Henry S Wars And Shakespeare S Laws

Provides new contexts for Shakespeare's play 'Henry V'. The result is an account of how Shakespeare's and other 'histories' dramatically articulated complex medieval and Renaissance attitudes to warfare and the conduct of nations and individuals in time of war.

Chivalry, one of Shakespeare's central themes, retains its pertinence and topicality in our rules for international humanitarian law and the conduct of war. Against a background of Medieval and Renaissance sources as well as Shakespeare's historical and dramatic realms, Professor Meron considers the ways in which law, chivalry, morality, conscience, and state necessity are deployed in Shakespeare to promote a society in which soldiers behave humanely and leaders are held to high standards of civilized behavior. In doing so, he illustrates the literary genealogy of such contemporary international humanitarian concerns as the treatment of prisoners and of women and accountability for war crimes.

Seminar paper from the year 2003 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, Bielefeld University (Fakultät für Linguistik und Literaturwissenschaft), course: Shakespeare’s History Plays, language: English, abstract: Das Referat behandelt die rechtliche und moralische Legitimation des Krieges in Shakespeares History Play Henry V, um damit zu klären, ob es sich um ein "affirmative play" oder ein "problem play" handelt.

War is a major theme in Shakespeare's plays. Aside from its dramatic appeal, it provided him with a context in which his characters, steeped in the ideals of chivalry, could discuss such concepts as honor, courage, patriotism, and justice. Well aware of the decline of chivalry in his own era, Shakespeare gave his characters lines calling for civilized behavior, mercy, humanitarian principles, and moral responsibility. In this remarkable new book, eminent legal scholar Theodor Meron looks at contemporary international humanitarian law and rules for the conduct of war through the lens of Shakespeare's plays and discerns chivalry's influence there. The book comes as a response to the question of whether the world has lost anything by having a system of law based on the Hague and Geneva conventions. Meron contends that, despite the foolishness and vanity of its most extreme manifestations, chivalry served as a customary law that restrained and humanized the conflicts of the generally chaotic and brutal Middle Ages. It had the advantage of resting on the sense that rules arise naturally out of societies, their armed forces, and their rulers on the basis of experience. Against a background of Medieval and Renaissance sources as well as Shakespeare's historical and dramatic settings, Meron considers the ways in which law, morality, conscience, and state necessity are deployed in Shakespeare's plays to promote a society in which soldiers behave humanely and leaders are held to high standards of civilized behavior. Thus he illustrates the literary genealogy of such modern international humanitarian concerns as the treatment of prisoners and of noncombatants and accountability for war crimes, showing that the chivalric legacy has not been lost entirely. Fresh and insightful, Bloody Constraint will interest scholars of international law, lovers of Shakespeare, and anyone interested in the history of war.

The concept of the just war poses one of the most important ethical questions to date. Can war ever be justified and, if so, how? When is a cause of war proportional to its costs and who must be held responsible? The monograph Just and Unjust Wars in Shakespeare demonstrates that the necessary moral evaluation of these questions is not restricted to the philosophical moral and political discourse. This analysis of Shakespeare's plays, which focuses on the histories, tragedies and Roman plays in chronological order, brings to light that the drama includes an elaborate and complex debate of the ethical issues of warfare. The plays that feature in this analysis range from Henry VI to Coriolanus and they are analysed according to the three Aquinian principles of legitimate authority, just cause and right intention. Also extending the principles of analysis to more modern notions of responsibility, proportionality and the jus in bello-presupposition, this monograph shows that just war theory constitutes a dominant theoretical approach to war in the Shakespearean canon.

Seminar paper from the year 2012 in the subject Didactics for the subject English - Literature, Works, grade: 1,00, Staatliche Berufliche Oberschule Fachoberschule / Berufsoberschule Kaufbeuren, language: English, abstract: “King Henry V” has always been considered as Shakespeare’s most patriotic play, one could even argue his most nationalistic play. “King Henry V” appears to be the story of the ideal English king who is brave, charismatic, honourable and pious or as Shakespeare puts it, he is “the mirror of all Christian kings” who fights for what is righteously his and leads his “band of brothers” to victory against impossible odds. However, to truly understand Shakespeare’s motivations, we have to take a look at the tumultuous time in which the play was written. Under the reign of Elizabeth I., England had either been at war or at the constant threat of one for decades. It was a time of frequent conspiracies to overthrow the queen and bloody rebellions. In this context the play can be seen as an attempt to raise the morale and to rally the English around a common cause. This interpretation becomes plausible given the fact that the play’s popularity increased whenever England was threatened, for example in both world wars and the Napoleonic wars. Nevertheless “King Henry V” is not just simple wartime propaganda, it’s an ambiguous play which can be interpreted both as a glorification of war or alternatively as a subtle critique of the cruelty and futility of war. It lies entirely in the eye of the beholder. Someone with a patriotic point of view might identify himself with the virtuous Henry or admire that - although weakened by plague and famine - the English soldiers and their king defeats a superior French army, whereas a more critical reader might question the legitimacy of waging a war of aggression in the first place. Furthermore particularly modern readers feel disgusted by the killing of the unarmed prisoners at the battle of Agincourt. Nowadays it would be considered a war crime and even back then it was considered inhumane. On the one hand Shakespeare seems to show the ideal monarch and an English nation united in victory, on the other hand he shows the ugly face of war with all his atrocities and inhumanity. In the following essay I will show both, the patriotic and a more critical perspective and the reason why Shakespeare implemented both of them in his play.