels, Richard strives to be a better person and to feel some contrition for the ways in which the perquisites of kingship have made him oblivious to the sufferings of his subjects.

Thus the contest of power between Richard and his successor is held in delicate and antithetical balance in the play. Richard is unwise but ineffably royal, whereas Bolingbroke is canny but unprincipled. Richard embodies a beautiful but impractical ideal of medieval kingship; Bolingbroke as Henry IV is a pragmatist who never really succeeds in gathering to himself the aura and mystery of kingship. He is a de facto king; legitimacy eludes him, since he seized power by irregular means.

Politics and Political Theory 53 titles by which he is known in the course of the play — Bolingbroke, Hereford, Lancaster, King Henry — bespeak a sense in which his political identity is in constant flux. To his supporters at the end he is King Henry, while to his opponents he is still Hereford 4. Who can say what it is to be a king? Yet history must go on, and Bolingbroke is the man of the hour.

Shakespeare refuses to give final judgement, even though he freely appeals to our sympathies as the story unfolds. His job as dramatist is to present opposing sides with sympathy and insight, inviting his audience to be enlightened and entertained by the clash of ideologies. King Henry continues to be plagued by the consequences of his irregular seizure of power.

More serious is the trouble that soon arises between Henry and the Percy clan. Henry Percy the Earl of Northumberland and his son Harry Percy, known as Hotspur, have been fending off the Scots in the north with considerable success. Northumberland was chief among the lords who helped Henry Bolingbroke depose Richard. His son, Hotspur, has done well at the battle of Holmedon historically Homildon Hill, and has taken some important prisoners. One might suppose that this difficulty could be gotten over by men who have stood together against Richard, but the good will they once shared seems to have dissipated.

When that gentleman died, the fifth Earl became the presumptive heir to the English crown, according to this Richardian line of succession. This is presumably why Richard had proclaimed Roger Mortimer heir; if one were to allow that his claim could trace its validity through the female in the person of Philippa, he was descended from Edward III by a genealogical line taking precedence over that to which Henry IV and his father belonged. To Hotspur, King Henry is now no better than a usurper. Hotspur is an enormously attractive character because of his forthrightness, his bravery, and his idealism.

Yet we are also invited to see him as young, innocent, and easily misled. His father and uncle seem ready to exploit this innocence in him. Why are they so mistrustful now of King Henry, and he of them? What has happened to the spirit of cooperation among them that led to the installation of Henry as king? One answer, seemingly, is that Henry has turned out to be not the sort of king that his erstwhile allies had expected.

The Percy clan backed the insurgency of Henry Bolingbroke because they were outraged by the irresponsible taxing policies of King Richard that had endangered their welfare and independence as medieval barons.

Shakespeare's Ideas (Blackwell Great Minds)

Henry, they hoped, would be more tractable and willing to leave them alone in their independent northern fiefdoms so far from the English court. Now that he is king, however, Henry appears to have a very different idea of what would be best for England and for himself as monarch. Henry wishes to centralize power in the English throne. Henry is a man of the new order. The Percys, and especially Hotspur, embody the values that we associate with medieval chivalry. Shakespeare dramatizes the process of historical change with multiple sympathies.

He allows much to be said on both sides. He eagerly accepts the mantle of leadership thrust upon him by his canny uncle and father, who have been coaxing him around to a rebellious point of view because they need his charismatic leadership in the civil war they are about to initiate. The irony is that Hotspur cannot see the extent to which his uncle and father are just as cunning at political manoeuvering as is the King. These men have common interests and political concerns, and yet the drift toward civil conflict seems unavoidable. The King, for his part, fears that if he gives in to these powerful barons they will drift increasingly out of his control.

War is the unavoidable consequence, and it is a war in which the ironies of a lost hope for peace become more and more insistent. As Worcester and Sir Richard Vernon return to the rebel camp from those negotiations, Worcester explains to Vernon his fear that the King cannot keep his word; he might indeed forgive Hotspur, but he will suspect the barons still, keeping them out of the counsels of power. Hotspur dies for what he takes to be a valiant and honourable cause, unaware of the political infighting and compromises with the truth that have occurred on both sides.

Politics and Political Theory 57 highlight political issues and ask hard questions without propounding dogmatic answers. Does the Prince realize what he is doing, or is he putting off the responsibilities of adulthood by pretending that idle dissipation can be called profitable recreation? Does he want to grow up?

Directors, actors, and critics alike have opted for almost every imaginable possibility. Hal has been variously presented as a playboy, a drunkard, a youngster with a deep emotional dependency on Falstaff, a thoughtful young politician who knows exactly where he is going, and a sardonic observer of human nature who from the very start has sized Falstaff up.

Falstaff, conversely, can be seen as a funny and endearing old rascal, an irresponsible alcoholic with a massive weight problem, a practising highwayman, a calculating and ambitious campaigner for the office of Lord Chief Justice, and a cynic who adopts a whimsical style in order to curry favour with the future king of England. King Henry can be played as a careworn monarch plagued by political and military difficulties, a much-put-upon parent, a student of Machiavelli whose every gesture has political intent, and an overbearing father who fails utterly to understand his son.

For all the liveliness of their badinage, they are discussing a weighty topic.

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Hal parries the question with a quibble, but the issue is serious enough. When Hal ascends the throne, will he keep Falstaff at his side, and will justice then be perverted to personal ends? The soliloquy thus seems to characterize the Prince as fully aware of how he can use Falstaff and the rest for ulterior political purposes. Yet lest we write him down as a cynical and heartless manipulator, we must recognize that this soliloquy can be read in a number of different ways, from self-aware calculation to whistling in the dark.

We need too to consider that Shakespeare may have his own purposes as dramatist in ending the scene with this soliloquy: In the great tavern scene of 2. Hal and Poins exult in catching Falstaff out in this lying. But who is fooling whom? Such an interpretation makes him out to be not simply an outrageous liar but one who wishes to endear himself to the Prince by being funny. If to be old and merry be a sin, then many an old host that I know is damned.

Whether he says so wistfully or mockingly or curtly depends on the actor. The debate continues as to what to do about Falstaff, but the issues are clarified. At the battle of Shrewsbury Falstaff is at once supremely irresponsible and an incisive critic of the senselessness of this war. This is craven, even if it is funny. Given the exigencies of battle, the practical joking is ill-timed. One has so many more options when one is alive than when one is dead.

Shakespeare invites us to consider whether some wars might be avoidable through better understanding, especially when the contestants are all from the same country. He understands the need of a prince for companionship and entertaining diversions, and yet seems sensitive too to the way in which the education of a future king necessarily sets him apart from his fellow mortals.

The phenomenon of political rebellion he regards with great wariness: Politics and Political Theory Two young men named Henry or Harry must do battle to determine the political future of England. Prince Henry asserts legitimacy as his own best claim against rebellion. Shakespeare does not let us forget the massive irony that Hal is himself the son of a former rebel and regicide. The future belongs not to Hotspur but to Hal. The realization that Hal is the son of a rebel never leaves him.

On the eve of what will be his great victory over the French at Agincourt, he implores God to forgive that circumstance over which this young king has no control: Can time and the succession of generations erase such a guilt?

He has shown himself to be a loyal son of the church, seeking ecclesiastical endorsement of his war against the French. This king is presented, then, not just as God-fearing, but as a firm believer in a providential view of history. He is certainly not above using piety as an essential part of his image as Christian king. In the opening of Henry V he masterfully orchestrates support for the impending war.

He receives vociferous backing from his nobles before calling in the French ambassador. The church has assumed moral responsibility, as Henry wished it to; the war is proclaimed a just war. The young King Henry has learned much from his father, despite their wariness toward one another. When father and son effect one last and tearful reconciliation as Henry IV lies dying, the old man has one last crucial piece of advice to offer his successor: In other words, find a foreign enemy to attack as the surest way of uniting the English people behind their leader.

His timeless counsel to his son is Machiavellian in the truest sense in that it proposes to seek war less for inherent reasons than as a means to solidify political support at home. War should be an instrument of royal policy. Both men seem adept at practising the kind of ruthless pragmatism and concern for image-making as a means of consolidating power that goes with the name of Machiavellism. Does the young King Henry V go to war largely for this reason? Does such a motive enhance his personal rivalry with the French Dauphin? Politics and Political Theory the Chorus provides an incessant drum-beat of enthusiasm for the war, but Shakespeare does allow us to see behind the scenes in a most telling way.

Positive and negative interpretations of Henry V have been strongly advocated in productions and in critical analyses. Yet the same play has been filmed in a more disillusioning way by Kenneth Branagh in under the weight of public anger over the Vietnam War and the Falklands engagement of What we can perhaps say is that Shakespeare is fascinated by the complexity of the political process.

He sees what manipulation of public opinion can do for a ruler. He studies the arts of governing and of military leadership in all their pragmatic details. Henry is a successful king, whatever one thinks of kingship or of success. Concomitantly, the view of history that emerges from these plays is that the quality of individual leadership matters crucially. Being born into royal power is not enough, as Richard II abundantly illustrates by his failure. History has its ups and downs.

Much depends on the man of the hour. Henry VI was less than a year old when he came to the English throne. He proved to be unlike the father in every way: Plantagenet and his sons mounted a military challenge to the kingship of Henry VI in what is known as the War of the Roses, white rose of York versus red rose of Lancaster. The fighting continued, see-sawing back and forth Henry VI was actually restored to the throne in for six months until the Yorkists gained decisive control.

He wrote these before writing King John c. For a number of reasons, the political object-lessons seem more sharply etched in the earlier-written historical plays about Henry VI than in the later-written series. By the same token, the civil wars themselves had to be told as a horror story of brother against brother and family against family. The best that could be said for the civil war was that it eventually brought forth the Tudor dynasty. Jack Cade, the leader, is a buffoon making absurd pretensions of ancestral descent from Lionel Duke of Clarence, older brother of John of Gaunt 3.

Cade is surrounded by Dick the butcher, Smith the weaver, a Sawyer, and other handicraftsmen whose pretensions to expertise in matters of governance are ludicrous. Cade promises his followers a world of cheap prices and plentiful goods to be had without labour: There is to be no money. Like many a radical reformer in parodic Utopian literature, Cade will eliminate wealth and rank in his communal state while arrogating all wealth and royal rank to himself.

A clerk of Chartham i. The damage to London, to its palaces, its shops, and its legal institutions, is extensive. Kill and knock down! Throw them into Thames! Shakespeare is wary generally of popular movements. Aristocrats are often to blame for starting the trouble, to be sure. Richard Plantagenet boasts in soliloquy that his plan is to unleash widespread violence through Cade: Once this mediating figure is out of the way, these opportunists and their allies including Cardinal Beaufort, a great-uncle of the King hope that anarchy will enable them to seize power.

Yet even if popular unrest is stirred up by unprincipled manoeuvrings of this sort, and even when that unrest appears to have grievances with which we can sympathize, the resulting inversions of authority are presented by Shakespeare as unnerving. However much his end may seem to be a suitable reward for his villainies, this is posse justice. This anarchy is the baleful fruit of civil conflict. In Richard III as well, the role of the populace in political decisionmaking is a matter of grave concern, though here the Londoners are more cautious and less easily prevailed upon.

The citizens say nothing, as though stalling for time. With the Lord Mayor and his fellow aldermen and some citizens, Richard himself has better success: Thus the citizens and civic officials of London, as well-intentioned as they are, allow themselves to be manipulated into sanctioning a devastating violation of English law and custom.

As a collective force they are unstable. The crowd in Coriolanus c. They are forbearing in spite of his disdain for them, and willing to elect him to the consulship. Yet they are moved to violence by their spokesmen, the Tribunes. Once again, we see that Shakespeare is ready to show sympathy for both sides of a political conflict. As in 2 Henry VI, political leaders bear the first responsibility for stirring up popular unrest. An associated worry in the Henry VI plays is that civil war quickly spirals downward into uncontrolled reciprocal violence and counterviolence. In return for these atrocities, young Clifford is the next to suffer retribution: And so it goes.

The very names of the main contestants underscore the dismal business of reciprocity. The Duchess of York adds to this grim list that she too had a Richard, namely, her husband Plantagenet, and also a Rutland, her youngest son, both of them slain, as we have seen, by Margaret and her Lancastrian supporters 44— 5. Queen Margaret sees a necessary justice of revenge in all these deaths: Such direful reciprocity is clearly presented as insane in these plays. The Richard who becomes Richard III is personally responsible for many of these deaths, and indeed stands before us as the epitome of civil violence.

He is the kind of evil ruler that England has brought upon itself through internecine conflict. Yet his role in this carnage is at last paradoxical and ironic. Although Richard does what he does out of monstrous self-interest, and seems to be succeeding brilliantly as he manoeuvres toward the throne, his murderous acts have the effect of punishing those who for the most part are guilty of punishable offences. Moreover, the violence that Richard embodies is a way of clearing out the competition for the English throne, so that when the Earl of Richmond i.

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Politics and Political Theory 69 expedients as did Richard to do away with troublesome rivals to his disputed possession of the crown. Elizabeth loathed the very idea of forcible resistance to any monarch, no matter how incapable or troublesome that monarch may have been. Mary was a rallying point for Catholics as long as she lived and was therefore a constant threat to Elizabeth, but she was still a duly constituted monarch. Elizabeth could allow no exceptions. Whatever one thought of the rival dynastic claims of the Lancastrians and the Yorkists, Richard III had a pedigree in comparison with which that of Henry Tudor was laughable.

Some of the things that the historical Richard had done in finagling his elevation to the kingship in place of his nephew, including quite possibly the killing his two young nephews in order to eliminate dangerous rivals to power, made him fair game for some of the blackening of character that took place. Politics and Political Theory house More was brought up and who had been present at some of the events thus narrated. The distortions of historical truth are more patent in the Tudor-sponsored presentation of Henry VII.

His hands were no more clean than those of his predecessor. The great reason for the historical vindication that followed his coming to power is simply that he succeeded where Richard had failed. The event itself came to be seen as a kind of spontaneous rising up of the English nation for which Henry was not the chief designer.

His agency needed to be downplayed so that he would not be cast in the role of regicide — the very precedent that Elizabeth feared most. Henry Tudor himself needed to be represented as wholesome, God-fearing, incorruptible, and capable of inspirational leadership. This is precisely the portrait of him we get in Richard III. Artistically, the ending of Richard III fulfills a dramatic design, not only for this play but for the four-play series as a whole.

The ironies of history serve well in fashioning closure for the entire narrative. Civil war is a nightmare; anarchy is a constant threat; selfish personal ambitions can overwhelm a state when it is weakly led; revenge is a double-edged sword that turns on itself in the form of endlessly reciprocal violence. How is a dramatist like Shakespeare to make artistic sense of what could so easily become an endless litany of barbarous deeds?

Shakespeare needs to find meaning in history and in his art, and he does so by showing, belatedly but surely, how all the carnage of the Wars of the Roses has a meaningful purpose of which its perpetrators and victims are ironically unaware. The carnage produces a Richard III and then it disposes of him once the job of destructive punishment has been finished.

In providential terms, Richard III can be characterized as a scourge of God — that is, the unwitting agent of Providence, carrying out its long-range intentions of which he himself is unaware. This reading provides a neat answer to the question as to why so much evil and suffering occurred in the first place. If one adopts a providential reading of history, much evil and suffering can be seen as the deserved punishment for a people who have lost their way spiritually.

Politics and Political Theory 71 obedience: Those who suffer at the hands of Richard III freely confess the sins that have led them to their suffering and punishment. They see purpose in their own tragedies, and respond with contrition. True enough, that idea does find expression at key points. He is of course right: He is right even in the sense that if Bolingbroke had not deposed Richard II, history would have taken a different turn; this is a truth so self-evident and at the same time so hypothetical in its predictive powers as to be essentially useless.

Though it offers nothing new to those who study theplays for a living, everyone else will find it a masterpiece ofthoughtful investigation into the plays. Lower- and upper-divisionundergraduates, graduate students, general readers.

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