Just and Unjust Wars in Shakespeare 9783110301113, 9783110301052

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Franziska Quabeck Just and Unjust Wars in Shakespeare

Law & Literature

Edited by Daniela Carpi and Klaus Stierstorfer

Volume 7

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Franziska Quabeck

Just and Unjust Wars in Shakespeare

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D6 ISBN 978–3–11–030105–2 e-ISBN 978–3–11–030111–3 ISSN 2191–8457 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the internet at http://dnb.dnb.de © 2013 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Printing: Hubert & Co. KG, Göttingen o Printed on acid free paper Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com

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Acknowledgements First and foremost I would like to thank my supervisors Klaus Stierstorfer and Ludwig Siep for their invaluable support over many years, excellent guidance and great critical advice. I would also like to thank my other teachers Peter Coßmann, Stephan Gabel, Rainer Gocke, Brian Gibbons, Angela Kallhoff, Marga Munkelt and Andreas Vieth for their inspiration and support. I am also immensely grateful to my brilliant colleagues Joanna Becker, Florian Kläger, Sebastian Laukötter, Bente Lucht, Markus Schmitz and Marlena Tronicke for all their help over the years. I am greatly indebted to my family and friends, who made this possible.

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Contents 1

Introduction fi 1

2 2.1 2.2

Just War Theory fi 12 Historical Development and Context fi 12 Contemporary Principles fi 29

3 3.1 3.1.1 3.1.2 3.1.3 3.1.4 3.1.5

Approaching Just War Theory in Shakespeare fi 36 Pacifism versus Military Realism fi 36 Political Responsibility fi 44 Realism fi 49 Measure for Measure fi 59 Richard Crookback fi 72 Richmond’s Just War fi 82

4 4.1 4.1.1 4.1.2 4.1.3 4.1.4 4.1.5

Just and Unjust Wars in Shakespeare fi 94 Jus ad Bellum fi 94 Legitimate Authority fi 99 Just Cause fi 116 Right Intention fi 138 The Principle of Responsibility fi 152 The Principle of Proportionality fi 171

4.2 4.2.1 4.2.2 4.2.3 4.2.4 4.2.5

Jus in Bello fi 188 Warriors fi 196 Just and Unjust Conduct fi 201 Soldiers’ Consent fi 215 War Crimes fi 221 Strategy and Morality fi 232

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Conclusion fi 240

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Bibliography fi 245

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Index fi 261

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Contents

Introduction

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1 Introduction Shakespeare’s account of war has been the subject of much debate over the past decades and the prominence the theme maintains in the majority of the plays has led to a variety of interpretations. Critics agree that war is “universal” or “ubiquitous” in Shakespeare’s plays, which often results in the assumption that the playwright had a particular interest in the phenomenon.1 More specifically, scholarly opinion on Shakespeare’s representation of war can be seen as a threefold cluster. Scholars like Paul Jorgensen and Tim Spiekerman deduce a glorification of war and Machiavellian ‘might makes right’-policy in the plays.2 Theodor Meron, Steven Marx or R. S. White, on the other hand, take the diametrically opposed position and identify a pacifist stance. Meron even goes as far as to say that he sees evidence for William Shakespeare’s personal opinion: Each of Shakespeare’s dramatic characters expresses distinct, individual attitudes, and is not a spokesperson for Shakespeare. I believe, nevertheless, that when the preponderance of his characters express certain themes, as about the bloodiness and the futility of war, for example, it is legitimate to draw certain conclusions about Shakespeare’s own attitudes. […] He shows that wars are not only tragic and bloody, but also futile.3

Similarly, Steven Marx concludes that throughout his dramatic career, “Shakespeare’s own abhorrence of war became steadily more emphatic.”4 R. S. White, on

1 Simon Barker uses the term “universal,” Paola Pugliatti the term “ubiquitous.” Hale speaks more generally of a “broad sweep of military interest.” See Simon Barker, War and Nation in the Theatre of Shakespeare and his Contemporaries (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007): 157; Paola Pugliatti, Shakespeare and the Just War Tradition (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010): 1; J. R. Hale, “Shakespeare and Warfare” in William Shakespeare. His World, His Works, His Influence. Vol. I, ed. John F. Andrews (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1985): 85–98, 89. 2 See Paul A. Jorgensen, Shakespeare’s Military World (Berkeley et al.: University of California Press, 1956); and Tim Spiekerman, Shakespeare’s Political Realism. The English History Plays (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001). 3 Theodor Meron, Bloody Constraint. War and Chivalry in Shakespeare (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998): 7/8. 4 Steven Marx, “Shakespeare’s Pacifism,” Renaissance Quarterly 45.1 (1992): 49–95, 91. Kenneth Muir, on the other hand, tries to distance himself from attributing personal opinions to the author through the plays, but nevertheless claims to detect a rejection of civil wars in particular: “In the plays he wrote during the reign of Elizabeth, Shakespeare seems to have regarded civil war as an evil to be avoided at all costs. […] We do not know, of course, whether Shakespeare was expressing his personal opinions, providing appropriate opinions for his characters, or making suitable comment in plays concerned with the evils of civil war; but from the way in which he harps on the theme, and from the intensity of the imagery connected with it, it has naturally been assumed

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Introduction

the other hand, refers to Shakespeare’s famous ambiguity, his technique of holding “in dynamic suspension equal and opposite views of his subject,” as an approach that according to him reveals a pacifist notion in the plays nevertheless: If we adopt such an understanding of Shakespearian drama, then we can begin to notice that despite the apparently overwhelming naturalisation and glorification of war in his plays, there are opposing voices who challenge war from a variety of broadly pacifist standpoints, and that this operates right from the beginning of his dramaturgical career.5

Despite his claim that Shakespeare hold two opposed ideas in equal balance, in the analysis of the plays White nevertheless opts for “either/or” rather than “both/and,”6 claiming that the voices opposed to war predominate in the plays.7 In order to come to a satisfying and coherent interpretation of Shakespeare’s account of war, however, it is indispensable to utilise its inherent ambiguity. The duality of opinions contrasted in the plays generally has left many a critic with an ambivalence that seems insuperable, as Norman Rabkin has stated: “Always the dramatic structure sets up the opposed elements as equally valid, equally desirable, and equally destructive, so that the choice that the play forces the reader to make becomes impossible.”8 This ambiguity, “dialectical dramaturgy,” “ambidextrousness,” or “even-handedness” is an approach towards Shakespearean drama that is as famous as it is popular for different reasons.9 First of all, this methodology defies the suspicion that the critic attempt to make a claim about William Shakespeare’s personal opinion by deducing it from his characters’ state-

that he felt strongly on the subject.” Kenneth Muir, “Shakespeare and Politics” in Shakespeare in a Changing World, ed. Arnold Kettle (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1964): 65–83, 66/67. 5 R. S. White, “Pacifist Voices in Shakespeare,” Parergon: Journal of the Australian and New Zealand Association for Medieval and Early Modern Studies 17.1 (1999): 135–162, 142/143. 6 Approaching Shakespeare’s plays from the aspect of duality ultimately derives from William Empson’s Seven Types of Ambiguity (London: Chatto and Windus, 19533). “Either/Or” and “Both/ And” was predominantly used by Norman Rabkin in Shakespeare and the Problem of Meaning (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1981). Jonathan Bate makes further use of this in The Genius of Shakespeare (London: Picador, 1997). 7 White concludes that “the equation of war and death as enemies to love and eternal life is too insistent through Shakespeare’s works to ignore. Even in the most unexpected and inconspicuous places, where voices of war are raised they inevitably provoke, and are sometimes defeated by, equally powerful voices of peace.” R. S. White, Pacifism and English Literature. Minstrels of Peace (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008): 177. 8 Norman Rabkin, Shakespeare and the Common Understanding (New York: The Free Press, 1967): 12. 9 Norman Rabkin uses the term “dialectical dramaturgy” (Shakespeare and the Problem of Meaning, 11), Jonathan Bate calls this “ambidextrousness” (Genius of Shakespeare, 328) and Simon Barker refers to Shakespeare’s “even-handedness” (War and Nation, 134).

Introduction

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ments. Secondly, the ambivalence of it shields the critic from the common assumption that they try to demonstrate their own personal opinion by reference to Shakespeare. Thirdly, it seems plausible that the dialogical nature of drama might serve as a means of juxtaposing two different accounts without favouring either.10 And lastly, as Rabkin has shown, an interpretation that tries to identify the theme or idea of a play as “either/or” is reductive.11 Approaching the text from the premise of an inherent ambiguity, it therefore seems sensible to find an alternative to the two opposing views of war. But this alternative approach does not have to be inconclusive concerning the portrayal of war, as J. R. Hale has claimed: [T]here is no suggestion in the plays that Shakespeare was suppressing strong feelings one way or another about the role of war in human life. […] No “view” on war emerges from the evenhandedness with which he has his characters express sentiments appropriate to their roles.12

Apart from the fact that the playwright’s personal feelings are not only impossible to identify in the text but moreover irrelevant, it is, however, not true that the dichotomy of the two views of war necessarily defies straightforward results. The key to the problem is that the ambiguity sought for presents itself differently to what has hitherto been thought. Thus far, scholars have only examined Shakespeare’s plays in search of either a pacifist or a realist stance, but this dualism does not represent the only possible theoretical approach to war: a third option is provided by just war theory. Militarism or realism13 is commonly understood as the

10 See R. S. White’s comment that Shakespeare “uses to the full the potential in the medium of drama for representing dialectic, as two or more passionately involved spokesmen for opposite positions argue with each other.” White, “Pacifist Voices,” 142. 11 See especially his famous analysis of Henry V: “Should one see a rabbit or a duck? Along the way I’ve cited some critics who see an exemplary Christian monarch […] and others who see ‘the perfect Machivellian prince’ […]. Despite their obvious differences, these rival views are essentially similar, for each only sees a rabbit or a duck. I hope that simply by juxtaposing the two readings I have shown that each of them, persuasive as it is, is reductive, requiring that we exclude too much to hold it.” Norman Rabkin, “Rabbits, Ducks and Henry V,” Shakespeare Quarterly 28.3 (1977): 279–296, 294. 12 Hale, “Shakespeare and Warfare,” 97. 13 In the attempt to distinguish between three different approaches to war, scholars distinguish between pacifism, just war theory and the third approach of unlimited violence. The terminology concerning this third approach varies between militarism, bellicism, jihad or realism. John Courtney Murray, for instance, juxtaposes pacifism and bellicism (We Hold These Truths. Catholic Reflections on the American Proposition [Kansas City, Mo.: Sheed and Ward, 1988]: 258). John Kelsay and James Turner Johnson, on the other hand, distinguish between just war, pacifism and jihad (Just War and Jihad: Historical and Theoretical Perspectives on War and Peace in Western

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Introduction

approach that postulates war as an amoral condition. “War is hell,” “All is fair in love and war” and “Inter arma silent leges”14 are proverbs that try to capture the amorality of war and the basic argument is that it is futile to approach the phenomenon from an ethical perspective, as Michael Walzer summarises the approach: “War is a world apart, where life itself is at stake, where human nature is reduced to its elemental forms, where self-interest and necessity prevail.”15 Pacifism, on the other hand, is understood as the view that it is “never permissible to engage in war” and that a moral justification for war can never be achieved.16 This approach maintains that “nothing which might be achieved by war can justify the massive taking of human life.”17 These two approaches are the only theories that are usually applied to investigate Shakespeare’s account of war, but just war theory offers a third approach to

and Islamic Traditions [Westport: Greenwood Press, 1991]). J. Daryl Charles and Timothy J. Demy juxtapose pacifism with “militarism/crusade/jihad” and subsume these three under the general term political “realism” (War, Peace, and Christianity: Questions and Answers from a Just-War Perspective [Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2010]: 55/56). For the sake of clarity, I will make use of Michael Walzer’s terminology, who distinguishes realism, pacifism and just war theory in Just and Unjust Wars (New York: Basic Books, 20033). 14 “War is hell” is usually attributed to General Sherman, a general in the American War of Independence (see Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 32). “All’s fair in love and war” can be traced back to John Lyly’s Euphues: see Gregory Y. Titelman, Random House Dictionary of Popular Proverbs and Sayings (New York: Random House, 1996). “Inter arma silent leges” was probably coined by Cicero, who uses it in Pro T. Annio Milone: see Dieter Hüning, “Inter arma silent leges. Naturrecht, Staat und Völkerrecht bei Thomas Hobbes” in Rüdiger Voigt, ed., Der Leviathan (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2000): 129–163. The approach was essentially influenced by Machiavelli’s realpolitik. For Machiavelli’s own doctrine see Machiavelli, The Prince, eds. Quentin Skinner and Russell Price. Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought (Cambridge: CUP, 2002): 62. For an analysis of Machiavelli’s impact on early modern philosophy see A. J. Parel, “The Question of Machiavelli’s Modernity” in The Rise of Modern Philosophy. The Tension Between the New and Traditional Philosophies from Machiavelli to Leibniz, ed. Tom Sorell (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000): 253–272. 15 Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 3. One of the most infamous representatives of this approach was Carl von Clausewitz, who believed that war is characterised by limitless violence and will therefore necessarily escalate: “If one side uses force without compunction, undeterred by the bloodshed it involves, while the other side refrains, the first will gain the upper hand. That side will force the other to follow suit; each will drive its opponent toward extremes, and the only limiting factors are the counterpoises inherent in war.” Carl von Clausewitz, On War, ed. and transl. by Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1976): 75f. 16 Jeff McMahan, “War and Peace” in A Companion to Ethics, ed. Peter Singer. Blackwell Companions to Philosophy (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991): 384–395, 385. 17 Richard Norman, Ethics, Killing and War (Cambridge: CUP, 1995): 38.

Introduction

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the text. The theory of the just war postulates that there is a moral reality of war and this provides a framework of discussion of the justice of war and justice in war. This approach opposes realism in the assumption that wars are not liable to moral judgement and at the same time posits against pacifism that war may be morally justified. Therefore, just war theory provides a promising approach to the representation of war in Shakespearean drama and avoids the traditional binary perspective. Since critics have been unable to determine whether realism or pacifism dominate the text, it is the third approach that suggests itself as a means of investigation. In fact, in recent years, just war terminology has occurred in Shakespeare criticism with increasing frequency. Michael Hattaway, for instance, claims that “the Battle of Bosworth in Richard III may be the only example of a just war in the canon.”18 Nicholas Grene agrees by stating that “when an armed force appears under the command of Richmond, it is to be welcomed as the just war to end the cycle of violence.”19 And Simon Barker calls Richmond’s speech before the Battle of Bosworth a “lukewarm version of the just war ethic,”20 while R. A. Foakes claims that, in general, “Shakespeare seems especially interested in […] the emerging question whether there can be a just war.”21 However, a full analysis of just and unjust wars in Shakespeare has not been undertaken. The quotations from recent publications on Shakespeare’s account of war demonstrate that scholars make increasing use of the discourse of just war theory, but the question all of them elide is what is considered to be a just war in Shakespeare’s plays and in how far the drama is influenced by just war theory. The only exceptions are Alexander Harrington’s and Mark Mattox’s articles that try to investigate whether Shakespeare’s Henry V can be considered to represent a just warrior and a monograph by Theodor Meron on the same play and its relation to the just war tradition.22 The only study that approaches more plays than one is a monograph by Paola Pugliatti. She recently tried to place Shakespeare within the history of the just war tradition, describing the approach of her study as follows:

18 Michael Hattaway, “The Shakespearean History Play” in The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare’s History Plays, ed. Michael Hattaway (Cambridge: CUP, 2002): 3–24, 14. 19 Nicholas Grene, Shakespeare’s Serial History Plays (Cambridge: CUP, 2002): 92. 20 Barker, War and Nation, 128. 21 R. A. Foakes, Shakespeare and Violence (Cambridge: CUP, 2003): 83. 22 Alexander Harrington, “War and William Shakespeare,” Dissent 50.4 (2003): 104–107; John Mark Mattox, “Henry V: Shakespeare’s Just Warrior,” War, Literature & the Arts 12.1 (2000): 30–53; Theodor Meron, Henry’s Wars and Shakespeare’s Laws. Perspectives on the Law of War in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1993). David L. Perry of Davidson College, NC, even uses Shakespeare’s Henry V to teach just war principles: see David L. Perry, “Using Shakespeare’s Henry V to Teach Just-War Principles.” Published online at http://www.ethicsineducation.com/ HenryV. pdf [last accessed March 17, 2011].

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Introduction

The general framework […] concerns the influence of the just war doctrine on a particular social phenomenon (the theatre) and, more specifically, on the work of a particular playwright (Shakespeare); and, consequently, the perspective which, on the issue of war, was communicated to the contemporary audience, thereby shaping the public opinion of the time. […] It is in the theatre, therefore, that we may expect to find reverberations of the dialogue between contemporary (and previous) statements about war and the social, political and cultural forces which nourished that dialogue and the revival of the just war doctrine at that particular time and in that particular place.23

Providing an extensive overview of the history of the just war tradition and specifically a thorough account of its reflection in Elizabethan times, Pugliatti shows in how far Shakespeare’s plays include Elizabethan just war terminology with a specific focus on Henry V. Her study is therefore strictly historical: it constitutes an “attempt at reconstructing and revising a theological and moral Christian tradition” and “is not meant to provide a fresh theoretical elaboration of these issues but simply to outline a framework and a viewpoint for the discussion of Shakespeare’s work.”24 Through detailed references to theoretical Elizabethan texts, Pugliatti has created a good basis for a historical analysis, since she emphasises the parallels between Elizabethan just war terminology and the drama, and it has been claimed that when it comes to the phenomenon of war, it is impossible not to analyse it from such a historical perspective: [A]lthough the conjunction ‘Shakespeare and war’ makes historical sense, it is still easy enough to miss the point, for war meant something different at different moments in history, and our knowledge of more recent military excesses might seriously affect our reading of war scenes in Shakespeare. The dangers of insufficient historicizing are greater still because the topic elicits such a strong emotional response: Shakespeare’s dramatic evocation of the horrors of war – the human cruelty, the bloodshed, the relentless killing and pathetic dying – has never ceased to appeal to modern sensibilities.25

Klein’s concern of insufficient historicising is certainly unnecessary, when it comes to Pugliatti’s account of Shakespeare and war. She provides the required detailed analysis of what war and just war meant in Elizabethan times and shows the advancement of the just war tradition, using the popular method of regarding Shakespeare’s plays as a mirror of the age. She thus traces the discourse of just war theory in the plays, but does not regard them in their overall dramatic con-

23 Pugliatti, Shakespeare and the Just War Tradition, 5. 24 Pugliatti, Shakespeare and the Just War Tradition, 5/6. 25 Bernhard Klein, “‘Tales of Iron Wars’ – Shakespeare and the Uncommon Soldier” in War and the Cultural Construction of Identities in Britain, eds. Barbara Korte and Ralf Schneider (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2002): 93–107, 94.

Introduction

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text, so that the ethical implications remain obscure. The arguments of different characters for and against the justice of their wars are outlined and juxtaposed in her study, but this supports the assumption that Shakespeare’s dialectic dramaturgy makes it impossible to decide. An analysis of the just war arguments that are included in the text according to their context will demonstrate, however, that the representation of war in the plays is far from ambivalent. This becomes most evident, when the plays are discussed in chronological order according to their date of origin, because this demonstrates the way in which the discourse of just war theory is gradually developed. For an analysis of the plays in chronological order it is indispensable to include the early plays. For a long time there had been a widespread tendency to regard them as too incoherent to be included in serious analysis, but towards the second half of the twentieth century, they were redeemed in scholarly opinion. In 2001, Emrys Jones rightfully pointed out that “[t]he recovery of the early Shakespeare is one of the achievements of twentieth century scholarship.”26 For decades of scholars before Jones, these early plays were considered more or less insignificant for the study of Shakespeare; mainly because on the one hand, they seemed too inferior to Shakespeare’s late plays and on the other hand, authorship in general was debatable.27 To critics it seemed that these plays lacked everything the later ones had – subtlety, complexity, ambiguity. This is Donald A. Stauffer’s criticism of the early Shakespeare: In the early histories, he preaches directly at the drop of a gauntlet. His moral instinct is obvious in his moralizing. Paradoxically, what he says carries no conviction, for he repeats stiffly the platitudes of the chroniclers and the saws of the pulpit. None of his own light shines through. He is still a dark planet, absorbing, not radiating ideas.28

These attitudes then finally changed in the seventies with such influential accounts as Edward Berry’s Patterns of Decay or Jones’s own The Origins of Shakespeare. Despite their general rehabilitation, however, most scholars still tend to see crucial differences in quality between the early and the late plays, pointing

26 Emrys Jones, “Reclaiming Early Shakespeare,” Essays in Criticism: A Quarterly Journal of Literary Criticism 51.1 (2001): 35–50, 35. 27 Since I will not attempt to identify any personal opinion by William Shakespeare, I will analyse the plays without considering the question of authorship, which is debatable in the case of 1Henry VI, for instance. See Gary Taylor, “Shakespeare and Others: The Authorship of Henry Sixth, Part One,” Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England: An Annual Gathering of Research, Criticism and Reviews 7 (1995): 145–205. 28 Donald A. Stauffer, Shakespeare’s World of Images. The Development of His Moral Ideas (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1966): 20.

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Introduction

out that they include many themes that more refined works of a later date take up again in a more complex manner. Jones, for instance, states that “[i]n these early plays [Shakespeare] was staking out the area within which he would continue to work in his mature tragedies and at the same time doing some radical thinking about drama.”29 John P. Cutts also sees Shakespeare’s early plays as “foreshadowing” his later “dramatic technique” and sketches a development throughout the canon of how Shakespeare was “finding his way.”30 The difference in quality between early and late Shakespearean plays is perhaps most evident in the comparison between the first and second tetralogy.31 Not only the fact that both constitute individual play series, but also the related themes of kingship and rightful succession suggest a close comparison, which demonstrates that the second tetralogy deals with the same complexities only in a more refined manner. However, to bring the history plays together like this must result in foreseeable difficulties. Alexander Leggatt attempts to dispense with this dilemma in the preface of his influential Shakespeare’s Political Drama: [A] controversy that affects the English history plays in particular is the question of whether to read each play on its own, or as part of a larger unit formed by the series as a whole. The latter approach, associated with Tillyard, is currently out of favour, and there are so many inconsistencies between one play and the next that the notion of treating the sequence from Richard II to Richard III as a single great work, developed over the years but meant to stand together, deserves to be viewed with suspicion. At the same time there are many points at which the plays consciously refer to each other. The two tetralogies […] need on the whole to be kept separate, but to keep each play separate is to reject quite explicit invitations in the texts – invitations to remember, to make connections. The best approach is the pragmatic one: not to force connections, but to be ready to acknowledge them if they can add something to our understanding.32

Leggatt is not only right in his approach of regarding the tetralogies separately, but moreover, his treatment of the ‘Tillyard problem’ is also most refreshing. E. M. W. Tillyard’s interpretation of the history plays was certainly an important one in the sense that it was followed by such controversial and lasting discussion,

29 Emrys Jones, The Origins of Shakespeare (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977): 29. 30 John P. Cutts, The Shattered Glass: A Dramatic Pattern in Shakespeare’s Early History Plays (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1968): 10. 31 The term “tetralogy” is often associated with Tillyard, who will not be considered in the present study, but the division of first and second tetralogy has been made by many more scholars up to the present day. I will therefore use the same terminology for practical purposes exempt from Tillyard’s original approach. 32 Alexander Leggatt, Shakespeare’s Political Drama. The History Plays and the Roman Plays (London and New York: Routledge, 1988): xiii.

Introduction

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but at the same time it formed rather rigid boundaries for criticism of Shakespeare’s histories, since the decades following his account were characterised by multifarious attempts to refute him. Finally, Leggatt confined himself to simply claiming Tillyard to be “out of favour,” offering a fresh start for scholarly criticism. Russ McDonald summarises a sensible contemporary take on Tillyard as follows: It is appropriate to point out that Tillyard is not always as retrograde as some polemicists have made him, but still it is true that much of his thinking, shaped as it was by the chaotic world events of the 1930s and 1940s, is unambiguous and, from this distance, apparently naïve.33

Now, in the second decade of the twenty-first century Tillyard’s important work should not be ignored, but a refutation of the Tudor Myth simply seems superfluous. In the present analysis, the assumption will be with James Siemon, that Tillyard “may no longer command assent or rebuttal.”34 The greatest problem Tillyard’s analysis caused was the question of how to discuss the history plays in their relation to each other: chronologically according to their date of origin or concerning the order of historical events they portray? This is why Leggatt chose to see “each play as a fresh experiment” at the same time determining that “each experiment is part of an ongoing investigation.”35 Presumably this is why he saw the necessity to regard the plays chronologically according to their creation, because the development in Shakespeare’s writing that so many critics observed is irrefutable and for the present approach it is equally essential to distinguish between early and late plays. The distinctive feature here is the phenomenon of war and its depiction in the plays, which differs greatly according to their date of origin. This approach to Shakespeare’s plays from the perspective of just war theory will show that what is normally perceived to be a mutually exclusive representation of war and peace becomes a very refined moral evaluation of just and unjust wars throughout the canon. It is true that no interpretation of the plays makes it possible to decide between pacifism and realism, between an absolute rejection of violence or glorification of war, but this is not the case because of an irresolvable ambiguity in the text. The early plays juxtapose realism with pacifism in a gradual development towards the arguments of just war theory, which will turn

33 Russ McDonald, ed., Shakespeare. An Anthology of Criticism and Theory 1945–2000 (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004): 418. 34 James Siemon, “‘The Power of Hope?’ An Early Modern Reader of Richard III” in A Companion to Shakespeare’s Works. Vol. II: The Histories, eds. Richard Dutton and Jean E. Howard (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003): 361–378, 361. 35 Leggatt, Shakespeare’s Political Drama, xiv.

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Introduction

out to be the prevailing account of war to be found in Shakespeare’s plays. The analysis of Shakespeare’s plays in chronological order will reveal that while the early plays mainly juxtapose the two diametrically opposed positions, this dialectic is broken up throughout the first tetralogy and turns into a representation of the theory of the just war. Thus, the seemingly irresolvable ambiguity of the plays’ treatment of war gives way to a profound ethical consideration within the text, which is in many instances included through invented or dramatically unnecessary scenes that are exempt from the plot.36 The analysis of the plays according to the principles of just war theory therefore supports Rabkin’s assumption that to give predominance to one idea over another would indeed be reductive, but here the solution is not to posit them both as complementary to each other, but to discard them for a third approach instead. The decisive principle therefore is not “either/or” nor “and/both” but rather “neither,” since a pacifist reading of the plays does not offer any more solutions than a realist reading. Despite the acknowledgement of the universality of war in Shakespeare, just war theory has not been the guiding principle of interpretation so far, and it will turn out that the analysis of the chosen plays from this angle provides an entirely new insight into the morality of war in Shakespearean drama. In the following I will therefore first provide an overview of the most important principles of just war theory. These principles include aspects that were developed by philosophers as early as St Thomas Aquinas, but have remained crucial arguments in any ethical consideration of war to this very day, as well as more modern elements. For this purpose it is necessary to give an overview of the historical development of the theory by taking the most important contributors up to Shakespeare’s time into consideration. The three main principles that Aquinas developed as necessary presuppositions for a just war were well established by this time and thus they feature prominently in the text. However, the analysis shall not stop there, since the plays additionally incorporate modern principles such as responsibility and proportionality as well as considerations of the justice in war. An obligatory basis of the analysis is to consider the theoretical background as far as it had been advanced in the Elizabethan age, but the main interest of this study lies in the congruencies between Shakespeare’s text and the modern theory of just war. The modern development of just war theory was substantially influenced by Michael Walzer’s seminal book Just and Unjust Wars of

36 I proceeded chronologically according to Wells and Taylor (see Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor, William Shakespeare. A Textual Companion (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987). My analysis focuses on those plays, which include an ethical negotiation of the principles of just war theory. As it turned out, some plays include war as an element of the plot, but do not imply a moral evaluation of it, which is why those plays are not included in my analysis.

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1977, which must be gratefully acknowledged as the direct inspiration for the present study, as the title Just and Unjust Wars in Shakespeare means to suggest. Several times throughout his work, Walzer quotes Shakespeare in order to emphasise his arguments for the justice and injustice of certain wars, which evoked the question how an approach from this perspective might change the recipient’s understanding of Shakespeare’s dramatisation of war. As it will be demonstrated in the following, the investigation of the plays concerning these principles has led to an entirely new interpretation. This analysis of the plays will be conducted in parts three and four of this study: part three focuses on the dichotomy of pacifism and realism in the early plays, which is finally resolved by the first just war at the end of Richard III. Part four therefore focuses on the representation of the morality of war that follows from the establishment of just war theory at the Battle of Bosworth and demonstrates the profound discussion of the justice of war and justice in war in Shakespeare’s plays.

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Just War Theory

2 Just War Theory 2.1 Historical Development and Context Just war theory reached the peak of its complexity in the twentieth century, but it is a philosophical approach to war, which is far older than that. It arose out of centuries of investigations concerning war and these investigations took different shapes. Plato argues in the Republic that an ideal state is a state which grows and expands, which makes war a necessary means for a flourishing state. Expansion is necessarily followed by war, since it violates other communities’ or states’ territories. Thus, Plato postulates the necessity of war without passing moral judgement upon it. War is presented as inevitable, whether desirable or not. An ideal state is a luxurious state and luxury requires expansion, for otherwise all resources will be exhausted eventually. Thus, a violation of others’ territories is inevitable: Then we shall have to cut a cantle of our neighbour’s land if we are to have enough for pasture and ploughing, and they in turn of ours if they too abandon themselves to the unlimited acquisition of wealth, disregarding the limit set by our necessary wants. […] We shall go to war as the next step.1

Plato postulates the necessity of warfare and specifically expresses that “we are not yet to speak […] of any evil or good effect of war, but only to affirm that we have further discovered the origin of war.”2 This descriptive rather than prescriptive account given in the Republic is revised a little in Plato’s later work Laws.3 Here, he diverges from the pragmatic necessity of war and stresses its regrettable aspects. He distinguishes between civil and foreign wars, the former constituting a worse phenomenon than the latter, and presents both as undesirable: “The highest good, however is neither war nor civil strife – which things we should pray rather to be saved from – but peace with one another and friendly feeling.”4 Moreover, he compares war to a disease which has infected the body of the state and makes it unwell:

1 Plato, Republic. The Loeb Classical Library (London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1963): 373d–374a. See also the editor’s note on “unlimited acquisition of wealth”: “Natural desires are limited. Luxury and unnatural forms of wealth are limitless, as the Greek moralists repeat from Solon down.” n. g. 2 Plato, Republic, 374a. 3 For the general shift in Plato’s political philosophy between the Republic and the Laws, see Trevor J. Saunders, “Plato’s Later Political Thought” in The Cambridge Companion to Plato, ed. Richard Kraut (Cambridge: CUP, 1992): 464–492. 4 Plato, Laws. The Loeb Classical Library (London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1961): 628c.

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[W]ith regard to the well-being of a state or an individual, that man will never make a genuine statesman who pays attention primarily and solely to the needs of foreign warfare, nor will he make a finished lawgiver unless he designs his war legislation for peace rather than his peace legislation for war.5

Although Plato here takes the negative consequences of war into consideration, he has not utterly distanced himself from the idea that war is inevitable.6 Aristotle does not discuss war as a moral problem either but seems to presume quite similarly that it cannot be avoided. According to Frederick Russell, “[i]t was Aristotle who coined the term ‘just war,’ applying to wars waged by Hellenes against non-Hellenes whom he considered barbarians.”7 Furthermore, Russell states that Aristotle considered war a natural form of acquisition: [S]ince some men by their virtue, equated with justice, deserved to extend their rule over less worthy men, wars by which they enslaved others were naturally just. Men should only resort to war to prevent their own enslavement, that is, in self-defense, or to obtain an empire for the benefit of the governed or to enslave those non-Hellenes deserving of slavery. In Aristotelian terms warfare was thus not an end in itself but a means to such higher goals as peace, glory and strength.8

For Aristotle the art of war is a natural art of acquiring, which must be applied towards animals and those human beings that are by nature meant to serve others.9 This kind of war, according to Aristotle, is a just war:

5 Plato, Laws, 628e. 6 For further particulars of Plato’s account of war see Ulrike Kleemeier, Grundfragen einer philosophischen Theorie des Krieges. Platon–Hobbes–Clausewitz. Politische Ideen, ed. Herfried Münkler (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2002). 7 Frederick H. Russell, The Just War in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975): 3/4. Scholars generally acknowledge Aristotle’s original coinage of the collocation; see also John Mark Mattox, Saint Augustine and the Theory of Just War (London, New York: Continuum, 2006): 1; Christopher Tyerman, God’s War. A New History of the Crusades (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006): 32. 8 Russell, Just War in the Middle Ages, 4. 9 This division of mankind into the ones that were born to serve and the ones that were born to command explains Aristotle’s approval of slavery. However, as Ross points out, Aristotle emphasises that “[s]lavery by mere right of conquest in war is not to be approved. Superior power does not always mean superior excellence.” David Ross, Aristotle (London and New York: Routledge, 1995): 250.

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Hence even the art of war will by nature be in a manner an art of acquisition (for the art of hunting is part of it) that is properly employed against wild animals and against such of mankind as though designed by nature for subjection but refuse to submit to it, inasmuch as this warfare is by nature just.10

Despite the inevitability of war, which is further suggested by the fact that in an ideal state martial virtue is absolutely indispensable,11 Aristotle clearly differentiates between just and unjust wars. Accordingly, every state should have the means to defend itself and also to wage war actively, which renders the training of soldiers necessary. Moreover, in the constitution of the well-organised state there must be an institution concerned with military matters. This institution must be in existence in times of war as well as in times of peace and it is concerned with the protection of the city, the recruitment and the training of civilians: “And both in peace and in war it is equally necessary for there to be military magistrates to superintend the guarding of gates and walls and the inspection and drill of the citizen troops.”12 For Aristotle this is a vital factor in the city’s structure and although there is no indication that war is a desirable condition, Richard Regan has shown that “Ancient Greece and Rome regarded war simply as a fact of life, a regrettable but inevitable fact of life.”13 Cicero shares a similar attitude, since he does not deny the fact that war might be necessary, but he puts stronger emphasis on the fact that it should be avoided if at all possible. He considers only the preservation or re-establishment of peace as an appropriate justification of warfare: “The only excuse […] for going to war is that we may live in peace unharmed.”14 The preservation of peace thus constitutes a just cause for war and “no war is just, unless it is entered upon after an official demand for satisfaction has been submitted or warning has been given and a formal declaration made.”15 Thus, in Cicero the emphasis on the casus belli

10 Aristotle, Politics. The Loeb Classical Library (London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1950): 1256b25. 11 Aristotle, Politics, 1283a20. 12 Aristotle, Politics, 1322a30–1322b5. 13 Richard J. Regan, Just War. Principles and Cases (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1996): 3. For a full account of Plato’s and Aristotle’s concepts of war and peace see: Friedo Ricken, Platon und Aristoteles über Krieg und Frieden (Barsbüttel: Institut für Theologie und Frieden, 1988). For an investigation of traditionally Greek rules in war see Josiah Ober, “Classical Greek Times” in The Laws of War. Constraints on Warfare in the Western World, eds. Michael Howard, George J. Andreopoulos, Mark R. Shulman (New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 1994): 12–26. 14 Cicero, De Officiis. The Loeb Classical Library (London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1961): I, xi, 35. 15 Cicero, De Officiis, I, xi, 36.

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is stronger than in his Greek predecessors and according to Russell war is not presented as “a wilful exercise of violence but a just and pious endeavour occasioned by a delict or injustice of the enemy.”16 Moreover, in contrast to Plato and Aristotle, Cicero further considers aspects of justice post bellum: [W]hen the victory is won, we should spare those which have not been blood-thirsty and barbarous in their warfare. […] Not only must we show consideration for those whom we have conquered by force of arms but we must also ensure protection to those who lay down their arms and throw themselves upon the mercy of the generals.17

Moreover, Cicero emphasises the Roman laws of war which must be adhered to without exception. These laws include, for instance, the principle of discrimination, i.e. that there are people who are designated to fight and others who are not: “[T]he man who is not legally a soldier has no right to be fighting the foe.”18 Although he claims that the preservation of peace is the only just cause for war, he also admits that wars may be fought for honour and glory. But those must be “carried on with less bitterness,”19 since such causes are not as severe as the preservation of peace. These classical accounts towards war shape the very beginning of just war theory, but “[t]he die for the medieval just war was cast by St Augustine, who combined Roman and Judaeo-Christian elements in a mode of thought that was to influence opinion throughout the Middle Ages and beyond.”20 Augustine is often considered as the father of just war theory, although Mark Mattox claims that “many well before Augustine’s time – philosophers, historians, playwrights, and warriors – concerned themselves with the way in which wars justifiably could be initiated or prosecuted.”21 However, Augustine’s approach is the first that may be systematised into certain definite principles concerning the justice of war and those are in part still valid today. He distinguishes between imperial wars and social or civil wars, and while he states that in general war is so atrocious that

16 Russell, Just War in the Middle Ages, 5. 17 Cicero, De Officiis, I, xi, 35. 18 Cicero, De Officiis, I, xi, 37. 19 Cicero, De Officiis, I, xi, 38. For further particulars of Cicero’s account of war see Maximilian Forschner, Stoa und Cicero über Krieg und Frieden (Barsbüttel: Institut für Theologie und Frieden, 1988). For a short overview of Cicero’s position in the tradition of just war theory see Kleemeier, Grundfragen, 27ff. 20 Russell, Just War in the Middle Ages, 16. For a more detailed analysis of Augustine’s theory of war than the following overview see Mattox, Saint Augustine; Russell, The Just War; Robert L. Holmes, “St Augustine and the Just War Theory” in The Augustinian Tradition, ed. Gareth Matthews (Berkerley, Los Angeles: The University of California Press, 1999): 232–344. 21 Mattox, Saint Augustine, 1.

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“a wise man would have no wars,” at the same time he acknowledges that “the wise man will wage just wars.”22 The distinction here is that, on the one hand, there might be a human desire to fight, which should be avoided, and on the other hand, a war might be begun because it is commanded by God. As Mattox points out, in Augustine’s account “wars owe their existence to the will of God, just as everything does that exists in the universe; and just like everything else that exists in the cosmic order, wars too serve a divinely appointed purpose.”23 If a war is commanded by God, it is a form of divine punishment and therefore justified, since its consequences are deserved.24 Although wars may be commanded by God, which renders them ipso facto just, it takes a legitimate authority to declare them. Such an authority can only be a person or body without a political superior. Additionally, this authority must have the right intention, which may only be the preservation or re-establishment of peace: “A right intention would not involve the desire for territorial expansion, intimidation or coercion, and it would be devoid of hatred for the enemy, implacable animosity, or a desire for vengeance or domination.”25 In general it can be said that Augustine’s theory of war influenced “opinion throughout the Middle Ages and beyond,”26 which is most notable in his successor Thomas Aquinas. He systematises Augustine’s account further by concentrating on those criteria necessary for a just war: “First, the authority of the prince [auctoritas principis] by whose command war is to be waged.”27 Aquinas follows Au-

22 St Augustine, City of God. The Loeb Classical Library (London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1972), XIX, vii, 151 [my italics]. 23 Mattox, Saint Augustine, 32. 24 See Josef Rief, “Die bellum-iustum Theorie historisch” in Frieden in Sicherheit. Zur Weiterentwicklung der katholischen Friedensethik, eds. Norbert Glatzel und Ernst Josef Nagel (Freiburg, Basel, Wien: Herder, 1981): 22ff. See also Mattox, Saint Augustine, 49: “A divine command to fight is sufficient in itself to establish not only the justice of the cause, but also to confer moral permission (if not impose moral obligation) to fight.” 25 Mattox, Saint Augustine, 9. However, Russell has shown that while Augustine was opposed to libido dominandi, he saw “punishment of heretics as a form of charity,” which had an unfortunate side-effect: “Medieval legalists eagerly employed both Roman law and Augustine’s doctrine of religious persecution as hammer and anvil to forge their justifications of wars and crusades.” Russell, Just War in the Middle Ages, 24/25. 26 Russell, Just War in the Middle Ages, 16. Russell has shown that Gratian’s Decretum from 1140 constitutes another step in the tradition of just war theory, but scholars tend to see Augustine and Aquinas in direct succession. See Kleemeier, Grundfragen, 30. 27 Thomas Aquinas, “Summa theologiae IIa IIa 40” in Aquinas, Political Writings, ed. R. W. Dyson. Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought (Cambridge: CUP, 2002): 240 [all further references will be to this edition and will be abbreviated as Aquinas, Political Writings]. For a full account of Thomas’s account of just war theory see Russell, Just War in the Middle Ages

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gustine in the assumption that war cannot be declared by a private person but only by a legitimate authority such as a legitimate sovereign. Private persons can only seek justice by appealing to this rightful authority and cannot take matters into their own hands. The prince, on the other hand, is responsible for the public order and therefore he is obliged to defend it against any foreign aggression, which entitles him to declare war: “since the care of the commonwealth is entrusted to princes, it pertains to them to protect the commonwealth of the city or kingdom or province subject to them.”28 The second criterion is the just cause (iusta causa), which means that “those against whom war is to be waged must deserve to have war waged against them because of some wrongdoing.”29 Thus, a just cause constitutes a form of punishment for the injustice done by others or the refusal to make amends for an injustice. Thirdly, whoever declares war must have the right intention (intentio recta), which can only be the attempt to keep or restore justice in the world. Any war declaration must be motivated by the intention to “promote a good cause or avert an evil.”30 By this premise, Aquinas rules out wars which are motivated by revenge, territorial wars and wars seeking domination: He considered wars waged for reasons other than the pursuit of the common good as dangerous both to the soul and to the community, for they were waged out of motives of greed and vainglory and often resulted in the surrender of liberty to the yoke of the enemy.31

Moreover, he declares wars which are excessively cruel and “which lead to slaying and looting” impermissible.32 It has been claimed that neither Aquinas nor Augustine distinguish properly between wars of aggression and wars of defense,33 but Aquinas’s quotations of Augustine on the subject of the right intention suggest otherwise. Aquinas quotes: “Among true worshippers of God, those wars which are waged not out of greed or cruelty, but with the object of securing peace by coercing the wicked and helping the good, are regarded as peaceful.”34 Thus,

and Joan Doreen Tooke, The Just War in Aquinas and Grotius (London: S.P.C.K., 1965). For a general analysis of Aquinas’s Summa, see Andreas Speer, ed., Thomas von Aquin: Die Summa theologiae (Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2005). 28 Aquinas, Political Writings, 240. 29 Ibid. 30 Aquinas, Political Writings, 241. These three criteria can also be found in Cicero’s and Augustine’s accounts but Aquinas is the first to distinguish them as explicitly as he does. See Kleemeier, Grundlagen, 30. 31 Russell, Just War in the Middle Ages, 263. 32 Aquinas, Political Writings, 242. 33 See Kleemeier, Grundlagen, 31. 34 Aquinas, Political Writings, 241.

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wars of aggression for the conquest of new territory are implicitly ruled out, which is further emphasised by the focus both philosophers place on wrong intentions for waging war such as “[t]he desire to do harm, the cruelty of vengeance, an unpeacable and implacable spirit, the fever of rebellion [and] the lust to dominate […].”35 As Frederick Russell has shown in his elaborate investigation of the just war tradition throughout the Middle Ages, Aquinas’ account of just and unjust wars is inseparable from another issue: “the spiritual purposes of temporal wars that legitimated ecclesiastical initiation and prosecution of wars against enemies of the faith and the Church.”36 Crusading constituted a religious act, since those wars were believed to be carrying out the divine will and the cause for war was justified by the appeal to God. The concepts of just war and holy war were merged, very much for the convenience of sovereigns and clergy. The implication of the holiness of a war was especially appealing not only because it could serve for providing the just cause. It also freed from responsibility for the resulting deaths with reference to the Bible, since those who die “for the justice of king and realm will receive the crown of martyrdom from God.”37 However, according to Russell, the equation of religious and secular arguments for the justification of war gradually decreased over the following centuries: By 1300 the just war war theory became lost in a flurry of statute law. What with Augustine had started out as a problem of morality and scriptural exegesis ended up as a tool of statecraft in the hands of secular monarchs. […] [T]he medieval just war was too time-bound to survive the religiously orientated period intact. It was fine for Aquinas in the thirteenth century to exalt the common good of separate societies, rather than the common good of all humanity, when the pope was seen as a kind of benevolent guardian of the human race, but by the time Grotius wrote, this papal role had disappeared while national states were fiercely locked in combat.38

During the sixteenth century, especially in England due to the Dissolution of the Monasteries and the foundation of the Church of England in 1534 and 1558, the idea of a natural, religious authority seemed to wane. While political theorists of the Middle Ages assumed that “[t]he political authority of some (typically, monarchs, emperor, or pope) over others, or of communities over their members, is natural because naturally bestowed on those persons or communities by God,” in the Renaissance the movement of political antinaturalism postulates that “per-

35 36 37 38

Ibid. Russell, Just War in the Middle Ages, 283. Maccabees, 2:15, vv. 7–8. Russell, Just War in the Middle Ages, 304/305.

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sons are naturally subject to no political authority.”39 Thus, the focus shifts towards the concepts of state and government, which can be seen in the rising discussion of the perfect ruler. The notion of absolute monarchy and unquestionable kingship gives way to more pragmatic considerations. Machiavelli, for instance, lays down the rules for a successful, but ruthless prince and others, like Thomas More and Francis Bacon, raise the question of the ideal state in Platonic fashion. Politics surpasses the spiritual guidance of the Church. Moreover, with the development of humanism the individual is brought into focus and thus also the question of the legitimacy of casualties resulting in war. The most important representatives of this development are Erasmus of Rotterdam, Thomas More and Francis Bacon. Due to the change in the concerns of the state and the individual, war is no longer considered to be inevitable in the sixteenth century, but its origins and its necessity are questioned. Erasmus of Rotterdam focuses on the legitimacy of war as a political phenomenon. He considers war to be a form of discord which “begins with man himself and spreads to all forms of human association.”40 And this highest form of discord in the shape of war necessarily destroys society. In Eras-

39 A. John Simmons, “Theories of the State” in The Cambridge Companion to Early Modern Philosophy, ed. Donald Rutherford (Cambridge: CUP, 2006): 250–273, 250/253. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries a divide emerged between two opposed view points, which Simmons calls “political naturalism” and “political antinaturalism.” He summarises these two approaches as follows: “We can think of political naturalism as the view that it is part of the natural condition of humankind for persons to be politically organized, for some to be subject to the political authority of others. […] The political authority of some (typically, monarchs, emperors, or pope) over others, or of communities over their members, is natural because naturally bestowed on those persons or communities by God. […] Political antinaturalism is the view that the natural condition of humankind is nonpolitical. […] While it may be perfectly natural for humans to create political societies and to freely subject themselves to political authority, persons are naturally subject to no political authority: the existence of political authority derives from acts of human creation. Existing political powers receive their authority (if any) neither directly from God nor from the natural superiority of rulers or governors.” See also R. S. White, Natural Law in English Renaissance Literature (Cambridge: CUP, 1996): 44: “Until the end of the seventeenth century the model of Natural Law was debated and contested in England throughout the system of law and politics. So radically ambivalent was the theory itself that it did not escape attention it held political implications, and could be appropriated by those of many different persuasions. The issue that was to become more and more crucial was whether reason and conscience are God-given faculties that lie within the human head and heart, able to be exercised in particular circumstances, or whether fallen man has lost touch with these faculties and needs to be coerced into obedience to the laws of the state, which were assumed axiomatically to be consistent with Natural Law if passed by the properly constituted authority.” 40 José A. Fernández, “Erasmus on the Just War,” Journal of the History of Ideas 34.2 (1973): 209–226, 211.

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mus’s approach towards war, it is seen as a form of discord between two individuals, rather than states or nations, and may thus be prevented by ruling out the source of discord. In his Complaint of Peace he lists all the disadvantages war has in order to raise the prince’s awareness and his wish to avoid it. Erasmus states that war is a disease in man’s mind, which can and must be cured. It is simply not comprehensible that man as a rational being should indulge in it, since he must perceive the negative consequences war will have and therefore strive to avoid it. Erasmus takes the pacifist position as far as to say that it would be better to “let one transgressor go unpunished than to subject thousands to the horrors of war.”41 A prince who rationally weighs the advantages of peace against the disadvantages of war can only find that an unjust peace is preferable to war, even if there is the possibility of a just war.42 He does not explicitly deny this possibility, but even in the unlikely case of a just war, the intention should always be to avoid it altogether: There is scarcely any peace so unjust, but it is preferable on the whole, to the justest war. Sit down, before you draw the sword, weigh every article, omit none, and compute the expence of blood as well as treasure which war requires, and the evils which it of necessity brings with it; and then see at the bottom of the account whether, after the greatest success, there is likely to be a balance in your favour.43

However, if war is absolutely inevitable, it must be conducted “in such a way as to shed as little blood as possible, spare the innocent, and be short-lived.”44 Thus, Erasmus’s account represents a pacifist approach typical of Renaissance humanism, although it has to be pointed out that his objections towards war mainly concentrate on war among Christians.45 Thomas More phrases his views on the theory of just war implicitly in Utopia. Since the treatise is a depiction of the ideal state, it focuses on questions of domestic policy and “the contrast between the just ruler and the tyrant is a recurrent

41 Fernández, “Erasmus on the Just War,” 214. 42 See Fernández, “Erasmus on the Just War,” 214. 43 Desiderius Erasmus, “The Complaint of Peace” in The Morality of War. A Reader, eds. David Kinsella and Craig L. Carr (London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2007): 37–42, 40. 44 Fernández, “Erasmus on the Just War,” 221f. It should be noted that this allowance for war, strictly speaking, means that Erasmus cannot be considered a pacifist in the modern sense of the word, but since the movement arose in the sixteenth century, he is still generally considered to be one of its earliest representatives. 45 As Kinsella and Carr point out, Erasmus emphasises that Christians should not fight against each other, but war against infidels for the preservation of the commonwealth might be another matter. See Kinsella and Carr, Morality of War, 33.

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theme in More’s epigrams, where he even dares to express his preference for the republic over the monarchy.”46 Despite the fact that he depicts an ideal state, he describes the Utopians as not averse to waging war, although they do not consider it proper. On the one hand, he claims that no state should have a standing army: “I cannot think it’s in the public interest to maintain for the emergency of war such a vast multitude of people who trouble and disturb the peace: you never have war unless you choose it, and peace is always to be more considered than war.”47 The general opinion of war given by More is a negative one: war is seen as an activity animals indulge in, not humans and there is no glory in victory.48 On the other hand, the citizens of Utopia train themselves daily for military purposes in case war might become a necessity. Thus, there is a certain readiness to be found to engage in war. Although More claims that the Utopians only go to war for “good” reasons, those are numerous: [T]o protect their own land, to drive invading armies from the territories of their friends, or to liberate an oppressed people, in the name of humanity, from tyranny and servitude. They war not only to protect their friends from present danger, but sometimes to avenge previous injuries; but enter a conflict only if they have been consulted in advance, have approved the cause, and have demanded restitution, but in vain. Then and only then they think themselves free to declare war.49

This multitude of reasons seems to form a contradiction to More’s statement that the Utopians think so meanly of waging war in general. However, the reasons mentioned above all circle around the topic of national security and the notion of necessity:

46 Paul Oskar Kristeller, “Thomas More as a Renaissance Humanist” in More. Vol. II. Great Political Thinkers 6, eds. John Dunn and Ian Harris (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, 1997): 82–99, 88. The question of what makes an ideal state is a typical concern of Renaissance thinkers: “Among political theorists of the Renaissance, whether scholastic or humanist in allegiance, there was little debate about what constitutes optimus status reipublicae. A state will be in its best state, it was widely agreed, if and only if two claims can appropriately be made about it. One is that its laws are just, and thereby serve to promote the common good of its citizens. The other is that its citizens are in consequence able to pursue their own happiness ‘living and living well’ in the manner most befitting the nature and dignity of man.” Quentin Skinner, “Sir Thomas More’s Utopia and the Language of Renaissance Humanism” in More. Vol. II. Great Political Thinkers 6, eds. John Dunn and Ian Harris (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, 1997): 328–362, 331. 47 Thomas More, Utopia. Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought, eds. George M. Logan and Robert M. Adams (Cambridge: CUP, 2002): 18. For a general analysis of Utopia see J. C. Olin, ed., Interpreting Thomas More’s Utopia (New York: Fordham UP, 1989). 48 More, Utopia, 87. 49 More, Utopia, 87–88.

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Since national security is a contributory goal to the goal of first priority, health, its attainment must take precedence over the attainment of any other goal with which it conflicts. Accordingly, the Utopians can be generous to their neighbours only insomuch as such generosity does not jeopardize their national security: and this, presumably, is the rule that governs their foreign relations.50

Any wars the Utopians wage are therefore justified by necessity, which suggests a case of self-defence. But, the Utopians are not averse to taking revenge either. More claims that the “only thing they aim at, in going to war, is to secure what would have prevented the declaration of war, if the enemy had conceded it beforehand,” but if that fails, they are not reluctant to take “such bitter revenge” to deter the enemy from committing a similar offence again.51 When it comes to questions of justice in war, the Utopians show quite a range of questionable partisan tactics to prevent open battles, as Logan and Adams point out: They employ mercenaries to do as much of their fighting as possible; and the mercenaries they prefer are the savage Zapoletes, whose use is hard to reconcile with the aim of minimizing war’s destructiveness. And, despite their compassion for the common citizens of enemy nations, the Utopians enslave prisoners taken in wars in which they have employed their own forces.52

Logan and Adams try to reconcile these contradictions in More’s depiction of the Utopians’ attitude towards war by referring to his emphasis on the well-being of the commonwealth and the notion of necessity. They claim that More does not approve of such strategies as above, but considers them necessary for the preservation of the commonwealth. The explanation is valid, since the argument from necessity is such a ubiquitous one in Renaissance literature.53 Francis Bacon, for

50 George M. Logan, The Meaning of More’s Utopia (Princeton: PUP, 1983): 236. 51 More, Utopia, 89. 52 Logan and Adams, “Introduction” in Thomas More, Utopia, xxvi. 53 See Markku Peltonen, “Bacon’s Political Philosophy” in The Cambridge Companion to Francis Bacon, ed. Markku Peltonen (Cambridge: CUP, 1996): 283–310, 295: “It has often been pointed out that, toward the end of the sixteenth century, the predominance of Ciceronian humanism was seriously challenged by a new kind of humanism, where the leading ancient guide was Tacitus, and where politics was seen more as an interplay of interests, as an exercise of the principles of reason of state rather than civic virtues. The venerable Ciceronian idea of the virtuous vita activa in the service of one’s commonwealth was challenged, and a new emphasis placed on moral skepticism and self-interest, self-preservation, and constancy: one should remain steadfast in the face of abrupt changes of fortune, keep aloof from public life, and attempt to enter a state of apathy. Another reaction was to apply the principles of reason of state to one’s private life and to focus on the ruthless advancement of one’s own career.”

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instance, states that wars are sometimes necessary to achieve a balance of power between kingdoms. In order to prevent one nation from gaining too much power, one or several states would have to step in by declaring war against them. As an example he mentions the “triumvirate of kings, Henry VIII. of England, Francis the I. King of France, and Charles the V. Emperor.”54 Bacon classifies these wars, which serve as pre-emptive strikes, as just: “[T]here is no question but a just fear of an imminent danger, though there be no blow given, is a lawful cause of war.”55 However, he seems to regard an imbalance in the power relations to be an imminent danger, even if no direct threat has been issued. For this reason, a standing army is indispensable for a state’s security and well-being: “[T]rainings of men, and arming them in several places, under several commanders, and without donatives, are things of defence and no danger.”56 The aspects of just war theory as they had been established by the time of the Elizabethan Age thus focus notably on aspects of jus ad bellum due to the gradual development of the nation state and a growing concern about international conflicts. Aspects of aggression and defence seem to have been of more concern than questions relating to just conduct in war, which might also have to do with the new development of standing armies, as recommended by Bacon, and professionally trained soldiers. For the purpose of this analysis, it is therefore also necessary to briefly refer to the historical accounts of Elizabethan warfare. The reign of Elizabeth I is often described as the most peaceful one in English history and it has been claimed that “Tudor England had been able to regard war as a distant activity which she could join or abandon as she chose.”57 However, due to the immediate threat of the Spanish Armada and the wars in Ireland and Scotland international conflict gained more immediacy and at the same time the nature of war was changing according to technical developments. Paul Hammer assumes that these developments made Queen Elizabeth question the military condition of her kingdom: Elizabeth’s wars were distinctly international in character and the changes in military practices which occurred during her reign were largely driven by the need to raise the performance of English forces to match international ‘best practice’. […] Elizabethan England there-

54 Francis Bacon, “Of Empire” in The Essayes or Counsels Civill & Morall of Francis Bacon Lord Verulam, ed. Ernest Rhys (London: J.M. Dent&Sons Ltd., 1928): 57–62, 58. 55 Bacon, “Of Empire,” 58. 56 Bacon, “Of Empire,” 61. In general, however, Bacon was much more concerned with general questions of the state and the citizen and touched upon the subject of war only briefly. See Peltonen, “Bacon’s Political Philosophy,” esp. 295ff. 57 Correlli Barnett, Britain and Her Army 1509–1970. A Military, Political and Social Survey (London: Allen Lane The Penguin Press, 1970): 24.

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fore embraced many of the practices which have been described as characteristics of the ‘military revolution’ of early modern Europe.58

According to Hammer, these concerns led to several changes undertaken in the practice of English warfare such as the introduction of the trained bands. Since England did not have a standing army, troops were levied from the country in times of need, which accounted for the lack of professional ability among the soldiers. The Privy Council decided that the county militias should only train a small amount of men in order to assure that those received proper training and were therefore well capable of fighting, rather than training all available men insufficiently.59 Historians assume that this led to an imbalance between the trained bands and the rest of the militia, especially since the trained bands were chosen to be reserved for home defence: [A]ny troops sent overseas would have to be volunteers or men who were regarded as unsuitable for the trained bands. The very structure of Elizabethan military organisation therefore ensured that future expeditionary forces would consist very largely of poor quality troops, severely limiting their effectiveness.60

Due to this structure the mortality rate of wars abroad, which had been high in any case, increased according to the insufficient abilities of the soldiers and the troops were in general less successful in foreign warfare. At the same time, since it was public knowledge that the trained bands were strictly reserved for home defence, all men who were mustered tried to gain a position in this more prestigious part of the army to avoid foreign service according to Cruickshank:

58 Paul E. J. Hammer, Elizabeth’s Wars. War, Government and Society in Tudor England 1544–1604 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003): 259. The expression ‘military revolution’ is a famous and also disputed one with regard to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Critics have argued for decades now whether or not there actually came a turning point in military history during this time but to decide this is not the issue at hand. For this particular debate see mainly the following: J.R. Hale, “Armies, Navies and the Art of War” in The Reformation 1520–1559. The New Cambridge Modern History 22, ed. G.R. Elton (Cambridge: CUP, 1990): 540–569; Jeremy Black, European Warfare 1660–1815 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994); all essays in C. J. Rogers, ed., The Military Revolution Debate: Readings on the Military Transformation of Early Modern Europe (Oxford: Westview Press, 1995); David Eltis, The Military Revolution in Sixteenth-Century Europe (London, New York: Tauris Academic Studies, 1995); for an evaluation of this debate see James Scott Wheeler, The Making of a World Power. War and the Military Revolution in Seventeenth-Century England (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 1999): 1–21; and Gervase Phillips, The Anglo-Scots Wars 1513–1550 (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1999). 59 See Hammer, Elizabeth’s Wars, 99. 60 Hammer, Elizabeth’s Wars, 102.

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[T]owards the end of the reign it was reported that [the trained bands] were full of worthless creatures trying to escape foreign service. They were intended for gentlemen, farmers, and better-class yeomen and labourers, but in fact they were full of servants and members of the poorer classes.61

This, however, was not the only reason for the rather poor quality of the troops according to Barnett: since service was compulsory, those were preferred at recruitment that had the least power to resist it: “Vagabonds had been ripe war material since the campaigns of Edward I, and now they formed the main source of recruits for Elizabethan expeditionary forces.”62 Traditionally, the justices mustering men did not choose according to very high standards and it was common practice for men with more resourceful financial means to escape their duty by bribing the justices to either take the money or their servants as substitutes.63 Thus, especially the troops sent overseas usually consisted almost exclusively of rogues and vagabonds and it became increasingly harder to recruit men, who would make good soldiers, since they earned little and the odds to die were high. In addition, the uniforms and supplies of the soldiers who were sent abroad were particularly bad and many commanders complained about these conditions.64 All of this made life for soldiers a very hard one, especially since most of them did not know what they were fighting for. The idea of a nation and hence patriotic duty was still too vague and distant to boost their morale, but they were not fighting for their own master anymore either. This creates a problem in investigating Elizabethan military reality, as Mark Fissel points out:

61 C. G. Cruickshank, Elizabeth’s Army (Clarendon Press: Oxford, 1966): 25. 62 Barnett, Britain and Her Army, 41. This is confirmed by Mark Fissel: “Though some ‘quality control’ was exercised, the pressing of prisoners by commissioners reflected increasingly bureaucratic procedure and the admission of less-than-satisfactory soldiers into overseas expeditions.” Mark Charles Fissel, English Warfare 1511–1642 (London and New York: Routledge, 2001): 86. 63 See Barnett, Britain and Her Army, 42. 64 See John R. Hale, The Art of War and Renaissance England (Washington: Folger Books. Published by the Folger Shakespeare Library, 1979): 4. See also Richard Stewart, who shows that soldiers were supposed to receive new clothing every six months and there were fixed dates for the deliveries, but “these dates were often delayed or overlooked completely and there were constant complaints throughout the war years about the quality, quantity and timeliness of clothing supply.” Richard W. Stewart, “The ‘Irish Road’: Military Supply and Arms for Elizabeth’s Army During the O’Neill Rebellion in Ireland, 1598–1601” in War and Government in Britain 1598–1650, ed. Mark Charles Fissel (Manchester: MUP, 1991): 16–37, 17.

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One problem of studying warfare before the era of nationalism is that the motives and obligations for entering into military service are completely inchoate and diverse. The English trained soldier of the Tudor and early Stuart period did not exactly serve England.65

Overall, MacCaffrey has stated that the hard conditions in service, the lack of training and supplies, and the lacking motivation can leave no doubt about the undesirability of being an Elizabethan soldier.66 According to historians, this unfortunate situation probably had another side-effect: the discipline among the English troops was equally inadequate. First of all, the majority of the troops presumably consisted of people with low moral standards, such as criminals, and secondly, the frustration resulting from the circumstances caused an even lower regard of morality in general. In order to control the soldiers therefore, there was a law of arms, which had been developed over the centuries before Elizabeth’s reign. It was enforced by punishment, and severe violations as stealing from churches were even punished by death, in order to discipline the troops and hinder them from severe human rights violations. However, frequent breaches of this law were still reported and many men entered into service, especially foreign service, to plunder and make profit. According to MacCaffrey, this lack of discipline among Elizabethan troops may in part be explained by the decay of chivalry.67 Chivalry had constituted the laws of war in the Middle Ages when warfare as such was mainly undertaken by knights and it was based on ideals such as honour, loyalty, mercy, courage and the avoidance of shame and dishonour.68 These ideals, however, depended on a differentiation between warriors according to social rank: “In the ordinary circumstances of battle a knight ought not to kill another knight if it was possible to capture

65 Fissel, English Warfare, 62. See also Cruickshank, Elizabeth’s Army, 173: “The idea of the state, however, was as yet too abstract for the average soldier to understand it and to fight for it with enthusiasm. The professional soldier might speak bravely enough about the privilege of shedding his blood for his sacred sovereign and dear country (as did Sir Roger Williams), and sometimes even mean it. Not so the ordinary recruit. For him the fireside had more attractions than the firing line. If he went to the wars it was only because he had not enough money to buy his escape from them. The moment he saw a chance of escape he was off like a shot, and no oath dedicating his life to the state would stop him.” 66 See Wallace T. MacCaffrey, Elizabeth I. War and Politics 1588–1603 (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1992): 46. 67 According to MacCaffrey, chivalry constituted no principle of war conduct that could be maintained despite the modernisation of warfare: “The feudal game of chivalry, which passed for warfare, and in which it was bad form to hate the enemy (except perhaps the infidel), simply could not evolve, even if it had been given the chance, to meet the scientific requirements of the modern age.” MacCaffrey, Elizabeth’s Army, 3. 68 See Meron, Bloody Constraint, 11.

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him instead for ransom. Armed peasants and townsmen, however, could be massacred at will.”69 Thus, these laws were only of service to the nobility and did not apply to the common soldier, who served in the Elizabethan army. Furthermore, the technical developments in Elizabethan warfare turned war into more of a mass phenomenon due to modern weapons and the increasing size of armies.70 This made it more difficult for soldiers to confront a particular individual as the enemy; now armies as whole bodies fought each other instead of individuals. This might have been the reason for the decrease of the notion of chivalry, which seemed inadequate in modern warfare, as Ferguson points out: Warfare in this world of dynastic chivalry was […] becoming more and more nonchivalric in the sense that it ran increasingly counter to the essential individualism of the chivalric tradition. It was not merely that the heavy-armed knight had lost much of his usefulness to infantry soldiers and men-at-arms of lesser rank – he retained after all, a symbolic significance capable of transcending time and change. What mattered more in the long run was that warfare was becoming more impersonal. Chivalry thrived on deeds of individual prowess and valor [whereas] the newer warfare […] was becoming involved in the impersonal considerations of policy and strategy.71

Thus, in every-day warfare, chivalry was no longer an adequate means of controlling and disciplining martial behaviour, since it was no ideology the common soldier could identify with.72 These fundamental changes in the nature of warfare are

69 Robert C. Stacey, “The Age of Chivalry” in The Laws of War. Constraints on Warfare in the Western World, eds. Michael Howard, George J. Andreopoulos, Mark R. Shulman (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1994): 27–39, 30. 70 For the particulars of the technical developments in Elizabethan military tactics and their effect on cavalry, infantry and knighthood, see Bert S. Hall, Weapons and Warfare in Renaissance Europe. Gunpowder, Technology and Tactics (Baltimore & London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997): esp. 190–200. 71 Arthur B. Ferguson, The Chivalric Tradition in Renaissance England (Washington: Folger Shakespeare Library, 1986): 39. 72 This, however, is not to say that chivalry was entirely dead in Elizabethan times. Especially in the literary works of the time, writers tried to evoke this particular ideology and men like Philip Sidney and Edmund Spenser made chivalry a major element of their works. See Edmund Spenser, The Fairie Queene. Wordsworth Classics of World Literature (Ware: Wordsworth Editions Limited, 1999) and Philip Sidney, The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia, ed. Victor Skretkowicz (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987). See also Gary Waller: “The code of chivalry, flourishing long after its military and political relevance were gone, is most certainly directly relevant to the age’s poetry. […] The chivalry of The Faerie Queene may have seemed archaic to many of its original readers, but the ideology of masculinity and personal honour that it enacted were far from dead, not least in formulating the allegiances into which both men and women were indoctrinated. [… T]he early seventeenth century may have seen the growing dominance of newer tech-

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also reflected in the military pamphlets and essays published during the Elizabethan Age, which show a great awareness of the theoretical and technical aspects of war. It has been argued that “the prevailing feeling of the times was strongly militaristic”73 and that in “books offering theoretical consideration of war, we find that on no social or intellectual level is there to be found impressive argumentation for peace.”74 J. R. Hale summarises the prevailing attitudes as follows: All agreed that the motive of war must be just, that it should only be waged at the command of a legitimate sovereign superior, and that the means used, and the nature of the peacesettlement, should be as moderate as possible. All, moreover, agreed that war was a continuation of justice by other means and should only be undertaken when all possibilities of peaceful arbitration had been exhausted.75

However, in general, war was considered to be inevitable: “[P]eace brings riches, riches bring envy, envy brings war, war brings peace, as a popular wheel-of-fortune formula had it.”76 The analysis of Shakespeare’s plays will show that many of these theoretical and practical aspects of Elizabethan warfare are reflected in the text, but this reflection is not restricted to contemporary beliefs. There is a strong focus on the three Aquinian principles, but the ethical considerations of war even extend to elements beyond the sixteenth century. After an investigation of the nature of legitimate authority, just cause and right intention in the early plays, later works even discuss the principles of responsibility and proportionality. Moreover, aspects of jus in bello are included, which makes it necessary to briefly lay out the corresponding arguments in current just war theory over the course of the next chapter.77

nologies of war and different strategies of mass destruction from those of chivalry, but the traditional view of the aristocratic male warrior as an innocent, idealistic (and humanistically educated) youth lived on as both an individual and collective fantasy.” Gary Waller, English Poetry of the Sixteenth Century2 (London, New York: Longman, 1993): 62. 73 John Lindabury, A Study of Patriotism in the Elizabethan Drama (Princeton: PUP, 1931): 54. 74 Paul A. Jorgensen, “Theoretical Views of War in Elizabethan England,” Journal of the History of Ideas 13.4 (1952): 469–481, 471. 75 J. R. Hale, Renaissance War Studies (London: The Hambledon Press, 1983): 339. For the only detailed analysis of the works of Elizabethan military theorists see G. Geoffrey Langsam, Martial Books and Tudor Verse (Columbia University, New York: King’s Crown Press, 1951). 76 John Hale, “War and Public Opinion in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries,” Past and Present 22 (1962): 18–35, 19. 77 Moral concerns about nuclear deterrence and weapons of mass destruction, however, will not be included since it seems too far-fetched to discuss such phenomena from the perspective of Shakespearean drama.

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2.2 Contemporary Principles In the following I will briefly summarise the most important arguments of just war theory today.78 Just war theory first of all makes a distinction between the justice of war and the justice in war. These two notions are traditionally termed jus ad bellum and jus in bello. The distinction is a necessary one to make, since it is perfectly possible that a war which is waged for a just cause is conducted in an unjust manner and an unjust war might be fought in strict adherence to the rules.79 Accordingly, the two concepts entail several aspects. Jus ad bellum implies that there may be a just cause for war and investigates the necessary conditions. First of all, it must be established that war is necessary in order to restore or maintain the balance of justice in the world. It must be reactive rather than active, which implies that “crusades, efforts to make the world better, or the pursuit of ideal goals are not sufficient as just causes of war.”80 This consideration grounds in the principle of proportionality: the inevitable and regrettable consequences war will have, must be in balance with the evil it tries to prevent. In other words, it must be established that “the costs of war do not in the long run outweigh the benefits.”81

78 For this proceeding I will refer to the following most important treatises of just war theory: Kinsella and Carr, The Morality of War; Mattox, Saint Augustine; Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars; Regan, Just War; Robert B. Holmes, “Can War Be Morally Justified?” in Just War Theory, ed. Jean Bethke Elshtain (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992): 197–233; William V. O’Brien, “The Challenge of War: A Christian Realist Perspective” in Just War Theory, ed. Jean Bethke Elshtain (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992): 169–196; Nick Fotion and Gerard Elfstrom, eds., Military Ethics. Guidelines for Peace and War (London, Henley: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986); Robert L. Phillips, War and Justice (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1984); Michael Howard, ed., Restraints on War. Studies in the Limitation of Armed Conflict (Oxford: OUP, 1979); James Turner Johnson, Ideology, Reason and the Limitation of War. Religious and Secular Concepts 1200–1740 (Princeton, New Jersey: PUP, 1975) Apart from specific details, these authorities agree on the most basic principles, as Paul Robinson summarises: “[O]ne may righteously wage war, if one has: a just cause; legitimate authority; a right intention; a reasonable chance of success; and all other reasonable alternatives to war have been exhausted (the principle of ‘last resort’). One’s actions during war can be considered just if one exercises discrimination in terms of who one targets; and if the amount of violence one uses is proportionate to the end that one seeks.” Paul Robinson, “Introduction” in Paul Robinson, ed., Just War in Comparative Perspective (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003): 1–5, 1. 79 See Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 21. 80 Fotion, Elfstrom, Military Ethics, 109. 81 Michael Howard, “Temperamenta Belli: Can War be Controlled?” in Restraints on War. Studies in the Limitations of Armed Conflict, ed. Michael Howard (Oxford: OUP, 1979): 1–15, 4. See also Regan, Just War, 64: “The decision to wage war will be justified only if the wrong to be prevented or rectified equals or surpasses the reasonably anticipated human and material costs of the war. Such due proportion involves three elements: (1) a value judgement about the worth of the cause that purports to justify recourse to war; (2) factual judgements about the war’s likely casualties

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War cannot serve as a means to right a slight injustice but must be morally required. Three categories of just cause can be distinguished: first of all, responding to an immediate form of aggression from another constitutes a just cause. Secondly, a pre-emptive strike against a likely aggression, such as a serious threat, can be justified if the danger is immediate. Thirdly, a response to threats against the lives of citizens of other nations can be justified.82 These causes clearly rely on the concept of the state. A state, “the body politic as organized for supreme civil rule and government,”83 grounds as a community on the social nature of human beings, which makes it existentially necessary for them to live together in a limited territory.84 Its function is to preserve and structure this community and to protect it from outward aggression. The rights this political association has are usually established through the rights of the individuals who belong to it, so much so that any violation of the rights of the state constitutes a violation of the individual human rights and may therefore be resisted. The basic rights of political communities are political sovereignty and territorial integrity.85 When states are attacked it is their rights which are at stake and therefore the individual rights are also endangered, which makes the response to aggression a valid cause for war. These defensive wars are justified because they are based on the individual’s right of self-defence.86 In general, it can be said that a just war is a war which makes it absolutely morally necessary for the right party to win. Soldiers must not die in vain, i.e. a war’s end must be worth to die for. Such an end would be the defence of indispensable values such as political sovereignty, general freedom and human lives.87

and costs; (3) a value judgement about the proportional worth of the war’s cause in relation to its likely casualties and costs.” 82 Fotion, Elfstrom, Military Ethics, 115. 83 Oxford English Dictionary s.v. state. 84 Such an assumption follows the rationale of political naturalism as introduced above. This assumption relates back to the Aristotelian notion of zoon politikon. Thomas Hobbes, on the other hand, would have argued that human beings need a government due to their asocial nature. See chapter 3.1. 85 Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 53. 86 The individual right of self-defence is justified under three conditions: “First, the threat against which self-defensive force is used must be unjust. The second condition requires that the degree of force does not exceed what is necessary in the circumstances to resist or repel the threat. Third, the foreseeable harm that is inflicted in self-defence must be proportionate to the harm that the self-defence is intended to prevent.” Suzanne Uniacke, “Self-Defence and Just War” in Gerechter Krieg. Ideengeschichtliche, rechtsphilosophische und ethische Beiträge, eds. Dieter Janssen and Michael Quante (Paderborn: Mentis, 2003): 29–43, 66. 87 See Fotion, Elfstrom, Military Ethics, 246.

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This implies that another necessary prerequisite is the right intention of the aggressor. Right intention in this case means first of all the intention to avoid war. If this proves impossible the intention must be to wage war according to all the precepts of justice: “War-decision makers have right intention if – and only if – they aim to conform their decisions to the objective criteria of just war.”88 In turn, wars of aggression constitute a crime, and it is morally obligatory to resist them to secure the aforementioned rights. This rules out wars waged for territorial reasons, as Regan points out: Although the claim of military action to vindicate long-standing territorial claims may be to right a putative wrong, and the cause may be ‘just’ in that sense, the human and material destruction of modern warfare and the destabilizing effect of such wars on world peace are vastly disproportionate to the cause.89

Aggression in this context means that the war declared is positive in the sense that it is not reactive but active in nature. This implies an illegitimate breach of peace and states are therefore prohibited to exercise this form of aggression as long as there might be a peaceful possibility of solving the conflict; negotiations must always be considered as a reasonable alternative to waging war. Reacting to aggression, however, may not offer these possibilities and if a state poses a serious threat to another, the first martial action might be committed by the originally defensive state. Such preventive strikes are only legitimate if the threat is immediate. Hence, a distinction must be made between provocation and threats in earnest, as Walzer argues: The line between legitimate and illegitimate first strikes is not going to be drawn at the point of imminent attack but at the point of a sufficient threat. That phrase is necessarily vague. I mean it to cover three things: a manifest intent to injure, a degree of active preparation that makes that intent a positive danger, and a general situation in which waiting, or doing anything other than fighting, greatly magnifies the risk.90

In short, states may execute pre-emptive strikes if their basic rights of political sovereignty and territorial integrity are unquestionably threatened. In any case, aggression must be preceded by thorough consideration, because war must be a last resort. It may only be declared when “all nonmilitary means of conflict resolution have been tried.”91 The responsibility not to risk lives in vain or unsuccess-

88 Regan, Just War, 84. 89 Regan, Just War, 66. 90 Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 81. 91 Bruno Coppieters, Ruben Apressyan, and Carl Ceulemans, “Last Resort” in Moral Constraints on War. Principles and Cases, eds. Bruno Coppieters and Nick Fotion (Plymouth: Lexington Books, 2008): 139–154, 139.

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fully lies with the aggressor, who is obligated to choose war only when it proves to be absolutely inevitable, so that “a party to the conflict may have a just cause, legitimate authority, and right intentions, and have all the other just war justifications for using military force, but still may be prohibited from going to war.”92 The notion of last resort, however, can hardly be attributed to the concept of foreign intervention, which makes this form of aggression a particularly difficult one. There might be cases where the government of a foreign state poses a threat to its own people. If governmental threats or even actions represent a violation of basic human rights, such as life, liberty and property, foreign states might be obligated to intervene. However, such a violation of another state’s sovereignty must be clearly distinguishable from a disguised attempt to invade for other reasons than lending aid to an oppressed people, which poses a very complex problem: The word [intervention] is not defined as a criminal activity, and though the practice of intervening often threatens the territorial integrity and political independence of invaded states, it can sometimes be justified. It is more important to stress at the outset, however, that it always has to be justified.93

One indication for intervention may be, when the oppressed people, whose rights are violated prove incapable of helping themselves. Walzer makes clear that “[t]he members of a political community must seek their own freedom, just as the individual must cultivate his own virtue. They cannot be set free, as he cannot be made virtuous, by any external force.”94 Only when an entire population falls victim to such tyranny and abuse that it is impossible to end the oppression by their own forces are states allowed, and in some cases even obligated, to intervene. It must be at all times clearly discernible, however, that the intervention is not motivated by any potential gain for the intervening state. Geoffrey Robertson has stated that “[a]ll civilizations have fought wars according to rules designed to make them less bloody.”95 From the Greek catalogue on just behaviour in war to the law of arms of the Elizabethan Age, there have been rules for the right conduct in war (jus in bello). The most important aspect of justice in war is the distinction between combatants and non-combatants. Sol-

92 Ibid. See also Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 85: “The general formula must go something like this: states may use military force in the face of threats of war, whenever the failure to do so would seriously risk their territorial integrity or political independence. Under such circumstances it can fairly be said that they have been forced to fight and that they are the victims of aggression.” 93 Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 86. 94 Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 87. 95 Geoffrey Robertson, Crimes Against Humanity. The Struggle for Global Justice3 (London: Penguin Books, 2006): 201.

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diers constitute a legitimate target in war and may therefore be rightfully attacked. They have chosen to partake in war, which implies that they have accepted a certain risk for their life and this consent legitimises their status as liable targets: [S]oldiers as a class are set apart from the world of peaceful activity; they are trained to fight, provided with weapons, required to fight on command. No doubt, they do not always fight; nor is war their personal enterprise. But it is the enterprise of their class, and this fact radically distinguishes the individual soldier from the civilians he leaves behind.96

Non-combatants, on the other hand, must be shielded as far as possible at all times, since they do not partake in war, but find themselves involuntarily in its vicinity. Civilians have the right to be as unaffected by war as possible and any deliberate violation of this principle of discrimination constitutes a war crime. However, since it is almost impossible to find a battlefield which is in clear distance of non-combatants, there will always be civilian casualties. This phenomenon is commonly termed double effect,97 but the intention should be to spare as many as possible: [R]ight reason concludes that just warriors should not directly target any portion of the enemy population not involved in the war effort, and that just warriors should observe due proportion between the military importance of targets and the unintended but inevitable civilian casualties in warfare.98

The key word here is “unintended”: just war theorists accept the fact that civilians might be killed, but the intention must be to keep the number of casualties as minimal as possible.99 This relates to another principle of jus in bello – proportionality. On the one hand, in a just war it is morally necessary to choose any means of martial conduct in proportion to the aim pursued. This means that all strategies and methods must be intended to directly contribute to the end of war to prevent excessive harm. Soldiers “can do what they must to win; they can do their utmost, so as to end the fighting as quickly as possible. The rules of war rule out only purposeless and wanton violence.”100 Such wanton violence would also include killing more civilians than is absolutely militarily necessary. In order to prevent that, risks must be taken which endanger the soldiers’ lives but here the

96 Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 144. 97 “Double effect is a way of reconciling the absolute prohibition against attacking non-combatants with the legitimate conduct of military activity.” Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 153. 98 Regan, Just War, 85. 99 See Kinsella and Carr, Morality of War, 242. 100 Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 129.

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civilians’ rights outweigh the soldiers’ according to just war theory. Alongside the principle of discrimination between soldiers and civilians ranges the principle of discrimination between soldiers and prisoners of war. The status of soldiers gives them the right to surrender and surrender entitles them to the right of immunity. Prisoners of war must not be tortured (neither physically nor mentally) or killed and they must be released after the end of the war.101 Anyone who surrenders, however, also has the obligation to surrender, which means that fake surrender as a tactical means is prohibited for obvious reasons: it deprives soldiers of their right to safety, since the enemy would not be able to distinguish anymore between sincerity and deception.102 The question of responsibility is another major aspect of jus in bello. This aspect is twofold: on the one hand, there are people who are responsible for the aggression and on the other hand, there are people who are responsible for the war’s conduct. This distinction is due to the logical independence of jus ad bellum and jus in bello: the aggressor is not responsible for the crimes soldiers might commit in war and the soldiers are not responsible for the crime of aggression. As Michael Walzer points out: “We draw a line between the war itself, for which soldiers are not responsible, and the conduct of the war, for which they are responsible, at least within their own sphere of activity.”103 In this sphere of activity, superior orders also free from responsibility to a certain extent, but this is not to say that any violation of the rules of war in adherence to superior orders is guilt-free. There might be orders which morally demand resistance of the soldier. The soldier status entitles the individual to so-called legitimate killings on the battlefield, because this is implied by the rights of their profession and the realm in which this is executed. This does not entail that such killings may be conducted with unnecessary cruelty, even if there might be a superior order. The realist approach claims that war brings out the inhuman, irrational side in soldiers, so that they cannot be held accountable for what they do in battle, but just war theory presumes that acting in war does not necessarily mean acting mercilessly or ruthlessly. Adversary soldiers who are wounded or who deliberately surrender must be spared, because they have officially resigned their status as soldier, so that

101 See Kinsella and Carr, Morality of War, 218. 102 This is one of the key problems of Guerilla warfare, according to Michael Walzer: “[G]uerillas don’t subvert the war convention by themselves attacking civilians; at least, it is not a necessary feature of their struggle that they do that. Instead, they invite their enemies to do it. By refusing to accept a single identity, they seek to make it impossible for their enemies to accord to combatants and noncombatants ‘their distinct privileges … and disabilities’” (Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 179/180). 103 Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 39.

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they are no legitimate opponents anymore. Similarly, if civilians might find themselves accidentally within battle or near the battlefield, it is required of the soldier to be able to assess the situation and not shoot them regardless. Just war theorists assume that there is a difference between acting out the profession and killing others arbitrarily. As Michael Walzer has pointed out, due to their status, the “war convention requires soldiers to accept personal risks rather than kill innocent people. […] The rule is absolute: self-preservation in the face of the enemy is not an excuse for violations of the rules of war.”104 These principles of just war theory can be summarised as six jus ad bellum-presuppositions: legitimate authority, just cause and right intention are necessary preconditions for aggression. Furthermore, war must be a last resort and it must be evident that “the good striven for by war cannot be accomplished by means causing less damage and suffering.”105 Lastly, the principle of proportionality requires that the good the war strives for must be in proportion to the evils it will cause. These principles concerning jus ad bellum are distinct from the rules of jus in bello and the two approaches will therefore also be considered separately in the present study. In the following, these principles shall provide the heuristic framework for the analysis of the drama in order to investigate what is just and unjust warfare in Shakespeare.

104 Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 305. 105 Reinold Schmücker, “Can War Be a Moral Action?” Ethical Perspectives 11.2–3 (2004): 162–175, 166. Schmücker terms this the “ultima-ratio condition.”

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3 Approaching Just War Theory in Shakespeare 3.1 Pacifism versus Realism Shakespeare’s first tetralogy presents a world that is at war with itself, where all understanding of morality and humanity have disappeared and natural law is obsolete. In 17th-century political thought one of the most important questions to arise was what would happen in a society without positive law and/or regal reinforcement; such a state of nature Thomas Hobbes conceived as a bellum omnia contra omnes.1 In comparison to a cold war, where every party is ready to attack at any given moment, Hobbes believed that men would turn against each other, if they were not governed by one common authority: And because the condition of Man, […] is a condition of Warre of every one against every one; in which case every one is governed by his own Reason; and there is nothing he can make use of that may not be a help unto him, in preserving his life against his enemyes; It followeth, that in such a condition, every man has a right to every thing; even to one anothers body. And therefore, as long as this naturall Right of every man to every thing endureth, there can be no security to any man, (how strong or wise soever he be,) of living out the time, which Nature ordinarily alloweth Man to live.2

Hobbes believed that without positive law enforcement, everyone would only serve their own interests and, if necessary, harm those around them. As pessimistic as his opinion of mankind may be, a look at Shakespeare’s early history plays seems to confirm such fear. The chaos that dominates these plays, however,

1 Famously, Hobbes’s later opponent John Locke sharply distinguished between a state of nature, which was peaceful, since men are governed by natural law, and a state of war: “The state of nature has a law to govern it, which obliges every one; and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind who will but consult it that, being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions […].” John Locke, Two Treatises of Government, ed. Peter Laslett. Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought (Cambridge, CUP, 1988): 271. 2 Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Richard Tuck. Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought (Cambridge: CUP, 2008): 91. The state of society in these plays might also be compared to Giorgio Agamben’s “state of exception,” which is “a space devoid of law, a zone of anomie in which all legal determinations – and above all the very distinction between public and private – are deactivated.” Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception (Chicago and London: The University of Chicagor Press, 2005): 50. Agamben sees the missing separation of public and private as a violation of the individual’s right of privacy, however, while in Shakespeare’s plays the distinction is disrupted in order to abuse the public sphere for personal ambitions, as shall be seen later on.

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is more importantly based on two opposing views of the reality of war: pacifism and realism are pit against each other, until the entire kingdom is plunged into ruin. As Utterback points out, Shakespeare “dramatized a social world falling into chaos where no public principle has any meaning.”3 In his essay, Utterback draws on a vital dichotomy, which is deliberately disregarded in the four plays: the dichotomy of public and private. As Utterback shows, in the plays “[t]here is no faithfulness to oath, title, right, or justice, but an aggressive assertion of private wills that accept no moral discipline from public principle or order.”4 Moreover, the characters in the plays who execute their private will on the public scale are ruthless realists, while the only public order can be represented by the King, who is in this case not only a pacifist, but moreover politically incapable. Thus, the two approaches to war are juxtaposed throughout the plays, which causes a “degenerating spiral of violence through increasingly bitter hatreds over the generations, finally played out with the upturn towards a new political order.”5 There have been two major attempts to detect an unmistakable pacifist stance in Shakespeare’s plays by Steven Marx and R. S. White. In his essay, “Shakespeare’s Pacifism,” Marx argues that Shakespeare “repeatedly” made use of the dichotomy of pacifism and realism, undergoing through the course of his career a development from a “partisan of war to a partisan of peace.”6 He believes to detect a crucial turning-point from a depiction of military glory and heroism in Henry V to Troilus and Cressida, which “condemns war and those who make it”7: In the earlier play, Shakespeare counters pacifist objections to war with militarist rationales; here, he counters militarist rationales with pacifist objections. In reducing war from a providential tool to an instrument of chaos, he inverts the rhetorical strategies of Henry V and also shrinks the proportions of epic to the distortions of satire.8

As much as Marx argues for a psychological development in Shakespeare’s mind, which led from the dramatisation of militarist realism as a goal worth achieving to an active promotion of the pacifist cause in his later plays, he does not address Shakespeare’s earliest plays and the pacifist voice of Henry VI. He claims that Shakespeare’s “career begins with the Marlovian militarism of the first history te-

3 Raymond V. Utterback, “Public Men, Private Wills, and Kingship in Henry VI, Part III” in Renaissance Papers, ed. George Walton Williams (Rochester: Camden House, 1978): 47–54, 54. 4 Utterback, “Public Men, Private Wills,” 54. 5 Grene, Shakespeare’s Serial History Plays, 94. 6 Marx, “Shakespeare’s Pacifism,” 50. 7 Marx, “Shakespeare’s Pacifism,” 69. 8 Marx, “Shakespeare’s Pacifism,” 70.

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tralogy and the glorification of violence in Titus Andronicus and The Taming of the Shrew […].”9 Marx sees the second tetralogy as well as King John as displaying the battlefield as an “arena for the expertise of both individual and collective virtue,”10 which he regards as particularly manifested in the character of Hotspur. Along the same lines runs his interpretation of Henry V, which Marx sees as supporting pragmatic rationales for war as a means to bring about peace. He then marks Troilus and Cressida as the turning point and regards all later plays, especially the great tragedies and Coriolanus, as written under the same influence, arguing that these plays “reveal that military power, the highest value of both the hero and his society, is a concomitant of deficiency in power over oneself and finally the loser in a battle with the greater power of love.”11 The other major analysis arguing for Shakespeare’s pacifism is R. S. White’s Pacifism and English Literature.12 While White also tries to argue for a consistently pacifist approach in Shakespeare, he consciously distances himself from Marx and openly opposes the latter’s argument for an identifiable turning point in Shakespeare’s thinking: Shakespeare included the pacifist voice among many others throughout his plays, virtually whenever the subject of war is raised. Armed conflict is rarely, if ever, allowed to stand unchallenged as the norm of human behaviour, even when the context is a ‘just war’, and it is arguable that no war in Shakespeare is either unequivocally necessary or provides a solution to a problem. On the contrary, the wars as he represents them are often badly motivated and futile.13

Thus, White argues that there is a coherent pacifist approach in Shakespeare’s plays, which he believes to see most graphically in the two tetralogies, Henry V, Troilus and Cressida and Coriolanus. Although White claims that there will be no definite answer and that he will “not argue that ‘Shakespeare is a pacifist’, but equally […] believe[s] that no argument can be made that ‘Shakespeare is a militarist’,”14 he still goes to great lengths in the attempt to show an unmistakable pacifist approach. His claim is that on the grounds of Shakespeare’s famous ambiguity, the playwright is able to argue both sides, but prefers the pacifist approach:

9 Marx, “Shakespeare’s Pacifism,” 59. 10 Marx, “Shakespeare’s Pacifism,” 59. 11 Marx, “Shakespeare’s Pacifism,” 59. 12 Most of White’s arguments for pacifism in Shakespeare were already published in an earlier article, quoted in my introduction as White, “Pacifist Voices.” 13 White, Pacifism and English Literature, 140. 14 White, Pacifism and English Literature, 140.

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As one steeped in the rhetorical tradition of Cicero and as an heir to educational precepts of humanism, Shakespeare would have been aware of classical objections to war, and also trained in rhetoric like a lawyer to defend almost any position with power and plausibility.15

While Marx does not take the first tetralogy into consideration at all, White refers to the plays on the reign of Henry VI, but claims that “even” in these early plays Shakespeare gives voice to a pacifist argumentation, while he should have said “only.”16 Henry VI is the only character in Shakespeare’s plays who can be considered to be a pacifist. Not only is his argumentation intended towards a non-violent solution of the conflict, but it is also motivated by and based upon the Christian doctrine against violence. In reaction to the conflict between the two houses, Henry argues on the grounds of their faith: I always thought It was both impious and unnatural That such immunity and bloody strife Should reign among professors of one faith […]. (1Henry VI, 5.1.11–14)17

He draws attention to the fact that in Christian pacifism the emphasis lies on the denomination, regarding Pagan enemies as quite another question altogether, which emphasises the causality between Henry’s pacifism and his piety. Those are inextricably linked to his failure as a king, because his attempts to preserve the peace are inadequate to control the unruly nobles around him. The principle of peace seems to Henry to be a point strong enough in order to prevent a civil war as well as in his dealings with the war in France. When the conflict between the Houses of York and Lancaster first erupts in the personal conflict between Gloucester and Winchester, Henry tries to interrupt: “We charge you on allegiance to ourself, | To hold your slaughtering hands and keep the peace.” (1Henry VI, 3.1.86/87) At this point, nobody has slaughtered anybody as of yet, but the drastic terminology here reinforces the distinction between the two concepts of war and peace; the realm of brutality and bloodshed is pitted against the peaceful, harmonious realm of life. Henry clearly considers peace to be the more worthy of the two realms and will not accept any cause for war, especially not when it arises from personal conflicts:

15 White, Pacifism and English Literature, 141. 16 White, Pacifism and English Literature, 141. 17 All quotations from the first part of Henry VI are from the following edition and will be given parenthetically: William Shakespeare, King Henry VI, Part 1, ed. Edward Burns. The Arden Shakespeare Third Series (London: Thomson Learning, 2000).

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Good Lord, what madness rules in brainsick men, When for so slight and frivolous a cause Such factious emulations shall arise? Good cousins both, of York and Somerset, Quiet yourselves, I pray, and be at peace. (1Henry VI, 4.1.111–115)

The words he uses here, however, indicate that he certainly underestimates the potential danger: “madness,” “brainsick,” “slight” and “frivolous” are inadequate in view of the gravity of the conflict. The nobles may be brainsick with power, but they certainly do not consider their cause as either slight or frivolous, as the determination with which either side pursues their cause demonstrates. Henry’s naivety is a consistent trait of the character throughout all three plays on his reign. When Suffolk is convicted of Gloucester’s murder in the second part, Henry states his belief in divine justice and the expendability of weapons: What stronger breastplate than a heart untainted? Thrice is he armed that hath his quarrel just, And he but naked, though locked up in steel, Whose conscience with injustice is corrupted. (2Henry VI, 3.2.231–235)18

Not only is Henry averse to national as well as international conflicts, he condemns violence in general, which ironically leads to the first escalation of events in the same play, when York’s rebels, led by Jack Cade, turn the entire city of London into chaos and terror. Again, Henry can only think of means disproportional to the gravity of the situation: I’ll send some holy bishop to entreat, For God forbid so many simple souls Should perish by the sword. And I myself, Rather than bloody war shall cut them short, Will parley with Jack Cade their general. (2Henry VI, 4.4.8–12)

As honourable as his intention is to save people’s lives as well as his motivation to intervene personally, his strategy would be absolutely ineffective. The rebellion is finally quenched because Cade is killed by Iden, which proves to be the only possible manner of dealing with his unrestrained ruthlessness. This escalation of the civil war, despite its momentary resolution after Cade’s death, is a clear indicator that if Henry was ever able to gain control over his country, he is certainly past

18 All quotations from the second part of Henry VI are from the following edition and will be given parenthetically: William Shakespeare, King Henry VI, Part 2, ed. Ronald Knowles. The Arden Shakespeare Third Series (London: Thomson Learning, 2001).

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that point now and the unruly nobles around him will follow their cause undisturbedly, as the beginning of part 3 immediately indicates. When York boldly seats himself on Henry’s throne and thus openly challenges him, Henry again tries to solve the conflict as peacefully as possible: Far be the thought from Henry’s heart, To make a shambles of the Parliament House. Cousin of Exeter, frowns, words and threats Shall be the war that Henry means to use. (3Henry VI, 1.1.70–73)19

Frowns, words and threats are inadequate means of dealing with York and his followers and the consequences dominate the whole play. In the following, it will become evident that Henry’s pacifism can be regarded from three different perspectives: on the one hand, it is representative of his Christian faith, which forms his main argument. Secondly, his pacifist stance raises questions about his masculinity, for it seems to effeminate him, which is most obviously pointed out by the opposition created between him and Queen Margaret and also through the antagonism between Henry and Margaret’s lover Suffolk. Thirdly, Henry’s pacifism is inextricably linked to his capabilities as king. Henry’s piety is a most crucial contributor to his pacifist stance portrayed in the plays and the virtues he tries to promote are first and foremost Christian love and peace: “I would prevail – if prayers might prevail – | To join your hearts in love and amity […],” (1Henry VI, 3.1.67/68) thereby rendering himself a political failure. As Harold Goddard has pointed out, “Henry was better fitted for the role of saint than of king.”20 Not only does he argue for Christian peace, he also believes that a clerical office suggests the same personal opinion, as is obvious in his reproach of the Bishop of Winchester for his partaking in the quarrel with Gloucester: Who should be pitiful, if you be not? Or who should study to prefer a peace If holy churchmen take delight in broils? (1Henry VI, 3.1.110–112)

The naivety evident in this assumption is emphasised by the ruthless determination Winchester shows in the play and although in the first part of the tetralogy Henry’s unworldly piety might be attributed to his youth, he never loses his nai-

19 All quotations from the third part of Henry VI are taken from the following edition and will be given parenthetically: William Shakespeare, King Henry VI, Part 3, eds. John D. Cox and Eric Rasmussen. The Arden Shakespeare Third Series (London: Thomson Learning, 2001). 20 Harold C. Goddard, The Meaning of Shakespeare, vol. 1 (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1960): 32.

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vety. In the second part he is not only more elaborate in his religious convictions, but these are also more obvious due to the juxtaposition of Henry with Queen Margaret. When she complains to her lover Suffolk about Henry it is evident that his devotion to the Church has increased: I would the college of the cardinals Would choose him Pope, and carry him to Rome And set the triple crown upon his head: That were a state fit for his holiness. (2Henry VI, 1.3.62–65)

Since her commentary precedes Henry’s first official political actions on stage, everything he says from now on that expresses his Christian faith seems even more ironic, especially when it is directed at Margaret: “I prithee, peace, | Good Queen, and whet not on these furious peers; | For blessed are the peacemakers on earth.” (2Henry VI, 2.1.32–34) This quotation from the Sermon on the Mount is followed by yet another statement of his absolute trust in God, which is nevertheless unfitting for the situation: “Let never day nor night unhallowed pass, | But still remember what the Lord hath done.” (2Henry VI, 2.1.82/83) Thus, Henry extends his pacifism to his politics, which proves entirely ineffective, as James Winny rightly points out: In Henry VI Shakespeare depicts a king whose gentle nature is appalled by the savagery of political conflict, and who cannot face the necessity of forcing obedience upon the mutinous nobles whom his own weakness has encouraged. Their unruly energy can only be held in balance by an equally resolved force impressing order upon them, but the King evades his obligation in the pious hope that mild persuasion will prove an effective substitute for political mastery.21

Henry’s incapability is emphasised through the juxtaposition with his far more determined wife, who embodies the King’s lack of authority through her dominance, as Howard and Rackin point out: Foretold at the very end of Part I and announced in the opening scene of Part II, Margaret’s marriage to Henry VI brings the subversive forces embodied by the French women in Part I to the heart of the English court. The French women who threaten to subvert the English historical project in Part I are unmarried; in Part II, the dangers they embody quite literally come home to England in the form of ambitious wives, married to the men who govern the land. These women threaten both the authority of their husbands and the stability of the kingdom.22

21 James Winny, The Player King. A Theme of Shakespeare’s Histories (London: Chatto & Windus, 1968): 39. 22 Jean E. Howard and Phyllis Rackin, Engendering a Nation. A Feminist Account of Shakespeare’s English Histories (London and New York: Routledge, 1997): 65.

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The marriage between Henry and Margaret of Anjou therefore has fatal consequences for Henry’s reign: first of all, Margaret will take control of the kingdom. Secondly, the marriage contract is of great disadvantage to England, which Henry does not see in contrast to everyone around him: The consternation caused by King Henry’s immediate acceptance of these terms, a consternation even shared by Gloucester, suggests how far the king has ventured into the domain of the irrational and how little, his authority undermined, he will subsequently be able to use his monarchical position to quell the mounting dissension among his nobles.23

Thus, the marriage is a crucial point in many respects: it is representative of the final loss of France, i.e. Henry’s failure as a politician; it will upset the nobles to an extent that will give them the last excuse needed to pursue their own ends and it emphasises Henry’s failure as man and king, which is parodied in Margaret’s frustrated rant to her lover Suffolk: I thought King Henry had resembled thee In courage, courtship and proportion. But all his mind is bent on holiness, To number Ave Maries on his beads. His champions are the prophets and apostles, His weapons holy saws of sacred writ; His study is his tilt-yard, and his loves Are brazen images of canonized saints. (2Henry VI, 1.3.54–61)

Henry’s piety here serves as a means for Margaret to ridicule him in more than one respect. Her comparison between Suffolk and Henry points out that Henry is in her eyes not “manly” enough and his studies of the bible and the devotion to his faith disqualify him as a man and king.24 Her reproach against him is critical of his manhood, his piety and implicitly of his subordinate behaviour, which culminates when she takes over his position in the conflict: “Henry’s lack of manly selfcontrol is matched by what is represented as Margaret’s unwomanly self-assertiveness.”25 The Queen has what Henry lacks: the military skills as much as the will to execute them in order to deal with the nobles, while Henry’s pacifism effeminates and disables him. As Nicholas Grene has it: “The marriage between Henry and Margaret is a disaster for England because her unwomanly spirit of ambition 23 Howard and Rackin, Engendering a Nation, 68. 24 Her speech represents the strong connection in this play between sovereignty and masculinity, as Howard and Rackin point out: “Henry VI, Part II makes the young King Henry responsible for much of the disorder in his kingdom, and it insistently connects his failures as monarch to his failures of masculinity.” Howard and Rackin, Engendering a Nation, 67. 25 Howard and Rackin, Engendering a Nation, 68.

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supplies all too well the gap left by his lack of the manly virtues.”26 More importantly, Henry is not only less fit to rule but also less fit to oppose the nobles, for his pacifism prevents him from raising the necessary determination to control his unruly knights. His wife, on the other hand, is in her attitude towards violence and her willingness to carry it out more than a match for them. Moreover, through this marriage the opposition between realism and pacifism is already introduced in the domestic setting, before it creates the political conflict on the major scale.

3.1.1 Political Responsibility Henry VI’s political incapability is introduced in the first play even before he first appears. Mourning the death of Henry V, Gloucester, Exeter and Winchester deliver speeches in praise of him, which are, however, merely intended to point out the failing politics of Henry VI. The sequence is structured by the arrivals of several messengers, announcing that Henry VI’s reign is in increasing danger. As the Arden edition notes, “with most of the events alluded to in this scene, narrative continuity and sequence have been manipulated to create an emblematic picture of national disaster.”27 The artificiality of the scene is further underlined by the historical inaccuracy according to Peter Saccio, who concludes that the fact that “the death of Henry V led to general calamity is the effect created, and to create that effect Shakespeare almost randomly picks events scattered over many pages of the chronicles […].”28 Thus, Henry VI is put into stark contrast to his father, as Lisa Dickson remarks: Between “the King is dead” and “long live the King,” the first scene of the play establishes the terms of the crisis of visibility that characterizes a fracturing of English identity and power. Dominating the conceptual space of the scene, Henry V’s body, memory, fame and loss emphasize the impossible standards set for the young king whose physical absence is indicative of a political vacuum that enables factionism to flourish where monologic power should reign.29

Similarly, Brian Walsh argues that the “play’s first scene offers a formula of disaster, as factions and the loss of effective leadership define the English nobil-

26 Grene, Shakespeare’s Serial History Plays, 113. 27 1Henry VI, 123, n108. 28 Peter Saccio, Shakespeare’s English Kings. History, Chronicle and Drama (Oxford: OUP, 2000): 106. 29 Lisa Dickson, “No Rainbow Without the Sun: Visibility and Embodiment in 1Henry VI,” Modern Language Studies 30.1. (2000): 137–156, 138.

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ity.”30 Early on in the trilogy the king makes the crucial political mistake which is representative of his naivety: ignorant of the gesture’s significance, he allies himself with the House of Lancaster by picking the red rose: I see no reason, if I wear this rose, That anyone should therefore be suspicious I more incline to Somerset than York […]. (1Henry VI, 4.1.152–154)31

As Donald Wineke points out, Henry is driven to reconcile the two factions and ignores completely that he should not humble himself in doing so, but rather try to control the boiling discord: His handling of the York-Somerset conflict in Act Four, scene one, is exemplary of his failure to grasp the nature of the situation and to deal with it decisively. Anxious as always to be conciliatory, he professes to be neutral in the dispute, even as he pins a red rose, Somerset’s emblem, on his robe […].32

Ironically, through his desire for peace, Henry here sets off the Wars of the Roses, as Exeter prophesies at the end of the scene: [N]o simple man that sees This jarring discord of nobility, This shouldering of each other in the court, This factious bandying of their favourites, But that it doth presage some ill event. ’Tis much when sceptres are in children’s hands, But more when envy breeds unkind division – There comes the ruin, there begins confusion. (1Henry VI, 4.2.182–194)

30 Brian Walsh, “‘Unkind Division’: The Double Absence of Performing History in 1Henry VI,” Shakespeare Quarterly 55.2 (2004): 119–147, 128. 31 Ironically, he reproaches the nobles earlier on not to let their personal discord affect international politics: “[W]hat infamy will there arise | When foreign princes shall be certified | That for a toy, a thing of no regard, | King Henry’s peers and chief nobility | Destroyed themselves and lost the realm of France!” (1Henry VI, 4.1.143–147). 32 Donald R. Wineke, “The Relevance of Machiavelli to Shakespeare: A Discussion of 1Henry VI,” Clio 13.1 (1983): 17–36, 24. Michael Manheim’s opposing argument that this is “Henry’s true stroke of political genius” is hardly convincing considering the consequences that this action has. However, he goes on to say: “Far from being a foolish sudden, inappropriate act, it is the same means by which Henry honestly seeks to demonstrate the folly of decision based exclusively on political expediency. His forthright gesture brings him all kinds of trouble later, but it is the basic, simple logic of his statement and its complete freedom from subterfuge that points the accusing finger at the conniving and pretenses of the lords […].” Michael Manheim, The Weak King Dilemma in the Shakespearean History Play (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1973): 96.

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The ruin that is caused by Henry’s denial of responsibility and authority culminates in part 3, where he withdraws completely from the action and leaves it to his wife to crush the rebellion of the nobles: Henry is admittedly weak, pious, and ineffectual in the earlier plays, but it is only in Part III that the hollowness at the center of the patriarchal edifice is fully exposed. The scandal of Henry VI, Part III is not that a woman is a general, but that a man, and an anointed king to boot, can perform none of the actions expected of a father and king. He is less fit to rule than his French-born wife.33

While his wife opposes York in battle, Henry chooses to lament the casualties of this civil war, which is in part his fault, as Leggatt states: “The authority the office requires is not in his nature as a man, and his passiveness can be not just irritating but culpable.”34 In this scene, Henry’s self-centred and self-indulgent character becomes most obvious when it is clear that the sorrowful spectacle of fathers and sons killing each other moves him only on his own behalf: three times his commentary relates the scene before his eyes back to his own misery. The parallelism of the dialogue thus emphasises Henry’s self-deprecation and guilt: How will my mother for a father’s death Take on with me, and ne’er be satisfied! Father How will my wife for slaughter of my son Shed seas of tears, and ne’er be satisfied Henry How will the country for these woeful chances Misthink the King, and not be satisfied! (3Henry VI, 2.5.103–107)35 Son

Thus, Henry compares the public reaction of his people let down by an incapable sovereign to the personal grief over losing one’s family due to an unnecessary war, which seems not only egotistical but also arrogant in view of his own culpability. Janis Lull points out that Henry identifies himself with the two soldiers and “regards himself as a victim and not an instigator of civil war, dreading censure without admitting faults.”36 He is even as overweening as to claim that his grief is 33 Howard and Rackin, Engendering a Nation, 85. 34 Leggatt, Shakespeare’s Political Drama, 25. 35 See also Barker’s comment: “The ‘artificial’ symmetry of the scene and its careful symbolism – two fathers and sons juxtaposed with the ‘fatherly’ presence of the shepherd king – give it a special place in the play. The linear action is held up for a moment of contemplation and reflection […].” Barker, War and Nation, 123. 36 Janis Lull, “Plantagenets, Lancastrians, Yorkists, and Tudors: 1–3Henry VI, Richard III, Edward III” in The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare’s History Plays, ed. Michael Hattaway (Cambridge: CUP, 2002): 89–105, 95.

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worse: “[m]uch is your sorrow; mine, ten times so much […],” and “[s]ad-hearted men, much overgone with care, | Here sits a king more woeful than you are.” (3Henry VI, 2.5.112, 123/124) The play-within-the-play therefore emphasises his denial of responsibility and the ineffectiveness of his pacifism. All he can do now is pray for peace: Woe above woe! Grief more than common grief! O that my death would stay these ruthful deeds! O pity, pity, gentle heaven, pity! The red rose and the white are on his face, The fatal colours of our striving houses: The one his purple blood right well resembles, The other his pale cheek methinks presenteth. Whither one rose, and let the other flourish; If you contend, a thousand lives must whither. (3Henry VI, 2.5.94–102)

The reference to the red and white roses is reminiscent of his guilt in the original conflict, and yet he speaks as if he was an innocent by-stander. His metaphor for the two antagonistic houses underlines that he regards them almost as if they were uncontrollable superior entities, powers that cause the deaths of thousands of people like a natural catastrophe. He seems to wish at this point that either side win, in order to save the people’s lives, but it is more likely that he simply wishes this war to be over to relieve his conscience.37 Henry VI stands out from among Shakespeare’s kings as the most incapable one and he has no excuse apart from piety and pacifism since those are the only reasons given for his catastrophic rule. Donald Wineke, who analyses the play and its king from a Machiavellian perspective, sums up Henry’s deficiencies: From a Machiavellian perspective, Henry is simply inadequate for the job. He lacks virtù, that combination of qualities – among them, energy, strength, boldness, shrewdness – that Machiavelli thought indispensable in a prince. Certainly, he is not intellectually equipped to deal with the complexities of rule. His political knowledge is limited to rudimentary principles […] that he seems to have learned by rote. […] He is altogether naïve about human behaviour and its motives, and vices like hypocrisy and dissimulation seem unknown to him.38

37 Henry’s complete denial of responsibility is even more ironic in reference to his soliloquy preceding this scene, where he dreams of a life as a shepherd, looking after his flock, devoid of other responsibilities or tasks. (3Henry VI, 2.4.21–54) The shepherd is of course a well-known metaphor for a priest; an office that Henry would have been much more suited for. 38 Wineke, “The Relevance of Machiavelli to Shakespeare,” 22.

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While Wineke’s characterisation is certainly correct, it is not only from the Machiavellian perspective that Henry is unfit to rule. The plays demonstrate that “[t]he disordered state of the kingdom derives chiefly from the failure of a weak-willed King to enforce his authority […],”39 but it is even more importantly his peaceful nature that makes his rule so inefficient. Over the course of the three plays it becomes obvious that Henry’s pacifist stance is simply inadequate to deal with the discord that grows around him. His desire to avoid bloodshed seems hopelessly old-fashioned in this modern political universe. Leggatt calls him a “spokesman for values that the rest of his world has virtually forgotten […],”40 but in a sense Henry VI makes the same mistake as the opposition by confusing his public and private identities. Harold Goddard pointed out that Henry VI is “the only of Shakespeare’s kings whose public and private personalities are identical […],”41 and exactly that is Henry’s fatal error. His unconscious political action of picking the red rose and giving “national scale to what had been a private conflict,”42 and the incapability of dealing with the consequences have shown that he is unable to act as a public figure: “[I]t is Henry’s impulsive desire to resolve a political issue by a consistent and appealing emotional attitude that is ultimately fatal to the stability and well-being of England.”43 His taking sides, his marriage to Margaret, his appointing York as rightful successor – all of these actions are attempts to preserve the peace and all directly contribute to his own downfall. Thus, Henry is portrayed with increasing intensity as “a holy fool, too pious for politics; [as] a feeble and inadequate man […],”44 whose incapability as a public figure provides the most fruitful ground for the private interests of the nobles surrounding him. In such a degenerated world, pacifism is not the means to solve a political conflict.

39 Winny, The Player King, 21. 40 Leggatt, Shakespeare’s Political Drama, 26. 41 Goddard, The Meaning of Shakespeare, 30. 42 Leggatt, Shakespeare’s Political Drama, 22. 43 H. M. Richmond, Shakespeare’s Political Plays (New York: Random House, 1967): 34. 44 Grene, Shakespeare’s Serial History Plays, 109/110. Grene, however, goes on to say that Shakespeare also makes the point that Henry “was being punished for the sins of his grandfather, the illegitimate usurper Henry IV.” (110) I did not quote this passage in full, for I do not agree with Grene’s latter point. Shakespeare’s way of depicting the Wars of the Roses makes perfect sense without the relation back (or, when it comes to the chronological order of writing, forward) to the Lancaster tetralogy.

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3.1.2 Realism In the first tetralogy, Shakespeare dramatises a social world that loses progressively but unavoidably all resemblance with a civilised society, where ruthlessness and brutality take over to an extent that morality is extinct. The quarrel sets out in the garden scene, a mere invention by Shakespeare: the discussion of the law introduces the lawlessness that will prevail from hereon, recalling the ancient principle inter arma silent leges. Discussing a never disclosed legal problem Warwick states that “in these sharp quillets of the law, | Good faith, I am no wiser than a daw […]” (1Henry VI, 2.4.17/18), and Suffolk claims “I have been a truant in the law | And never yet could frame my will to it, | And therefore frame the law unto my will.” (1Henry VI, 2.4.7–9) Both statements are open declarations of moral relativism – by declaring their ignorance of the law they render it obsolete, which introduces the amoral universe of this particular tetralogy. Robert Ornstein points out that “the quarrel prefigures even more dangerous conspiracies to come, for there is no sign of principle in the barons who jest cynically about law and who will accept no judgment except that rendered by the sword.”45 The characters’ statements, especially Suffolk’s intention to bend the law to his will, are representative of the general immoral attitude displayed by both sides of the conflict. As Donald Wineke remarks of this scene, it is indicative of the English peers in this play, who are “reflecting a dangerous egotism that allows them to sweep crucial moral and political questions aside with verbal ingenuity.”46 The evidence is provided by the immediately ensuing dialogue between the two main opponents, who express their subjective view of the case: The truth appears so naked on my side That any purblind eye may find it out. Somerset And on my side it is so well apparelled, So clear, so shining and so evident, That it will glimmer through a blind man’s eye. (1Henry VI, 2.4.20–24) Richard

The subjective judgement of both antagonists follows from the general unspoken agreement to ignore objective moral norms and fight for one’s own cause, be it lawful or not. The immorality is further emphasised because the cause of the con-

45 Robert Ornstein, A Kingdom for a Stage. The Achievement of Shakespeare’s History Plays (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard U P, 1972): 36. 46 Wineke, “Relevance of Machiavelli to Shakespeare,” 26.

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flict is never disclosed, so that the audience have no opportunity to evaluate who is in fact right and who is wrong: [The conflict is] designed to be regarded with a purely disinterested spectatorship. An audience is engaged, is moved to excitement, to pity, to horror; yet in a conflict where there is no right to be discerned, only wrong piled upon angry wrong, stable support of one side against the other is impossible.47

This omission of a cause for the conflict indicates that there can be no objective evaluation of justice, which implies that neither Richard’s nor Somerset’s cause is lawful and it is not essential for their followers to choose a just aggressor, as Alexander Leggatt points out: The fundamental chilling irony of the scene is that we never know what the quarrel is about – it is the tendency to quarrel and choose sides that matters – yet this seemingly trivial dispute will expand until it sends ‘A thousand souls to death and deadly night’ […]. The rights and wrongs of the cause are replaced by appeals for allies couched in challenges to pride […] and the debate, if there ever was one, degenerates into schoolboy taunts.48

As much as the true reason for the quarrel between York and Somerset is left in the dark, one thing is clear: this is a private, not a public conflict. When the garden scene draws to a close, York announces on the one hand that he has a personal interest – his honour and that of his father – to pursue the quarrel and on the other hand, it becomes clear that he will not rest until he is satisfied. And this will send “[a] thousand souls to death and deadly night.” (1Henry VI, 2.4.124–127) Warwick’s prophecy thus marks the disproportional consequences the quarrel will cause:

47 Grene, Shakespeare’s Serial History Plays, 83. 48 Leggatt, Shakespeare’s Political Drama, 8. Donald Wineke sees a deliberate trivialisation of the cause of the quarrel on Shakespeare’s part: “What is particularly striking in Shakespeare’s dramatization of the incident is the way in which he trivializes the attitudes and behavior of a group of noblemen about to set in motion events of great and tragic consequence for England. The issue they have come to argue – presumably either Plantagenet’s suit for restoration of the Yorkist title and properties or the validity of the Lancastrian claim to the throne – is undoubtedly a momentous one, but it is never specified.” Wineke, “Relevance of Machiavelli to Shakespeare,” 25/26. Emrys Jones states that the “initial cause of the quarrel is never disclosed; but the real grounds for the hostility between Somerset and Richard Plantagenet become clear towards the end of the scene where Somerset taunts Richard a ‘yeoman’ – neither nobleman nor a gentleman but ‘exempt from ancient gentry’. It is this taunt that stings and rankles.” Jones, “Reclaiming Early Shakespeare,” 46. See also 1Henry VI, 2.4.80–85.

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In dressing up the image of war in a conventional poetic conceit Warwick provides an appropriate conclusion to an argument in which aristocratic ambition, vanity, stupidity have been revealed in the interchange of witticisms. It is also ironic, because, while it explicitly anticipates the Wars of the Roses, Warwick’s prophecy – which underestimates the eventual casual count by a good margin – does not begin to supply a true image of the horrors to come.49

Ambition, vanity and stupidity are indeed contributive elements in the ensuing decay of society, but more importantly it is egotism and indifference towards the public good. The world of all three parts of Henry VI is presented as one in which individuals try to pursue their self-interests with progressively growing ruthlessness in order to gain power over the kingdom. Through the bellum omnium contra omnes of the following plays, humanity slowly but steadily decays and immorality and self-interest begin to dominate. Robert Ornstein postulates that although “[m]ore dangerous than the other opportunists of Part I, who aim at lesser spoils, York is nevertheless a patriot who identifies his cause with England’s, whereas Suffolk, Winchester, and Somerset casually sacrifice the national good to their ambitions.”50 This lack of interest for the internal public good is emphasised through the external conflict with France, captured in Exeter’s commentary: Ay, we may march in England or in France, Not seeing what is likely to ensue: This late dissension grown betwixt the peers Burns under feigned ashes of forged love And will at least break out into flame. As festered members rot but by degree, Till bones and flesh and sinews fall away, So will this base and envious discord breed. (1Henry VI, 3.1.189–196)

Here, the common Elizabethan conception that foreign wars may prevent rebellion and civil war is pointedly refuted and the reason why the popular formula fails is clear: foreign wars pose a threat to one’s country and the common interest in the public good overcomes internal discord. In these plays, however, self-interest surpasses concerns for the public good. The first consequence is Talbot’s death in the French wars, which is emphasised by parallel scenes in England and France, as Leggatt describes:

49 Wineke, “Relevance of Machiavelli to Shakespeare,” 26. 50 Ornstein, A Kingdom for a Stage, 39/40.

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Just as Talbot’s meeting with the Countess is succeeded by the Temple Garden scene, so the scene in which Henry dons a red rose and lifts the conflict to a new level is followed by the sequence of Talbot’s entrapment and death. The irony in this case works both against Talbot and for him, revealing the forces that will destroy him and showing them up by comparison with his own selfless dedication.51

Talbot’s pitiful failure to maintain the English dominion of France results from the shameful treason of his own countrymen, because they refuse their moral obligation to send troops to France out of self-interest.52 Thus, the national conflict causes an international defeat and the loss of France, which leads to the exclusive focus on the civil discord. The “central antithesis” of the tetralogy, according to Grene, between the “naturalness” of the war with France and the “unnaturalness of civil war which pits like against like”53 thus disappears, since now the unnaturalness of civil war dominates the action. Clausewitz defined war as “an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will,”54 and this is the nature of civil war in these early plays. The driving force of aggression is York’s pursuit of the throne, which reveals Machiavellian policy in action. Whether York has an actual claim to the English throne or not, is never answered in the play in the same way as it had been left unresolved by the chroniclers themselves.55 The focus lies instead on the human and moral degeneration of this character. In the beginning, he justifies his behaviour by his alleged right of succession, but the actual cause fades more and more into the background: Methinks the realms of England, France and Ireland Bear that proportion to my flesh and blood As did the fatal brand Althaea burnt Unto the prince’s heart of Calydon. […] A day will come when York shall claim his own. (2Henry VI, 1.1.229–232, 236)

Wineke refers to York as a “proto-Machiavellian” in his discussion of the first part of the trilogy,56 although York’s self-serving intentions and actions only come to 51 Leggatt, Shakespeare’s Political Drama, 9. 52 See Lucy’s comment: “The fraud of England, not the force of France, | Hath now entrapped the noble Talbot.” (1Henry VI, 4.3.89/90) 53 Grene, Shakespeare’s Serial History Plays, 66. 54 Clausewitz, On War, 75. 55 See Grene, Shakespeare’s Serial History Plays, 107–108. 56 Wineke, “Relevance of Machiavelli to Shakespeare,” 25. Wineke also asserts that York is the only character who “has an ambition that rises above the purely personal.” (25) Considering the analysis above as well as the impending chapter, I cannot agree with this statement, because York’s “ambition” is entirely self-serving.

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light properly in this soliloquy. It is now that he begins to turn into a “proto-Machiavellian”: And therefore will I take the Nevilles’ parts And make a show of love to proud Duke Humphrey, And when I spy advantage, claim the crown, For that’s the golden mark I seek to hit. (2Henry VI, 1.1.237–240)

As Edward Berry points out, York reveals himself here as the diametrically opposed counterpart to Gloucester: “Gloucester operates in public, with an impulsive, passionate concern for the common good; York in secret, with a cool, caustic attention to his own self-interest […].”57 The strategy York proclaims to follow in the future is very much in accordance with Machiavellian policy: to seem upright and trustworthy, but to be “a great feigner and dissembler.”58 Thus, York will make “a show of love,” spy and deceive, until he will eventually “claim” the throne through power. As is well-known, Machiavelli advised men to “imitate both the fox and the lion, for the lion is liable to be trapped, whereas the fox cannot ward off wolves. One needs, then, to be a fox to recognise traps, and a lion to frighten away wolves.”59 This is what York has already realised: he lives among wolves and thus decides to be both fox and lion in order to gain the crown. He vows to be a feigner and dissembler and in the succeeding soliloquy settles first for the role of the fox: Then, York, be still awhile, till time do serve. Watch thou and wake, when others be asleep, To pry into the secrets of the state […]. (2Henry VI, 1.1.245–247)

As the fox, he secures Salisbury’s and Warwick’s loyalty and as soon as he has achieved this due to his alleged hereditary right to the throne, he turns from fox to lion: But I am not your king Till I be crowned and that my sword be stained With heart-blood of the house of Lancaster; And that’s not suddenly to be performed But with advice and silent secrecy. (2Henry VI, 2.2.64–68)

57 Edward I. Berry, Patterns of Decay. Shakespeare’s Early Histories (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1975): 36. 58 Machiavelli, The Prince, 62. 59 Machiavelli, The Prince, 61.

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While his strategy partly still relies on deception and intrigue, he goes one step further by expressing his readiness to be as ruthless as necessary. From now on, policy will give way to force, since York not only allows for but also intends to shed blood in the process of gaining the crown. As Machiavelli had claimed, a man of power “is often forced to act treacherously, ruthlessly or inhumanely, and disregard the precepts of religion.”60 York follows this guideline step by step: he starts out as treacherous, secretly aiming for the crown, becomes ruthless by trying to gather as many nobles on his side as possible, prophesying that all others “[s]hall find their deaths.” (2Henry VI, 2.2.76) He contributes significantly to the deposition of the Lord Protector, Gloucester, but the closer his ruthlessness takes him to his aim, the more he begins to resemble an animal rather than a human being: Faster than springtime showers comes thought on thought, And not a thought but thinks on dignity. My brain, more busy than the laboring spider, Weaves tedious snares to trap mine enemies. Well, nobles, well; ’tis politicly done, To send me packing with an host of men; I fear me you but warm the starved snake Who, cherished in your breasts, will sting your hearts. ’Twas men I lacked, and you will give them me; I take it kindly, yet be well assured You put sharp weapons in a madman’s hands. Whiles I in Ireland nurse a mighty band I will stir up in England some black storm Shall blow ten thousand souls to heaven or to hell; And this fell tempest shall not cease to rage Until the golden circuit on my head, Like to the glorious sun’s transparent beams, Do calm the fury of this mad-bred flaw. (2Henry VI, 3.1.336–353)

He seems to be degenerating due to an obsessive desire for the crown and loses rationality and humanity in the process, as the ubiquitous animal imagery emphasises: These images dehumanize York, but they also reveal his singleness of purpose. Policy, not love, governs his actions. Having some claim to the throne as a descendant of the third son of Edward III, York scruples at nothing to make good on that claim.61

60 Machiavelli, The Prince, 62. 61 Howard and Rackin, Engendering a Nation, 79. See also Berry, Patterns of Decay, 45: “It is presumably no coincidence here that the imagery of bestiality, which begins to gather momentum in the play, rolls with increasing savagery through Part III and Richard III.”

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He compares himself to the spider and the snake, traditionally treacherous animals, and mocks his fellow noblemen for trusting him and thus enabling him to work against them. The irrationality he needs for his purpose is also represented in the reference to himself as a madman, which is supposed to relieve him of responsibility: he blames King Henry and his followers for providing him with the means to wage war and at the same time seems to declare himself certifiably insane and therefore not culpable. Furthermore, he is indifferent to the costs of his war, which will “blow ten thousand souls to heaven or to hell.” The expression is particularly brutal, because York ignores that his cause and the consequences are vastly disproportional. At the same time, the metonomy ‘souls’ suggests his awareness that he will destroy the lives of human beings, but he is equally indifferent to their fates. He is simply not interested in the people who will die for his own cause. Whether or not the audience is supposed to believe his claim on the throne, however, is highly questionable, since the character only uses the argument for his right of succession when he tries to win over Salisbury and Warwick. In his soliloquies he makes no such justifications: he only refers to England as “his own,” without demonstrating the justice of his claim, and every thought focuses on how to ascend the throne, not why. He displays no signs of inner struggle or scruples and no attempts at self-persuasion, so that his aggression is entirely unreflected. At the same time, the play itself still denies the audience any clue for a moral evaluation, but foregrounds the consequences of York’s actions and the moral decay of human society.62 This is almost comically reflected in his counterpart Jack Cade, whose rebellion is “a symbolic extension of the anarchy that York implicitly sanctions […].”63 It has been claimed that realists are “fond of saying that war is hell,”64 and the analogy between York’s rebellion and Cade’s battles certainly confirms such an assumption. “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers […],” (2Henry VI, 4.2.71) says the Butcher at the outset of the episode, and not only is it no coincidence that one of the most important rebels is a butcher, his statement is an indirect

62 For the fact that Shakespeare never resolved the question of the legitimacy of York’s claim and the relation to the Chronicles, see Grene, Shakespeare’s Serial History Plays, 106–108: “The ambiguous standing of York derived partly from the chronicles, but Shakespeare made of it something different by his dramatisation of a human career across three plays from young manhood to death on the battlefield” (107/108). 63 Berry, Patterns of Decay, 45. 64 Nick Fotion, Bruno Coppieters, and Ruben Apressyan, “Introduction” in Moral Constraints on War, 1.

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expression of the principle inter arma silent leges.65 The battles of the rebellion are conducted according to Cade’s absurd rules: “But then we are in order when we are most out of order” (2Henry VI, 4.2.178/179) is the guiding principle of their behaviour. Chaos and escalation are the two results of the rebellion, which almost parodies the traditional rules of war, for example when Cade, regarding himself as a legitimate authority, passes on to the butcher the “licence to kill.” (2Henry VI, 4.3.7) As Bernthal points out: Cade and his crew turn the prevailing concepts of law and rank upside down. They set forth genuine grievances, but the contradictions in Cade’s program of reformation are comically obvious. The rebellion is shown to disintegrate from within. It becomes, on the one hand, a comic “antimasque” of the irresponsible and selfish behaviour of the nobles who are vying for power, […] and on the other, a send up of the crude political comprehension of the English mob […].66

The licence to kill the Butcher receives then turns out not to be equivalent to the status of a soldier, who may rightfully kill in battle, but it is a licence to slaughter his enemies like animals, which becomes clear when Cade praises the Butcher for his ‘effectiveness’ in battle: They fell before thee like sheep and oxen, and thou behaved’st thyself as if thou hadst been in thine own slaughterhouse. Therefore, thus will I reward thee: the Lent shall be as long as it is, and thou shalt have a licence to kill for a hundred lacking one. (2Henry VI, 4.3.3–7)

Like York’s indifference to the lives of soldiers, Cade’s analogy almost hyperbolically epitomises the underlying disrespect for human lives, since men have become indistinguishable from slaughter cattle. As Ronda Arab points out, “Dick the butcher uses the very techniques he employs every day in the slaughterhouse to wreak carnage on the elite enemy. By doing so, he reduces his enemies to the

65 For an analyis of the Cade Rebellion from the perspective of its mockery of the law and lawyers in general see Craig A. Bernthal, “Jack Cade’s Legal Carnival,” Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900 42.2 (2002): 259–274; a historical reading of Shakespeare’s depiction of the Cade rebellion of 1450 is provided by Ellen C. Caldwell, “Jack Cade and Shakespeare’s Henry VI, Part 2,” Studies in Philology 92.1 (1995): 18–79. Especially Bernthal as well as Alexander Leggatt regard Jack Cade as one of Shakespeare’s most severe social critics, but although they are certainly right in their interpretation, the main focus of the approach at hand is the representation of the violation of the rules of war, as Shakespeare dramatises this aspect by means of Cade’s “carnival.” Leggatt states that “[Cade] can achieve his social ends only by treating human life as cheap; it is not by accident that one of his most voluble supporters is a butcher.” Leggatt, Shakespeare’s Political Drama, 18/19. 66 Bernthal, “Jack Cade’s Legal Carnival,” 259.

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status of the animals that are slaughtered for food.”67 Cade’s rebellion thus mirrors York’s more rational cruelty: he intends to drag all the bodies at his “horse heels” to London (2Henry VI, 4.3.11/12) and pronounces the arbitrary law that “henceforth it shall be treason for any that calls me other than Lord Mortimer,” (2Henry VI, 4.6.3–5) which demands its first victim immediately. A nameless soldier shouting “Jack Cade! Jack Cade!” (2Henry VI, 4.6.7) is killed on the spot. Through the dramatisation of Jack Cade’s rebellion on the one hand as an analogy to the discord of the nobles on the major political scale and at the same time as York’s “reductio ad absurdum,” as Berry has it,68 it is most graphically demonstrated therefore that the realist approach turns war into hell. There is no limit to the violence, which is even partly visually obvious by the number of heads that are either present on stage or referred to as off-stage beheadings, which is nicely summarised by Howard and Rackin: One unforgettable manifestation of the breakdown of order in the play is the startling amount of brute violence it depicts, especially in the form of decapitation. Suffolk is beheaded at sea, but his head is sent back to the English court. Cade also loses his head, and it is brought to the king to earn his killer, Alexander Iden, the reward promised for cutting down a traitor. Cade, in his turn, had already had Lord Say beheaded, along with Say’s sonin-law, James Cromer; and he had ordered their heads to be placed on poles and made “to kiss” at every corner.69

Similarly, all of Cade’s orders to his rebels draw attention to their irrationality and brutality and the ruthlessness of his orders, such as “Kill and knock down! Throw them into Thames!” (2Henry VI, 4.8.1/2) are indicative of this absolute war waging, which permits no pity or parleys. The injustice of the sub-plot thus mirrors the immorality of the nobles in the main plot. This parallel is most obvious towards the end of the rebellion, when Buckingham and Old Clifford try to parley with Cade

67 Ronda Arab, “Ruthless Power and Ambivalent Glory: The Rebel-Labourer in 2Henry VI,” Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 5.2 (2005): 5–36, 11. 68 Berry, Patterns of Decay, 47. See also Ornstein: “Cade’s ramshackle is the antimasque of York’s rebellion even as Cade’s claim to royal descent is a parody of York’s pretension to the throne.” Ornstein, A Kingdom for a Stage, 51; and Pascale Drouet, “Popular Riot in Shakespeare’s 2Henry VI” in Riots in Literature, eds. David Bell, Gerald Porter and Jukka Tiusanen (Newcastleupon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2008): 1–20, 11ff. 69 Howard and Rackin, Engendering a Nation, 66/67. See also Caldwell, “Jack Cade and Shakespeare,” 61: “Shakespeare wrote no other play with so many on-stage severed heads, the symbolic force of which renders merely textual analyses inadequate: it is conceivable and highly probable that Shakespeare’s mixed audience would have interpreted such violence in a variety of ways.” Though Caldwell is certainly right in pointing out the impact of the historical context for the interpretation of the play, I would like to foreground the immorality the violence represents.

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and his followers. The arbitrariness of the mob’s loyalty, which makes them switch sides irrationally, is symbolic of the irrational conflict between the Houses of York and Lancaster, whose memory is clearly evoked by Cade’s aside “Was ever feather so lightly blown to and fro as this multitude?” (2Henry VI, 4.8.55/56)70 Although this constitutes the ending of the sub-plot, the structure of the play makes clear that the Cade rebellion merely foreshadows the atrocities to come: “The death of Cade brings no restoration of order, since the more dangerous threat of York remains; it is his act of rebellion that concludes the play’s exploration of lawlessness and sets the stage for the outright anarchy of Part III.”71 Thus, the very moment his reductio ad absurdum is destroyed, York returns: The Duke of York is newly come from Ireland, And with a puissant and a mighty power Of gallowglasses and stout kerns Is marching hitherward in proud array, And still proclaimeth, as he comes along, His arms are only to remove from thee The Duke of Somerset, whom he terms a traitor. (2Henry VI, 4.9.24–30)

Upon his return from Ireland, York discards his policy of deception in favour of open militarism. He casts off all caution and strategic thinking and confronts Henry openly for the first time at the end of the play: Then, York, unloose thy long-imprisoned thoughts And let thy tongue be equal with thy heart […]. ‘King’ did I call thee? No, thou art not king, Not fit to govern and rule multitudes, Which dar’st not, no, nor canst not rule a traitor. (2Henry VI, 5.1.88/89, 93–95)

70 As Bernthal has pointed out, there are certain comic elements in the Cade rebellion and a justification for their behaviour is not even attempted: “[Cade’s followers] put into question why they are following Cade at all. Are they just out for a good time and a little bloodshed? How are readers and audiences to know when to laugh with Cade and the rebels and when to laugh at them? The Cade Rebellion gives audience members no simple picture of the motivations or justifications for rebellion, but a chaotic and contradictory one, appropriate to the empirical messiness of revolution.” Bernthal, “Jack Cade’s Legal Carnival,” 260. The episodic nature of the Cade rebellion might lead one to question why Shakespeare included it in such a manner at all. Drouet gives the following explanation: “First, because that might be the only way to stage a massive insurrection whose violence and the drift towards extermination would have been hardly bearable otherwise; the absurdity of Cade’s thoughts and acts verges on comic relief and appears as necessary compensation. Second, as has been shown, because it serves as a foil to the much more serious plots and abuses of power taking place at the King’s court; the original threat is to be found in the rivalry and misgoverning of the upper sphere.” Drouet, “Popular Riot,” 15. 71 Berry, Patterns of Decay, 49.

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“Traitor” here refers to Somerset, but the predicate is clearly ironic, since it might as well refer to York himself. Moreover, York blames Henry that he cannot control the traitor Somerset, but this serves as a pretext for his own treacherous behaviour. The two factions now openly oppose each other and the conflict escalates to open battle. The fact that Cade’s war can indeed be seen as a foreshadowment of the ensuing civil war is strengthened by the fact that even the battles between the nobles equally resemble slaughter, rather than legitimate combat. They hunt each other down and show neither pity nor mercy like true realists: Strong realists might summarise their nonmoral stance toward war by saying that ethics and war do not mix. It is an oxymoron to talk about either starting or fighting wars ethically. Realists are nonmoralists. This does not mean that they are incapable of telling right from wrong. It is just that for them, it makes no logical sense to be concerned about ethics when nations are thinking about or are actually involved in war.72

For the characters of the first tetralogy, ethics and war definitely do not mix, but it is also true that they can tell right from wrong, which makes the cruelties they commit even more atrocious than Cade’s paradoxes. The noblemen harm each other intentionally according to the principle of ‘an eye for an eye,’ whose escalatory effects are pointedly brought to the fore through the following battle scenes.

3.1.3 Measure for Measure The first casualty is Old Clifford, who is killed by York. Grene points out that “there has been no suggestion in the combat between York and Old Clifford that it is an unequal fight of a younger man with an older man; quite the contrary, the symmetry of their contest makes them equal champions.”73 The more astonishing is the reaction Young Clifford shows towards his father’s death. From the important encounter between York and Old Clifford onwards, the characters of the plays follow the spiral of decay downwards, as David Riggs has pointed out: “[In 3Henry VI] there is only the ceaseless deterioration of aristocratic idealism into uncontrolled violence and brutality. Although its end cannot be foreseen, its source can be discovered in that original encounter between York and Old Clifford.”74 This encounter can thus be identified as the starting point of ‘an eye for an eye,’ for it is this principle which shapes Young Clifford’s reaction towards

72 Fotion, Coppieters and Apressyam, “Introduction,” 2. 73 Grene, Shakespeare’s Serial History Plays, 85. 74 David Riggs, Shakespeare’s Heroical Histories (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1971): 130.

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his father’s death, and he is the first one to express his decision to disregard all laws of war: Even at this sight My heart is turned to stone, and while ‘tis mine It shall be stony. York not our old men spares; No more will I their babes; tears virginal Shall be to me even as the dew to fire, And beauty, that the tyrant oft reclaims, Shall to my flaming wrath be oil and flax. Henceforth I will not have to do with pity. Meet I an infant of the house of York, Into as many gobbets will I cut it As wild Medea young Absyrtus did. In cruelty will I seek out my fame. (2Henry VI, 5.2.49–60)

At this moment, where Young Clifford “prepares himself psychologically to be the merciless killer whom the audience of 3Henry VI will see murder the child Rutland,” the civil war takes on the character of a bloody vendetta, in which “warhardened sons of murdered fathers will abandon whatever Geneva conventions previously obtained to indulge themselves in a violence without limits.”75 Clifford rationally decides to distinguish between war and ethics and to commit deliberate war crimes in order to avenge his father’s death. This is war conducted according to the realist stance with no consideration of morality – brutality is the only guiding principle: The battle of St. Albans marks the end of intrigue and conspiracy, and the outbreak of civil war. Now all enmities and ambitions are declared and all conflicts openly waged. The eruption of the impostume of disorder fails, however, to relieve the diseased state, even as the call to arms fails to resurrect England’s chivalric greatness. Where Talbot achieved a heroic apotheosis in defeat, Clifford, the Lancastrian champion, rages for destruction after St. Albans and swears to revenge his father’s death on York’s babes. The age of chivalry is dead, and the time will soon be at hand when political conflict descends to vendetta, when the murder of children will become commonplace, and severed heads will be casually tossed down as trophies of victory.76

75 Grene, Shakespeare’s Serial History Plays, 85. See also Goy-Blanquet’s comment: “Vengeance of the father, the logical counterpart of love of progeny, extends the blood obligation to include an archaic law of blood for blood. These two themes with their attendant motives – hatred, cupidity – supply the main dynamics of the action.” Dominique Goy-Blanquet, Shakespeare’s Early History Plays. From Chronicle to Stage (New York: OUP, 2003): 155. 76 Ornstein, A Kingdom for a Stage, 51. See also Berry’s comment: “2Henry VI ends appropriately, then, with the confusion of the battlefield, lawlessness achieving apotheosis in civil war. The battle of Saint Albans settles no issues, offers no resolution to the conflict that will pervade

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In the next play, “[t]he prey-thirsty menagerie and axe-wielding butchers who prowled through Part II continue their terror in Part III.”77 Many critics have remarked that 3Henry VI is characterised by chaos, but it is escalation that causes the disorder that dominates the play. The first confrontation makes clear immediately that debates about right or justice have become redundant: York’s announcement “[b]y words or blows here let us win our right” (3Henry VI, 1.1.37) indicates that might makes right and neither side is concerned with justice: “King Henry, be thy title right or wrong, | Lord Clifford vows to fight in thy defence.” (3Henry VI, 1.1.159/160) The realist argument could hardly be more pointed and any claims of right in the play are completely arbitrary, as Ornstein points out: “[Shakespeare] recognizes that neither side in the War of the Roses had a consistent or logical ideological stance. Altering their principles as circumstances required, they did not hesitate to adopt the enemy’s arguments.”78 The horrors of war conducted without restraint is most graphically dramatised at the beginning of scene 3: when Clifford confronts and kills York’s son Rutland, the violation of several principles of jus in bello is brought to the fore. Rutland presents no legitimate target for Clifford, since he is no combatant: on the one hand, he has fled from the battlefield, has deserted and could therefore only be taken captive as a prisoner of war, but he cannot be attacked legitimately according to the rules of war; on the other hand, the character is younger than the historical Rutland.79 He is an “innocent child,” (3Henry VI, 1.3.8) and asks Clifford to be “revenged on men,” (3Henry VI, 1.3.20 [my italics]), since he claims himself to be “too mean a subject” (19) and urges him to turn to his actual enemy, York, since “he is a man.” (24) Thus, Clifford’s violation of the principle of discrimination is emphasised, since he kills outside the battlefield and his target is illegitimate per se. Moreover, the injustice of conduct is further pointed out by Rutland’s tutor, who specifically requests Clifford not to “murder” (3Henry VI, 1.3.8) the child, thus making the terminological distinction between legitimate battle and criminal murder. The whole scene points to the way in which war escalates, when it is conducted through revenge:

Part III. New characters emerge – Richard, Edward, Clifford – a new generation that will push the violent propensities of its elders to glorious extremes.” Berry, Patterns of Decay, 50. 77 Carol McGinnis Kay, “Traps, Slaughter, and Chaos: A Study of Shakespeare’s Henry VI Plays,” Studies in the Literary Imagination 5.1 (1972): 1–49, 17. 78 Ornstein, Kingdom for a Stage, 53. 79 See 3Henry VI, 208, n1.3.

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Rutland Clifford Rutland

Clifford

I never did thee harm; why wilt thou slay me? Thy father hath. But ’twas ere I was born. […] Ah, let me live in prison all my days, And when I give occasion of offence Then let me die, for now thou hast no cause. No cause? Thy father slew my father, therefore die. (3Henry VI, 1.3.38–46)

Clifford’s echo “No cause?” draws attention to the absence of a just cause and his guilt is emphasised through Rutland’s unconditional surrender, which does not suffice to stir pity in the character: “In vain thou speak’st, poor boy; my father’s blood | Hath stopped the passage where thy words should enter.” (3Henry VI, 1.3.21/22) Both Richmond and Berry see implicit pity in Clifford’s address “poor boy.” Richmond believes that “Clifford stifles his pity for this ‘poor boy’ […], because of his pathological hatred of the family that killed his father; yet, when Clifford says ‘I live in hell’ […], one feels the force of self-judgement.”80 Berry, on the other hand, emphasises the more important point: The startling jolt of sympathy in the phrase “poor boy” and the evasion of personal responsibility for his deafness are telling reminders of an idealism permanently crippled on the field at Saint Albans. For Clifford, filial love ultimately reduces all of life to a terrible geometric simplicity.81

Even if Clifford’s address is supposed to imply stifled compassion for Rutland, it is stifled nevertheless. There are two underlying aspects to be found here: one is that there is a general lack of the distinction between jus ad bellum and jus in bello and the other is that Clifford kills under the pretext of necessity out of sheer malice, which is not directed at the appropriate target. Overall, Clifford’s act constitutes the murder of an innocent, underage non-combatant who surrenders, which demonstrates that this character considers war to be an amoral condition.

80 Richmond, Shakespeare’s Political Plays, 64. Richmond here also refers to Clifford’s following speech: “Had I thy brethren here, their lives and thine | Were not revenge sufficient for me. | No, if I digged up thy forefather’s graves | And hung their rotten coffins up in chains, | It could not slake mine ire nor ease my heart. | The sight of any of the house of York | Is as a Fury to torment my soul: | And till I root out their accursed line | And leave not one alive, I live in hell.” (3Henry VI, 1.3.25–33) Clifford might acknowledge the atrocious universe he lives in and contributes to, as if paraphrasing the ‘war is hell’-doctrine, but he is nevertheless determined to eliminate an entire family, whether guilty or not. 81 Berry, Patterns of Decay, 60.

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Parallel to his son’s death, York’s end constitutes a similar war crime. Like his son, he is denied prisoner-of-war status and is physically and emotionally abused by Queen Margaret and her followers. York faces his enemy alone and announces even before they appear on stage that he regards his situation as hopeless: Ah, hark, the fatal followers do pursue, And I am faint and cannot fly their fury; And were I strong, I would not shun their fury. The sands are numbered that makes up my life: Here must I stay, and here my life must end. (3Henry VI, 1.4.22–26)

Again, mercy is denied the captive in question; the only difference is that York is tortured before his death by this group of people turned savage: Even the rhetoric of the scene, alternating as it does between aphorism and primal shout, suggests the impotence of civilized norms in the face of an ineluctable barbarity. Both hunter and hunted seem grimly aware of their own decline into primitivism, often spouting the familiar metaphors of capture and escape – fused now with references to animalism – in order to convey either triumphs or their frustrations.82

The principle of ‘an eye for an eye’ thus drives people to the extremes of immorality – mercy cannot be granted, for every deed must be more ruthless than its predecessor, so that York, according to Clifford, may only be granted “such mercy as his ruthless arm | With downright payment showed unto my father.” (3Henry VI, 1.4.31/32) Thus, once York is beaten and taken captive, they torture him psychologically and it is not only the particular imagery that is suggestive of animals and their prey.83 Moreover, it is the dynamics of the scene, which has Clifford, Northumberland and Queen Margaret surround their prey and play with it. The most disturbing element of the scene is Margaret, who is the leader of the pack and abuses not only York, but also his dead son’s body in front of his eyes: Look, York, I stained this napkin with the blood That valiant Clifford with his rapier’s point Made issue from the bosom of the boy; And if thine eyes can water for his death, I give thee this to dry thy cheeks withal. (3Henry VI, 1.4.79–83)

82 Joseph Candido, “Getting Loose in the Henry VI Plays,” Shakespeare Quarterly 35.4 (1984): 392–406, 402. 83 See 3Henry VI, 1.4.61/62: “Ay, ay, so strives the woodcock in the gin”; “So doth the cony struggle in the net.”

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As Ornstein points out, we “shudder more at the sadistic deliberateness of Margaret’s taunting of York than at the sudden fury of Clifford’s murder of Rutland.”84 The Lancastrians here take the violation of the laws of war even further than Clifford did, since their intentional torture defies all sense of humanity and, in Margaret’s case, femininity. By “forgetting her proper gender role,”85 Margaret is turned into the key figure of violence and unnaturalness, brought to attention by York’s reproach: How couldst thou drain the lifeblood of the child To bid the father wipe his tears withal, And yet be seen to bear a woman’s face? Women are soft, mild, pitiful and flexible; Thou stern, obdurate, flinty, rough, remorseless. (3Henry VI, 1.4.138–142)

Margaret’s wolfish cruelty is even more pointedly emphasised by the fact that Northumberland is moved to tears at the sight of the entrapped and abused York. His presence “as a weeping spectator of Margaret’s atrocities invites the audience to recognize the extent of her violation of proper femininity […],”86 but, more importantly, also her violation of proper humanity. In the true manner of retribution, the characters of the play perform “their brutal deeds, so that crime is answered with crime, murder with murder […].”87 Thus, real sympathy with York is denied – among the general display of immorality, it is impossible for the audience to side with anyone.88

84 Ornstein, A Kingdom for a Stage, 55. See also Emrys Jones’s comment: “We have just seen Clifford butchering York’s child, so we know what mercy his father can expect. But Clifford is a butcher, not a sadist; left to himself he would have stabbed York to death without delay. It is Margaret who decides to lengthen out the business to a ritual of torment […].” Jones, Origins of Shakespeare, 184. 85 Howard and Rackin, Engendering a Nation, 96. 86 Howard and Rackin, Engendering a Nation, 95. 87 Ornstein, A Kingdom for a Stage, 55. 88 Although Margaret’s crowning of York with a paper crown clearly evokes the association with Jesus Christ, the analogy is also ironic, for York’s life “has been evil to the highest degree, and every clashing analogy to the death of Christ drives home that fact.” Richmond, Shakespeare’s Political Plays, 61. While I agree with Richmond about the irony evoked by Shakespeare’s dramatic means, I do not see this scene as the just retribution for all of York’s sins. Richmond claims that “[f]ar from being an innocently suffering Christ, York is a brutally ambitious man who is now meeting his just deserts for having broken his oath to King Henry. […] Margaret is consciously the agent of just retribution visited upon a man who has broken a twice-taken oath […].” (61) Richmond is surely right that York is a “brutally ambitious man,” so much so that one cannot feel authentic compassion for him at this point, but I do not agree with the providential aspect Richmond asserts to this scene. However, York is right when he claims before his death that

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This war is conducted according to the rules of vendettas and thus the depiction necessarily borrows from the customary dramatisation of the revenge tragedy, where “vengeance seems a form of savage, but appropriate repayment.”89 The fusion of two different realms here adds effect, as Berry points out: In his treatment of Clifford and Margaret and the play’s other avengers, Shakespeare depends upon the standard formulas of the revenge play; in placing these conventions in the framework of civil war and the historical process out of which it emerges, however, he shapes them to new and dramatically compelling ends.90

The original conflict is forgotten as all characters get caught up in this endless spiral of violence. They have no other aim than purposeless cruelty and “show a sadistic inhumanity of purpose which has nothing to do with the strong-minded direction of war.”91 The ambivalent antagonism leaves no real possibility then for the audience to identify with either side: “This is war as it has become, with the accumulated burden of past injuries bearing down on the personal vindictiveness of those involved. Causes, principles, right, honour are all equally obsolete.”92 Therefore, York’s death brings no resolution, which becomes obvious when both parties confront each other again: the insults issued here make it impossible to distinguish between right and wrong. “[B]utcher,” (2.2.95), “child-killer,” (112)

“even my foes will shed fast-falling tears | And say, ‘Alas, it was a piteous deed!’” (3Henry VI, 1.4.162/163) At least, this is true for his friends, as the message delivered to Edward and Richard makes clear: “By many hands your father was subdued, | But only slaughtered by the ireful arm | Of unrelenting Clifford and the Queen, | Who crowned the gracious Duke in high despite, | Laughed in his face, and when with grief he wept, | The ruthless Queen gave him to dry his cheeks | A napkin steeped in the harmless blood | Of sweet young Rutland, by rough Clifford slain. | And after many scorns, many foul taunts, | They took his head and on the gates of York | They set the same, and there it doth remain, | The saddest spectacle that e’er I viewed.” (3Henry VI, 2.1.56–67) The moral judgement that is passed on this conduct is obviously indicated by expressions like “slaughtered,” “unrelenting,” “ruthless,” “foul taunts,” “saddest spectacle,” etc. 89 Katherine Eisaman Maus, “Introduction” in Four Revenge Tragedies (Oxford: OUP, 2008): x. 90 Berry, Patterns of Decay, 60. See also Riggs: “In so far as the play that results is one where dukes, princes, and kings are slaughtered without regard to their high political status, it is apparent that the logic of the revenge play is being used as a kind of general metaphor for civil war […].” Shakespeare’s Heroical Histories, 135. 91 Winny, The Player King, 33. See also Riggs, Shakespeare’s Historical Histories, 130: “[T]he battle of St. Albans is transformed, ex post facto, from the open, chivalric test enacted by York and Old Clifford into a personal tragedy involving the violations of family pieties. Indeed, the political origins of this conflict – the deposition and murder of Richard II, the weakness of the Lancastrian title, the attainder of York’s father for treason – are scarcely mentioned after the brief debate in the opening scene that is defiantly sidetracked by the three aggrieved sons.” 92 Grene, Shakespeare’s Serial History Plays, 88.

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and “executioner” (123) are among the reproaches, which are all indicative of the immorality on both sides. Amidst the confusion, Warwick tries to re-evoke a moral objective for the Yorkist cause: “York in justice puts his armour on.” (3Henry VI, 2.2.130)93 However, the flimsiness of this justification is immediately identified by Prince Edward: If that be right which Warwick says is right, There is no wrong but everything is right. (3Henry VI, 2.2.131/132)

The implication here that the Yorkists are applying moral relativism in order to justify their actions is clearly ironic, since the Lancastrians’ behaviour is equally immoral. As Goy-Blanquet points out, “justice has deserted the stage, though ironically both sides constantly appeal to it.”94 It is impossible to determine who is in the right, since the pattern of human degeneration has reached its peak as all characters are caught up in the irrational vicious circle of violence.95 Therefore, the following battle scenes are reminiscent of previous ones in deliberately repetitive structure: Richard

Clifford

Now, Clifford, I have singled thee alone. Suppose this arm is for the Duke of York, And this for Rutland, both bound to revenge, Wert thou environed with a brazen wall. Now, Richard, I am with thee here alone. This is the hand that stabbed thy father York, And this the hand that slew thy brother Rutland, And here’s the heart that triumphs in their death And cheers these hands that slew thy sire and brother To execute the like upon thyself. (3Henry VI, 2.4.1–10)96

93 Already in scene 2.1, Warwick had described the lack of morale among his troops, who could not be persuaded to fight for the Yorkists any longer due to the lack of a just cause: “I cheered them up with justice of our cause, | With promise of high pay and great rewards; | But all in vain, they had no heart to fight […].” (3Henry VI, 2.1.132–134) See also chapter 4.2.3. 94 Goy-Blanquet, Shakespeare’s Early History Plays, 159. 95 See McGinnis Kay, “Traps, Slaughter and Chaos,” 25: “As Part III unfolds, the whole mayhem is revealed: slaughter and butchery images continue unchanged in cruelty, while sea images reach their peak in stormy violence, length, and frequency, and destruction becomes universal. As the imagery moves from rational to animal to cosmic, a pattern of human degradation emerges.” 96 The perpetual manner of everyone involved is most striking in Richard’s lines concluding the same scene, which are an almost verbal rendition of York’s at the end of part 2 of the tetralogy: “Nay, Warwick, single out some other chase, | For I myself will hunt this wolf to death.” (3Henry VI, 2.4.11/12) Compare this with York’s lines in the earlier play: “Hold, Warwick, seek thee out some other chase, | For I myself must hunt this deer to death.” (2Henry VI, 5.2.14/15)

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This pattern of human degradation is characterised by the principle of “an eye for an eye,” or, in Warwick’s terms: “Measure for measure must be answered […],” (3Henry VI, 2.6.55)97 but despite the inevitability of escalation, there is an awareness of the principle’s fatality acknowledged by one of its most determined executors. Finding himself in a hopeless situation of defeat, Young Clifford affirms what he knows he deserves: “The foe is merciless and will not pity, | For at their hands I have deserved no pity.” (3Henry VI, 2.6.25/26) Clifford’s prognosis is right and his death constitutes a parallel to the ritual killing of York, as Goy-Blanquet has pointed out: [T]he crimes find their exact counterparts in acts of retaliation, reprisals, or the turns of fortune. These symmetries, of structural rather than providential design, organize the tragic disorder into a dance of death. The avenging heroes strike their victims in high rhetorical style, chanting obsessive litanies. The pattern of York’s death, stabbed by Clifford and Margaret, is taken up in successive ritual killings.98

Thus, the Yorkists equally mock the dying Clifford and the attention is drawn to the eternal pattern of retribution (“Thou pitied’st Rutland; I will pity thee.” 3Henry VI, 2.6.74), which culminates in the murder of yet another son. The two families thus slaughter each other in their perpetual pursuit, failing to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate targets. The immorality of their conduct is eventually expressed by Queen Margaret at the death of Prince Edward: O traitors, murderers! They that stabbed Caesar shed no blood at all, Did not offend, nor were not worthy blame, If this foul deed were by to equal it. He was a man; this, in respect, a child, And men ne’er spend their fury on a child. What’s worse than murderer, that I may name it? No, no, my heart will burst an if I speak – And I will speak, that so my heart may burst. Butchers and villains! Bloody cannibals! (3Henry VI, 5.5.52–61)

97 Prima facie the phrase may indicate that there is some ruling principle at hand, for measure implies a certain limit, but in just war theory this principle is seen as the first step towards escalation. This is due to the fact that the principle as such actually legitimises retribution and the disregard of the laws of war, if only the other side initiate it. As soon as one of the opponents commits a war crime, for instance, the other may regard themselves as justified in doing the same, which will necessarily lead to an escalation of events. The flawed logic of the principle measure for measure is pointed out at length in Shakespeare’s play of the same name. See chapter 4.2. 98 Goy-Blanquet, Shakespeare’s Early History Plays, 187.

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Regardless of the fact that Margaret is one of the key forces of escalation,99 her speech captures the hell they have brought upon themselves. Through the juxtaposition of the murder of Caesar and the murder of her child, she brings the principle of discrimination to the fore again; so much so that the judgement “murderer” proves insufficient and is substituted by butcher and cannibal. Ironically, the question of succession has become subordinate as these families kill the next generation and tragically, these horrors are also inflicted upon the innocent. R. A. Foakes has pointed out that the plays “expose the horrors of civil war, and make drama out of the self-interest of the nobles whose professions of loyalty barely mask their real concern, which is for their own selfish advantage.”100 As a direct consequence innocent families are coerced into murdering each other, which is presented as symbolic of the nature of civil war. Due to the intention to equal measure with measure, the nature of the war becomes perpetual, cyclical and prone to escalation, which directly corresponds with the realist principle. This pattern of escalation is emphasised by King Henry’s speech at the beginning of the crucial scene 2.5: This battle fares like to the morning’s war, When dying clouds contend with growing light, What time the shepherd, blowing of his nails, Can neither call it perfect day nor night. Now sways it this way, like a mighty sea Forced by the tide to combat with the wind. Now sways it that way, like the selfsame sea Forced to retire by the fury of the wind. Sometime the flood prevails, and then the wind; Now one the better, then another best, Both tugging to be victors, breast to breast, Yet neither conqueror nor conquered: So is the equal poise of this fell war. (3Henry VI, 2.5.1–13)

The graphic imagery of natural forces opposing each other, none superior or stronger, forms the epitome of the injustice of this war. As McGinnis Kay has pointed out at length, storm imagery is a dominant theme in the third part of

99 See Howard and Rackin’s comment: “There is, of course, irony in the fact that the Margaret who taunted York with his young son Rutland’s blood should be outraged at her son’s murder. But what is perhaps more significant is that the tigerish queen is here so completely disempowered and so firmly repositioned in a feminine subject position.” Howard and Rackin, Engendering a Nation, 98. 100 Foakes, Shakespeare and Violence, 50.

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Henry VI,101 but Henry’s speech here specifically addresses the uncontrollability that results from two realist forces at war with each other. The analogy represents the two houses that try to overcome each other, surpassing each other in violent deeds, uncontrollable by man and neither of them justified. Most importantly, due to the perpetual motion as described in Henry’s image, it is pointed out that neither side seems to be able to win. “Now one the better, then another best,” in eternal motion, this war might go on forever. Secondly, Henry expresses no wish for either side to win: what counts is that the war ceases, not who wins, as he explicitly points out a few lines further down: “Whither one rose, and let the other flourish,” (3Henry VI, 2.5.101) expresses no partiality for either side. As Nicholas Grene points out, Henry sees this war “from the outside as if it were a mere natural force of waves and wind completely beyond anyone’s control. So far from willing on his troops to win, he can only neutrally and piously pray […].”102 Thus, the injustice of this war is once again evident, for a war where neither side is able to win can never be regarded as a just war. As Leggatt points out, “the rest of the scene compels us to agree [with Henry] that an end to the carnage – any end – is more important than victory for one side or the other.”103 Henry thus tells us that the realist ‘might makes right’-doctrine is not even useful anymore, since the armies seem to have equal powers. As much as they are indistinguishable concerning the justice of their cause, it is now impossible to tell whether either is capable of winning the war, because they are pitted against each other in an eternal stalemate. This, however, has tragic consequences for all those involved. This is revealed in the following scene, which brings two fathers and two sons on stage, who have unawares killed their father and their son respectively. First of all, the reciprocal slaughter of family members as in this case of the anonymous fathers and sons draws on the underlying principle of family and family virtues, which is an important theme of especially the third part of the sequence: In centering 3Henry VI on the concept of family, then, Shakespeare adapts a traditional conception of social structure to the theme of social devolution begun in Part I: chivalric community gives way to the narrower bonds of law, law to kinship, and kinship […] to self-love.104

101 McGinnis Kay, “Traps, Slaughter and Chaos,” 18ff. 102 Grene, Shakespeare’s Serial History Plays, 88. That divine providence has nothing to do with the outcome of this war has been elaborately proven by Kelly in defiance of Tillyard. See Henry Ansgar Kelly, Divine Providence in the England of Shakespeare’s Histories (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1970): esp. 262–276. 103 Leggatt, Shakespeare’s Political Drama, 25. 104 Berry, Patterns of Decay, 59.

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Self-love in the case of these plays leads to utter destruction of both the family and the state. The macrocosmic catastrophe of a state at war with itself is mirrored by the microcosmic tragedy of families turning against their own kin. At the same time, both spheres are causally linked, as “all of [the] important characters have, in effect, a double role. Each is conceived both as a member of an aggrieved family and as a participant in a political struggle […].”105 The war takes place on two different scales and the duality of the characters is reflected in the duality of the next scene, which “directs attention to the thematic significance of the family relationships of the main characters”106: Son

It is my father’s face, Whom in this conflict I unawares have killed. O heavy times, begetting such events! From London by the King was I pressed forth. My father, being the Earl of Warwick’s man, Came on the part of York, pressed by his master. (3Henry VI, 2.5.61–66)

Thus, the unnatural division of the state is embodied by the unnatural division of this family and in Emrys Jones’s words, we are “required to look and think, meditate, on this ultimate collapse of civil society.”107 The crucial point here is the coercion that has inflicted the dilemma on these soldiers: this is a situation where the “peculiar horror of war” comes to the fore as analysed by Michael Walzer. This is a kind of war, which is “a social practice in which force is used by and against men as loyal or constrained members of states and not as individuals who choose their own enterprises and activities.”108 Due to the unnatural division of the state, an unnatural coercion is executed that leads to this particular tragedy, which is metonymic for the civil war. The dichotomy of consent and coercion is indicative of the level of horror in a particular war and not only did these soldiers not consent to their service in this war, the coercion is such that they have to fight not a distinct enemy but their own family:

105 Riggs, Shakespeare’s Heroical Histories, 131. 106 Robert B. Pierce, Shakespeare’s History Plays. The Family and the State (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1971): 70. 107 Jones, Origins of Shakespeare, 188. 108 Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 30.

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What is important […] is the extent to which war (as a profession) or combat (at this or that moment in time) is a personal choice that the soldier makes on his own and for essentially private reasons. That kind of choosing effectively disappears as soon as fighting becomes a legal obligation and a patriotic duty.109

Walzer’s emphasis on a soldier’s private reasons is all the more significant, because Shakespeare’s soldiers here fight for the nobles’ private reasons which are diametrically opposed to their own concerns, so that patriotic duty is perverted.110 Alexander Leggatt confirms the significance of the scene due to its allegory: In a play not generally allegorical, the decision to use allegory makes a point of its own […]. We may think back to another set piece of fathers and sons, Talbot and John; it would be possible to use the same actors. There, two characters fulfilled a destiny they had chosen for themselves; here, four are crushed by a destiny imposed by others.111

The anonymous father and son, who grieve the death of their family members and their own part in it, did not choose to participate in this war; a war which was unjust to begin with and whose conduct has reached a level of unbearable injustice, so that the characters once again distinguish between “killing” and “murdering”: O pity, God, this miserable age! What stratagems, how fell, how butcherly, Erroneous, mutinous and unnatural, This deadly quarrel daily doth beget! […] I’ll bear thee hence, and let them fight that will, For I have murdered where I should not kill. (3Henry VI, 2.5.88–91; 121/122)

With these lines, two important aspects of just war theory are expressed: the soldier argues that the war has become so unjust that his service in it is also un-

109 Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 28. 110 As Barker points out, the speech quoted above also “rehearses those arguments in the contemporary military theory about the virtues of a standing army and the inadequacies of earlier feudal arrangements.” Barker, War and Nation, 124. However, the moral judgement that is passed on the conduct of this war as such is clearly the more prevalent one. 111 Leggatt, Shakespeare’s Political Drama, 21. As McGinnis-Kay points out, however, the allegory works not only in reminiscence of Talbot and his son: “All the fathers and sons of the trilogy who soar together and then fall (for example, Talbot and John, Henry and Edward, York and Rutland, Old Clifford and Young Clifford, Salisbury and Warwick, the Master Gunner of Orleans and his son, etc.) are symbolically present in these unnamed fathers and sons. Sacrificial victims of war’s senseless butchery, these unidentified figures reflect the nature of these dynastic wars which are in essence nothing but family quarrels grown to monstrous proportions.” McGinnisKay, “Traps, Slaughter and Chaos,” 20.

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just, thus rendering the otherwise legitimate killing of an enemy soldier criminal murder. Secondly, the logical distinction between jus ad bellum and jus in bello is emphasised: this soldier regards his killings as murder and feels a responsibility for them that the rules of war would normally free him of. The war has become so “butcherly, erroneous, mutinous and unnatural” that even a just cause would be rendered illegitimate by the injustice of battle. As Grene points out, the “momentum that has built up from St Albans to Towton is of an ever-growing inwardness of violence beyond the control of the helpless and hopeless people involved.”112 Although Emrys Jones defined this part of 2.5 as an “anti-climax”113 due to its artificiality in contrast to the preceding speech by Henry, it has to be said that the scene certainly constitutes the high-point in the gradual development of the atrocities of civil war and represents a first peak of the discourse of just war theory. Implicitly, distinctions are made between just and unjust wars, just and unjust conduct, the responsibilities of the aggressor and the soldier and therefore between jus ad bellum and jus in bello, which are here causally intertwined. This civil war, which is a direct result of the opposition between pacifism and military realism, thus incorporates in its depiction an early version of the just war discourse, which arises simultaneously to the insight that realist warfare can only lead to the most brutal destruction.

3.1.4 Richard Crookback Howard and Rackin have stated that “[t]he only figure in the play to rival Margaret as a figure of the monstrous is Richard, Duke of Gloucester. It is as if in this play the failure of patriarchy produces two sorts of anomalies: the Amazonian woman and the deformed Machiavellian man.”114 Until York’s death, the most astonishing aspect of the play amidst all the cruelty is the strong bond between him and

112 Grene, Shakespeare’s Serial History Plays, 89. The scene is important from another perspective too: “[H]ere, as nowhere else in the series, Shakespeare imagines ordinary men innocently entangled in the wars.” (Ibid.) Indeed, this scene is an early consideration of the plight of the common soldier, which will recur in more mature discussion in the later plays, most prominently obviously in Henry V (see chapters 4.1.4 and 4.2.3). For the aspect this scene bears considering the formula of revenge tragedy, see Riggs: “The tragic perception of the Son and Father depends, of course, upon the unique irony of their situation. Had father met father, the episode might have become a simple restatement of the main plot, in which the sons find their revenges by destroying one another.” Riggs, Shakespeare’s Heroical Histories, 132. 113 Jones, Origins of Shakespeare, 188. 114 Howard and Rackin, Engendering a Nation, 96.

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his sons.115 His death, however, forms a breach in these family relations, which leads to a breach between the brothers and a total disruption of family bonds in general, congruent with Richard’s development into the true villain of this play. Richard’s reaction to the news of his father’s death is a crucial turning-point in his representation. While Edward is overwhelmed by grief, Richard refuses to mourn his father, which is inextricably linked to the unscrupulousness associated with the character from hereon: I cannot weep, for all my body’s moisture Scarce serves to quench my furnace-burning heart […]. Tears then for babes; blows and revenge for me. Richard, I bear thy name, I’ll venge thy death Or die renowned by attempting it. (3Henry VI, 2.1.79/80; 86–88)

Richard thus subscribes himself to the realist cause like Clifford and emerges as the embodiment of ruthless warfare out of the general destruction; or, as Rackin puts it, “a Machiavellian figure erupts from this maelstrom of history turned savage […].”116 Richard is therefore a true descendant of his father, but the monstrosity of the character is even further elaborated in this and the following play: And I […] Torment myself to catch the English crown: And from that torment will free myself, Or hew my way out with a bloody axe. Why, I can smile, and murder whiles I smile, And cry ‘Content!’ to that which grieves my heart, And wet my cheeks with artificial tears, And frame my face to all occasions. I’ll drown more sailors than the mermaid shall, I’ll slay more gazers than the basilisk, I’ll play the orator as well as Nestor, Deceive more slyly than Ulysses could, And, like a Sinon, take another Troy. (3Henry VI, 3.2.174, 179–190)

This soliloquy bears obvious parallels to York’s, but it shows that Richard is even more devious. While York appeals to madness and irrationality, Richard rationally decides to ignore all sense of humanity. He announces his policy of deception

115 The strength of the family bonds between York and his sons is just as much emphasised as, for instance, Margaret’s connection to her son or Clifford’s bond to his father. For a full analysis of such family relations in the play see Berry, Patterns of Decay, 53–74. 116 Phyllis Rackin, Stages of History. Shakespeare’s English Chronicles (London: Routledge, 1990): 63.

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and treachery, but he makes no analogies to bestiality, which makes the speech more chilling and the character more dangerous, for Richard’s emphasis lies on human features: to be able to smile, to grieve at heart, to cry tears (whether artificial or real) and complex facial expressions are all human abilities that set man apart from animal, thus foregrounding the danger that Richard embodies. He sets out to rid himself of human emotion, but maintains human rationality in order to destroy his fellow human beings: Rising from the collapse of the patriarchal world around him, claiming to outdo the murderous foreigner, Machiavelli, in evil […], Richard stands alone. In the world of this play, with its emphasis on the tragedy of shattered social bonds, such a figure can be seen only as evil, alien, and unnatural.117

The character is born from the midst of cruelty, rising to the peak of immorality in the succeeding play and it is not so much the depiction of a psychological development taking place in Richard’s mind than the gradual creation of a villain, whose function it is to embody the moral decay resulting from realism: The stages of Richard’s “development,” like those of other characters […] are defined with less attention to the inner workings of individual psychology than to the general vision of social and historical process that unifies the tetralogy.118

The further Richard’s development progresses, the clearer it becomes that it is impossible for him to stay human – he identifies himself more and more with an animal, which is intertwined with his deformity, and distinguishes and isolates himself from his fellow human beings: ‘O Jesus bless us, he is born with teeth!’ And so I was, which plainly signified That I should snarl, and bite and play the dog. Then, since the heavens have shaped my body so, Let hell make crook’d my mind to answer it. I have no brother; I am like no brother. And this word ‘love’, which greybeards call divine, Be resident in men like one another And not in me: I am myself alone. (3Henry VI, 5.6.75–83)

Richard grounds his evilness in his deformity, so that it is presented as “the outward sign of his unnatural nature as much as it is presented as its cause”119 and he 117 Howard and Rackin, Engendering a Nation, 97. 118 Berry, Patterns of Decay, 69. 119 Howard and Rackin, Engendering a Nation, 97.

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concludes that his unnatural outward appearance can only result in unnatural, i.e. immoral behaviour; he “explains his ‘monstrosity’ as a sign of his irredeemability […].”120 Thus, he embodies the social dysfunction that dominates the play: “Part III of Henry VI […] depicts the gradual dissolution of a society at war with itself, a society in which the single bond of kinship, isolated from the higher values that must sustain it, becomes increasingly corrupted and is finally destroyed.”121 The soliloquy demonstrates that the character expects to be unable to feel love, compassion and pity, which is a clear juxtaposition with the Christian virtues embodied by Henry and “in repudiating all love, he cuts himself off from the wider network of values symbolized earlier.”122 Thus, the turning-point from morality to evil is reached, which is symbolically manifested when Richard murders Henry and realism wins over pacifism. The play depicting Richard’s reign of tyranny follows as the culmination of this development. Already in the opening soliloquy of the play, Richard evokes the audience’s reminiscence of his identity as a person of war and a representative of realism: Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths, Our bruised arms hung up for monuments, Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings, Our dreadful marches to delightful measures. Grim-visaged War hath smoothed his wrinkled front; And now, instead of mounting barbed steeds To fright the souls of fearful adversaries, He capers nimbly in a lady’s chamber To the lascivious pleasing of a lute. (Richard III, 1.1.5–13)123

By means of parallelism and alliteration peace and war are juxtaposed in a manner that war seems superior and peace inadequate. “Stern alarums” are indicated as having more significance and severity than “merry meetings,” “[d]read-

120 Mark Thornton Burnett, Constructing ‘Monsters’ in Shakespearean Drama and Early Modern Culture (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002): 66. For an analysis of Richard’s ‘monstrosity’ as political allegory also see Linda Charnes, Notorious Identity. Materializing the Subject in Shakespeare (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1993): 20–69; and Michael Torrey, “‘The Plain Devil and Dissembling Looks’: Ambivalent Physiognomy and Shakespeare’s Richard III,” English Literary Renaissance 30.2. (2000): 123–153. 121 Berry, Patterns of Decay, 73. 122 Berry, Patterns of Decay, 72. 123 All quotations from Richard III are from the following edition and will be given parenthetically: William Shakespeare, King Richard III, ed. James R. Siemon. The Arden Shakespeare Third Series (London: Thomson Learning, 2009).

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ful marches” seem to be preferable to “delightful measures,” so that peace seems frivolous and contemptible. Richard personifies war as “grim-visaged” and with a wrinkled front, his only ally as an inhuman entity and as the only realm in which he can function. He needs “barbed steeds” and “fearful adversaries,” since these aspects define his warlike identity and his speech turns frivolous peace into the enemy. As Howard and Rackin point out, Richard is “[c]haracterized throughout in terms of warlike masculinity,”124 so much so that he identifies himself with war. Richard is war, since his character emerges out of the apocalyptic universe of the Henry VI plays.125 Traditionally, Richard III is seen as “conventionally Machiavellian,”126 and at the beginning of the play, Richard is just as much a Machiavel as his father; in Phyllis Rackin’s words, he is “the apotheosis of the Machiavellian forces in the first tetralogy […].”127 His particular strategy relies on an outward display of Christian virtues and the dramatic irony of his actions and statements constantly evokes the image of Henry VI. Thus, the former king is post mortem mocked and ridiculed, but at the same time the dichotomy between Henry’s piety and Richard’s brutality, Henry’s pacifism and Richard’s realism is brought to the fore, when Richard employs his hypocritical piety in order to pursue his way to the throne.128 The character already draws on his affinity to hell in the previous play

124 Howard and Rackin, Engendering a Nation, 109. 125 It has been pointed out that Shakespeare’s dramatisation in the York tetralogy is intended to demonstrate the process of historical causation, as, for instance, by Phyllis Rackin: “Insofar as events are explained in the Henry VI plays, they are explained in the Machiavellian terms of politic history; but the episodic plots, the large casts of characters, and the rapid whirl of events all work to frustrate any attempt by the audience to discover a clear principle of causality. In Richard III, by contrast, Shakespeare constructs a Marlovian tragedy centered on the rise and fall of a single, strong character; here the principle of historical causation is clearly providential. In this play, as in the three parts of Henry VI, the king’s vision of historical causation is subjected to a powerful dramatic irony, but this time, the king is a Machiavel, and it is providence that asserts its power in the end. Pious and well-intentioned, Henry VI is confronted by a world ruled by Machiavellian Realpolitik. Ruthlessly clever, Richard III is subjected to the power of providential justice.” Rackin, Stages of History, 27/28. I would argue, however, that the character of Richard III is not so much a product of historical causality than moral causality and the speed and intensity with which his moral decay progresses results necessarily in the climax of his inevitable downfall. 126 John Roe, Shakespeare and Machiavelli. Studies in Renaissance Literature (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2002): 28. 127 Rackin, Stages of History, 73. 128 He woos Anne by appealing to her sense of “charity,” hypocritically asks God to forgive those who have spun the intrigue around Clarence and surrounds himself with priests. See Richard III, 1.2; 1.3; 3.7. In the same attempt, Richard displays a cunning strategy of upholding not

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and now both approaches are incorporated into one. This is not to say that this character is supposed to be the perfect Machiavellian prince, as Conny Loder points out: Though Machiavelli requests a ruler to be consciously aware of the binary good-bad opposition – an awareness that Richard proves to have, although he never feels genuine remorse – Richard’s commitment to do evil has little in common with Machiavelli’s virtù. The character Richard is a distortion of Machiavelli’s doctrine, which presents the Machiavel as someone who is committed to evil out of mere selfishness.129

Richard maintains the Machiavellian strategy only as long as he deems it necessary and then moves “beyond ‘humanity’” in Loder’s terms.130 This turning-point can be identified after his coronation, when Richard openly orders Buckingham to kill the two young princes, the legitimate successors to the throne: “Shall I be plain? I wish the bastards dead […].” (Richard III, 4.2.18) The line is indicative of the decline of deception as well as of his eventual demise, because Richard initiates his own downfall by making the mistake of denying other people’s humanity, which isolates him to an extent that makes his downfall inevitable. He returns to the “generational chaos of Henry VI, Part III from which he originally emerged,”131

only Christian virtues, but any form of moral norm. For an analysis of Richard’s seeming regard and inner hatred of the form of law see William C. Carroll, “‘The Form of Law’: Ritual and Succession in Richard III” in True Rites and Maimed Rites. Ritual and Anti-Ritual in Shakespeare and His Age, eds. Linda Woodbridge and Edward Berry (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1992): 203–219. 129 Loder goes on saying: “The image of excessive murder and treachery, coupled with selfish ambition, stems little from the perception of the original but much from the distortion. Richard commits his crimes not for the sake of the welfare of his people, but only for his own sake, which again removes him from the original doctrine, since Machiavelli claims prosperity of the commonwealth to be a principal aim of a prince.” Conny Loder, “Shakespeare’s King Richard III: The Perverted Machiavel” in “Divining Thoughts”: Future Directions in Shakespeare Studies, eds. Michael P. Jones, Lizz Ketterer and Joshua McEvillia (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007): 69–76, 73. 130 Loder, “Shakespeare’s King Richard III,” 72. Loder further wraps up the discussion on the question of whether Richard is an embodiment of the vice figure in the tradition of the morality plays: “The question of vice versus Machiavel is discussed by critics under the point of Richard’s evil disposition. The vice defenders claim that Richard has no obvious cause for his evil disposition. As far as they are concerned, Richard’s thinking is binary – while being good seems impossible, being bad seems to be the only alternative – and so he informs the audience in his first soliloquy […].” (70) For an analysis of Richard III from this particular perspective see Bernard Spivack, Shakespeare and the Allegory of Evil. The History of a Metaphor in Relation to His Major Villains (New York: Columbia University Press, 1958): 386–407. 131 Burnett, Constructing Monsters, 87.

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but he is the only one left who embodies the realism of the earlier plays.132 After this crucial turning-point, Richard lives out his rule of tyranny without inhibitions or moral cover: But I am in So far in blood that sin will pluck on sin. Tear-falling pity dwells not in this eye. (Richard III, 4.2.63–65)

Richard fully devotes himself to immorality, even exceeding the violence of the earlier plays, as Tyrrel points out when the two young princes are dead: The tyrannous and bloody act is done, The most arch deed of piteous massacre That ever yet this land was guilty of. (Richard III, 4.3.1–3)133

The deed is symbolic of the utter decay of the kingdom: Richard has reached the peak of inhumanity, he is the “hell-hound that doth hunt [them] to death,” (Richard III, 4.4.48) who represents the rotten state of society: “[…] Shakespeare conceives of history as process and the time of Richard III as the culmination of decades of civil dissension and civil war.”134 The play’s plot then gradually moves towards the final resolution, the deposition of the inhuman villain and the final demise of realism, as the Duchess prophesies: “Bloody thou art; bloody will be thy end.” (Richard III, 4.4.195) Like his father, Richard is eventually the victim of his own ruthlessness, but he is defeated by the final re-establishment of justice at

132 His degenerated existence becomes even visually obvious in the very same scene, where it is pointed out that “he gnaws his lip,” (Richard III, 4.2.27) which brings back in one fell swoop all the animal metaphors and Richard returns to the deformed creature whose shadow dogs bark at. The image is also clearly reminiscent of the fact that he was “born with teeth.” (3Henry VI, 5.6.75) Burnett explains that in the Elizabethan Age, “[t]he conventional explanation for children born with teeth was that they were sent as warnings from above, as divine prognosticators of such calamities as pestilence and famine.” Burnett, Constructing Monsters, 67. In Richard’s case his teeth are obviously a foreshadowing of the degeneration of humanity: “In the play, however, such ‘monstrous’ tropes are invoked only to be reworked, a recurring example being the ways in which Richard’s association with a range of temporal ‘monstrous’ signifiers is invariably politicized […]” (Ibid.). 133 For the parallel between Richard III and the biblical Herod see Carroll, “‘Form of Law’,” 208: “[Richard’s] quest to slay the first-born of the kingdom – those most likely to inherit – of course links Richard with another infamously bloody king, Herod […].” For a full analysis of the many parallels between the two kings see Scott Colley, “Richard III and Herod,” Shakespeare Quarterly 37.4 (1986): 451–458. 134 Berry, Patterns of Decay, 94.

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the Battle of Bosworth. As Nicholas Grene points out, this is the only instance of warfare in the play, but it is through this battle that all the civil discord from the previous plays is resolved.135 Even before Richmond’s appearance on stage, the news of his inexorable advance makes clear that his just aggression against Richard will restore the order of society.136 As the embodiment of realism, Richard necessarily fails, since the dramatic universe around him turns from a state of war to a state of peace and order. Richard’s solitary existence as the last of his kind, as the last representative of the bellum omnium contra omnes, is most pointedly emphasised by his final soliloquy. It creates the image of Richard in a vacuum, since the realm he has dominated by ruthlessness has turned into enemy territory due to the impending return of justice. Richard finds himself entirely alone amidst a society that is gradually progressing towards morality: What do I fear? Myself? There’s none else by. Richard loves Richard, that is, I am I. Is there a murderer here? No. Yes, I am. Then fly! What, from myself? Great reason why? Lest I revenge. What, myself upon myself? Alack, I love myself. Wherefore? For any good That I myself have done unto myself? (Richard III, 5.3.182–188)

The central lines of the whole passage contain no less than twenty-two self-references, which emphasise Richard’s solitude in a world which is about to be morally restored, his quest for identity and his self-centredness, which will necessarily lead to his doom. Richard is falling apart, as Berry points out: The impression created by this speech, quite literally, is of a man trying to pull himself together. Yet the self he strives to integrate – “I am I” – continually splits apart. Tormented by his conscience, Richard discovers that to pursue the doctrine of “I am myself alone” leads, in the word’s most profound sense, to confusion. […] With Richard’s dream, then, the fundamental values of community that are articulated at the very beginning of the tetralogy

135 See Grene, Shakespeare’s Serial History Plays, 91–93. See also Berry, Patterns of Decay, 101/102: “It is the final battle that the audience has anticipated since the beginning of the play as the decisive moment at which the disordered world of the civil wars will be purged and renewed.” 136 The scene itself is reminiscent of the very first scene of the tetralogy in 1Henry VI, for it is similarly structured by the entries of different messengers announcing news of failure and eventual downfall. In the first part of Henry VI, the news delivered foreshadows the chaos and destruction that will follow and in Richard III the same technique is employed to prepare for Richard’s eventual downfall.

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reassert themselves, if only in negative terms. The aggressive egocentricity that gradually reduces the state to chaos ultimately destroys the self.137

It is his only humanly emotional moment in both plays and emphasises that his realism is a strategic device that goes against human nature. Here, he feels like a human being – he refers to his “conscience” (193), considers himself guilty of sins (198/199), and needs to be loved and pitied (200–203); all of which are exclusively human traits, which stand in stark contrast to the character’s former abdication from humanity. This moment is thus diametrically opposed to Richard’s approach to war, which is why he has to discard such sentiments in order to return to his warlike self for the Battle of Bosworth: Let not our babbling dreams affright our souls. Conscience is but a word that cowards use, Devised at first to keep the strong in awe. Our strong arms be our conscience, swords our law. (Richard III, 5.3.308–311)

This speech indicates the return to his realism: for him the sword is figuratively as well as literally the only guiding principle in a realm where might makes right: “The prospect of Richard’s entrance into the realm of humanity is thus raised only to vanish in a final and irrevocable act of will.”138 Conscience is for cowards, war is an amoral condition and this is reflected in Richard’s oration to his troops before the battle: in order to motivate his soldiers Richard tries to kindle hatred and contempt for the enemy, presenting them as unworthy and undeserving of pity or just treatment: Remember whom you are to cope withal, A sort of vagabonds, rascals and runaways, A scum of Bretons and base lackey peasants […]. (Richard III, 5.3.315–317)

Burnett has pointed out that the “failing powers of Richard are […] communicated though [sic] his increasingly desperate use of ‘monstrous’ discourses […],”139 but

137 Berry, Patterns of Decay, 99. 138 Berry, Patterns of Decay, 101. As R. Chris Hassel has noted, Richard does not even attempt to justify his cause, which constitutes a deviation from the sources. In Hall, Richard actually claims to be justified. Here, the focus lies on the sheer power of force: “Might makes right. But then right cannot also make might. Having claimed a raw universe of power, Richard cannot also claim a just cause. In Shakespeare he has at least the honesty to know it.” R. Chris Hassel, Jr., “Richard Versus Richmond: Aesthetic Warfare in Richard III,” Jahrbuch der Deutschen Shakespeare-Gesellschaft West (1985): 106–116, 109. 139 Burnett, Constructing Monsters, 87.

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Richard’s contemptuous description of the enemy soldiers is also an attempt to evoke xenophobia: the enemy does not deserve moral consideration, since they pose a threat to the lives of the English: You sleeping safe, they bring to you unrest; You having lands and blessed with beauteous wives, They would restrain the one, distain the other. (Richard III, 5.3.320–322)

Richard’s argumentation is, of course, highly ironic, since the real threat to English lives is the tyrant himself, but the polemical strand of his oration indicates that it is not supposed to be logically consistent – all he tries to do is evoke bloodthirst among his soldiers, so that their conduct in war will be as ruthless as his.140 In the ensuing description of the battle, the focus lies for the last time on Richard’s embodiment of war. In war, his immorality enables him to superhuman performance: The King enacts more wonders than a man, Daring an opposite to every danger. His horse is slain, and all on foot he fights, Seeking for Richmond in the throat of death. (Richard III, 5.3.2–5)

Catesby’s report encapsulates several of the most important themes of the play: first of all, Richard’s inhumanity is emphasised, in this case with a positive implication, which indicates the inextricable link between Richard’s brilliant performance in war and his degeneration. Secondly, the speech points out that Richard has forsaken his sense of self-preservation – he has no regard for his own life and fully devotes himself to battle: “I have set my life upon a cast, | And will stand the hazard of the die.” (Richard III, 5.4.9/10) This attitude again causes complete solitude as he fights alone in single combat. The motivation that drives him is clear: he seeks for Richmond, his antagonist and nemesis, since the play has been built

140 Simon Barker has pointed out that Richard’s speech is also in line with the common advice given by Elizabethan military theorists: “Richard’s speech expands on the idea of nation that the military theorists calculated as the most important reason for the introduction of a standing army. Richmond’s army lacks credibility in terms of a national ideal since it is composed of Bretons, thought of here as French and therefore reminiscent of the traditional sixteenth-century enemy. It also consists of ‘vagabonds, rascals and runaways’ – a key complaint for those theorists who were disgusted by the composition of Elizabethan armies. Moreover, Richard can appeal to the ‘yeoman’ of England to fight against foreign peasants, resurrecting an old adage about the centrality of a certain class of citizen to a military and national ideal. Richard also speaks in a way that is both informal and colloquial, just as the theorists recommend.” Barker, War and Nation, 127/128.

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up to this final confrontation, but Richmond’s triumph is inevitable, as Ornstein points out: At Bosworth field […] the moral oppositions are as clearly drawn again as they were in Henry VI Part I, where chivalry opposed witchcraft and was betrayed by policy. When Richmond and Richard share the stage, good stands against evil, love opposes hate, and the communal impulse is set against the predatory instincts of the lone wolf.141

Corresponding to the clear distinction between right and wrong at the end of Richard III, the decisive battle is short. Richmond and Richard finally confront each other on stage, but the battle as such is only given in stage direction; they fight and Richard is slain. Correspondingly short is the eulogy he receives: “the bloody dog is dead.” (Richard III, 5.5.2)142 Stating the obvious, Burnett points out that “it might be suggested that Richmond labels Richard a dog to condemn the baseness of his monstrous behaviour.”143 The bloody dog is dead, social order and humanity are restored and realism is extinct. Richmond’s triumph embodies the triumph of justice in the world of the history plays and simultaneously the triumph of just war theory over realism.

3.1.5

Richmond’s Just War

Even before Richmond’s first appearance as an actual character in the play, he is introduced by Shakespeare as the saviour who will free England from Richard’s ‘yoke.’ The character itself is never fully developed, but serves as a deus ex machina, since Shakespeare “subordinates the hero’s personality to his symbolic function,”144 according to Berry. However, despite this reduction, Richmond em-

141 Ornstein, A Kingdom for a Stage, 79. For the “communal impulse” embodied by Richmond see next chapter. 142 The eulogies following the deaths of important characters in Shakespeare are always retrospectively indicative of the character’s true nature. See chapter 4.1.3. 143 Burnett, Constructing Monsters, 89. 144 Berry, Patterns of Decay, 102. Berry refers at this point to John Dover Wilson, who had complained that Richmond is a “stick” (qtd. in Berry) and compares him to Macbeth’s Malcolm. See also Pierce, who calls Richmond a “dramatic nonentity,” (Pierce, Shakespeare’s History Plays, 119) and Riggs, who also refers to the “relative flatness” of the character (Riggs, Shakespeare’s Heroical Histories, 148). This lack of an elaborate character in this case is surely dramatically motivated and does not raise fundamental questions such as asked by Wilders, who complains that “it would be easier to believe in his crusading mission if we knew more about him and about his motives for mounting the invasion. But these are never revealed, perhaps because Shakespeare thought it advisable not to enquire into them (Richmond was, after all, the grandfather of

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bodies the most important principles of just war theory. Consistent with the flatness of the character, he does not enter the stage until the final act and from hereon it is Richmond’s function, not his personality that is focused on, which is immediately clear: Fellows in arms, and my most loving friends, Bruised underneath the yoke of tyranny, Thus far into the bowels of the land Have we marched on without impediment; And here receive we from our father Stanley Lines of fair comfort and encouragement. The wretched, bloody and usurping boar, That spoiled our summer fields and fruitful vines, Swills your warm blood like wash, and makes his trough In your embowelled bosoms, this foul swine Is now even in the centre of the isle, Near to the town of Leicester, as we learn. From Tamworth thither is but one day’s march. In God’s name, cheerly on, courageous friends, To reap the harvest of perpetual peace By this one bloody trial of sharp war. (Richard III, 5.2.1–16)

In order to create the impression of Richmond as the just opposition to Richard, several elements of just war theory are employed in this speech. He begins by addressing his army as his “fellows” and “friends,” emphasising the unity, solidarity and love among them, which proves that there has been no coercion or force to fight in this war. These soldiers fight because they believe the cause to be worth dying for, there is no unnatural division and the re-establishment of family and kinship are foreshadowed.145 Then, Richmond refers to Richard’s tyranny in order to underline the fact that his aggression does not constitute a rebellion but an intervention, which is also supported by the “invitation” from within as reported by Stanley. This is not a “crusading mission,”146 as Wilders had termed it, but a liberating mission motivated by the restoration of human rights and “encouraged”

the reigning monarch) and he is not so much a positive moral force as the leader of an opposition which Richard has created.” John Wilders, The Lost Garden. A View of Shakespeare’s English and Roman History Plays (London and Basingstoke: The Macmillan Press Ltd., 1978): 58. The fact that the audience do learn about Richmond’s true motives and that the character has moral force shall be shown in the following. 145 As Ian Moulton points out, Richmond “sees society in terms of broad kinship networks.” Ian Frederick Moulton, “‘A Monster Great Deformed’: The Unruly Masculinity of Richard III,” Shakespeare Quarterly 47 (1996): 251–268, 268. 146 Wilders, The Lost Garden, 58.

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by the people of England: Richmond is not “rebelling against a tyrant, but […] putting down a tyrannous usurper.”147 The next rhetorical step is the evocation of Richard’s inhumanity by the familiar animal imagery associated with this character – he is the “wretched, bloody and usurping boar,” thus not only an animal, but one of the lowest kind. He is wretched, i.e. immoral, bloody, which immediately evokes the image of all the murders he has committed, and above all he is a usurper, who has no right to the throne, which is why he must be deposed. Richard has done everything to destroy the country (“spoiled your summer fields and fruitful vines”) as much as the people (“swills your warm blood like wash”) and has thus proven to be an immediate threat for England’s population. The last three lines of the speech capture all of the above in terms of the justification of this war: first of all, Richmond acts in God’s name. Numerous scholars have pointed out that Richmond’s role is “in every respect that of an agent of God.”148 Wilders, however, is skeptical: “In a series of plays where God’s name is played with so irresponsibly, it is difficult to be wholly convinced by Richmond’s claim to be the instrument of divine justice.”149 Richmond does lead his troops “in God’s name,” which justifies it as a holy war that is divinely sanctioned. But, although Pugliatti claims that “whenever a war is pronounced ‘holy’, to enquire about the justness of its cause is superfluous […],”150 it turns out that in this case, there is a great focus on a secular moral justification, since Richmond’s aggression is justified prior to the outbreak of war from every conceivable angle. Up to this point, causes for aggression mentioned in the drama are personal and subjective – this character refers to the principles of just war theory in order to justify his actions. He concludes with the most important point to be made: this war is intended to serve as a means for the restoration and perpetual preservation of peace and peace is a public good, whose re-establishment may justify the deaths of those trying to achieve it: There must be purposes that are worth dying for, outcomes for which soldiers’ lives are not too high a price. The idea of a just war requires the same assumption. A just war is one that is morally urgent to win, and a soldier who dies in a just war does not die in vain. Critical

147 Kelly, Divine Providence, 293. 148 Berry, Patterns of Decay, 102. See also Kelly: “Because Henry [Richmond] prays to be God’s minister of chastisement and does win and thanks God for the victory, it must no doubt be assumed that Shakespeare means him to be objectively viewed as supported by divine authority.” (Kelly, Divine Providence, 293) Riggs calls Richmond “God’s Captain,” (Riggs, Shakespeare’s Heroical Histories, 148) and Rackin claims that Richmond “is never anything but God’s soldier” (Rackin, Stages of History, 70). 149 Wilders, The Lost Garden, 57. 150 Pugliatti, Shakespeare and the Just War Tradition, 151.

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values are at stake: political independence, communal liberty, human life. Other means failing (an important qualification), wars to defend these values are justified.151

The contrast to the previous sequence of battles could not be more obvious: instead of endless battles with thousands of casualties for no legitimate reason and without a final peaceful resolution, Richmond intends to fight “one” battle in order to achieve the public good of “perpetual peace.” That this is a just war is further confirmed objectively by three other characters. Oxford exclaims: “Every man’s conscience is a thousand men | To fight against this guilty homicide,” (Richard III, 5.2.17/18) indicating that all soldiers have a personal interest to fight.152 Herbert assures “I doubt not but his friends will turn to us,” (Richard III, 5.2.19), since there is no solidarity for the tyrant; and Blunt prophesies: “He hath no friends but what are friends for fear, | Which in his dearest need will fly from him,” (Richard III, 5.2.20/21) emphasising further that Richard has no support from the people, which increases the moral urgency to depose him. Thus, the whole scene serves one major purpose in multifarious respects: to restore war as a moral phenomenon. The same is true for all of act 5 – the eventual Battle of Bosworth is prepared very thoroughly in dramatic terms, so that when Richmond leads his army to the battlefield “it is to be welcomed as the just war to end the cycle of violence […].”153 Despite the elaborate justification of Richmond’s cause upon his first appearance, the whole act is dedicated to the justness of this aggression. The night before the Battle of Bosworth both army leaders sleep in their respective tents on stage and both are visited in their sleep by several apparitions. The simple representation of the scene is already a contribution to the dichotomy of good and evil to be maintained, as Barker points out: “On the Elizabethan stage, as with most modern productions, two tents would probably have presented the two armies. The symmetry invites comparison and judgement, as does the action that unfolds.”154 The ghosts that appear address Richard and Richmond separately, condemning Richard and encouraging Richmond, emphasising with unnecessary thoroughness the latter’s legitimate succession to the throne as well as his right

151 Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 110. 152 This reference to the conscience of the soldiers is further underlined by Richard’s statement that “conscience is but a word that cowards use,” so that the soldiers who fight for Richmond and can therefore have a clear conscience are put into stark contrast to the soldiers fighting for Richard, who have to ignore their conscience in order to be able to fulfill their duty as his subjects, fighting in an unjust war. 153 Grene, Shakespeare’s Serial History Plays, 92. 154 Barker, War and Nation, 46.

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intention in the pursuit: “Virtuous and holy, be thou conqueror,” “Arm, fight, and conquer for fair England’s sake,” “God and good angels fight on Richmond’s side […].” (Richard III, 5.3.129/151/176) Thus, Richmond has the obligation to rule England; he must free it from the tyrant and lead it to prosperity, since this is his fate and God’s will. There is no personal motivation or ambition, so that “Richmond’s victory will be clearly marked as the will of God, not only by the judgements of the other characters but also by the prophecies, curses and prophetic dreams that give direct and unambiguous directions for its interpretation.”155 As Emrys Jones has pointed out, the evening before the Battle of Bosworth is even more crucial than the battle itself: In dramatic terms what ‘Bosworth’ means is not so much the battle itself – of that we are only given a brief token show – as the eve of battle, the occasion richest in imaginative potential and significance: the long sequence of evening, night, and early morning during which Richard and Richmond sleep and dream and in dream are visited by ghosts. In stage terms the procession of ghosts is the battle of Bosworth.156

Since the dream sequence includes the ghosts of Henry VI, Clarence, Prince Edward and Lady Anne amongst others, it becomes repetitive and is stretched to unnecessary length, but as Leggatt points out, “the repetitions in the dialogue […] are used […] for balancing good against evil.”157 The focus lies on the establishment of Richmond as the rightful ruler, whose intervention is legitimate in moral terms and not motivated by personal ambition. As Ornstein points out, Richmond’s “‘legitimacy’ is moral, not genealogical,”158 which is why the character never insists on his right to the throne; his right to succession is only established by objective voices.159 Thus, the scene creates a shift of attention from Richard to Richmond, from evil to good, which justifies the war.160

155 Rackin, Stages of History, 51. 156 Jones, Origins of Shakespeare, 226. 157 Leggatt, Shakespeare’s Political Drama, 50. 158 Ornstein, A Kingdom for a Stage, 81. 159 The prophecies and blessings of the ghosts are reminiscent and affirmative of the first indication of Richmond’s calling made by Henry VI in the third play of the sequence: “If secret powers | Suggest but truth to my divining thoughts, | This pretty lad will prove our country’s bliss. | His looks are full of peaceful majesty, | His head by nature framed to wear a crown, | His hand to wield a scepter, and himself | Likely in time to bless a regal throne.” (3Henry VI, 4.6.68–74) Henry’s prophecy is now confirmed, which extinguishes any suspicion about Richmond’s true intentions or motivations in his endeavour. 160 Richmond’s superiority here is also established simultaneously to Richard’s waning powers and the desperation he expresses in his soliloquy. See Emrys Jones: “In this second movement of Richard III we have clearly moved into the area of dynastic drama. This is the assumption that de-

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This assumption is confirmed by Richmond’s oration to his troops in order to fully outline the justice of his cause before the Battle of Bosworth: God, and our good cause, fight upon our side. The prayers of holy saints and wronged souls, Like high-reared bulwarks, stand before our faces. Richard except, those whom we fight against Had rather have us win than him they follow. For, what is he they follow? Truly, gentlemen, A bloody tyrant and a homicide; One raised in blood, and one in blood established; One that made means to come by what he hath, And slaughtered those that were the means to help him; A base foul stone, made precious by the foil Of England’s chair, where he is falsely set; One that hath ever been God’s enemy. Then if you fight against God’s enemy, God will, in justice, ward you as His soldiers; If you do sweat to put a tyrant down, You sleep in peace, the tyrant being slain; If you do fight against your country’s foes, Your country’s fat shall pay your pains the hire. If you do fight in safeguard of your wives, Your wives shall welcome home the conquerors. If you do free your children from the sword, Your children’s children quits it in your age. Then in the name of God and all these rights, Advance your standards, draw your willing swords. For me, the ransom of my bold attempt Shall be this cold corpse on the earth’s cold face; But if I thrive, the gain of my attempt The least of you shall share his part thereof. Sound drums and trumpets boldly and cheerfully. God, and Saint George, Richmond and victory! (Richard III, 5.3.240–270)

termines the shaping of the second wooing scene as well as the Bosworth sequence. Our viewpoint in these final scenes has changed decisively to a post-Bosworth position: Richard is now surrounded not only by a divinely controlled universe but by a historically determined one. He is ruined on both counts. He remains to the end more engaging theatrical company than anyone else on stage, but he now shares the weakness which had earlier been a mark of his victims.” Jones, Origins of Shakespeare, 231.

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Simon Barker comments on this speech as a “sanitised and lukewarm version of the just war ethic,”161 but “lukewarm” seems like a deprecating judgement considering the multifarious aspects of just war theory incorporated in this speech. The very first words “God, and our good cause” introduce the general justification of divine sanction, but there is also a rational cause for a secular justification, thus catering for both needs in a time of change concerning these beliefs.162 Secondly, this war is intended to set previously committed wrongs right and punish the unlawful aggressor by avenging the “wronged souls,” that now fight on Richmond’s behalf. Along the lines of Richard’s unlawful aggression, Richmond now continues with several different arguments that are closely connected: Richard is a tyrant but more importantly, he is a usurper, who has used violent means to gain the throne (“raised in blood and in blood established”), thus contradicting God’s will: he is God’s enemy, which provides the right to depose him: “It was not of course said by anyone that you must or may obey the King rather than God. All agree that commands contrary to God’s law must be disobeyed.”163 Hence, Rich-

161 Barker, War and Nation, 128. Earlier in his monograph, Barker phrases it more positively: “Richmond’s speech is a model of justification for war and the cause. It is the abstract discourse of the just war, which speaks of God’s involvement and protection, and of a future inscribed in the present outcome.” Barker, War and Nation, 125. Due to the flatness of Richmond’s character, many critics have seen his speech as too artificial and hollow, as Hassel points out, but it is also possible to find it aesthetically appealing as he, for instance, does: “Personally, I find Shakespeare’s version of Richmond’s oration a moving affirmation of just cause and honorable conflict. It is time for a good man to stand up effectively against the tyrant Richard, and Richmond is that good man. Richmond’s speech inspires his men, clarifies the value at issue, and finally produces for England, and not incidentally for Shakespeare’s own Queen Elizabeth, a Tudor victory at Bosworth Field. Put simply, Richmond’s speech works, just as Richard’s does not. For this reader it even works aesthetically, particularly after comparing it with its source in Hall.” Hassel, “Richard Versus Richmond,” 114. 162 Wilders has pointed out that “Richmond is only one of many characters who call on God to carry out their wishes: he differs from the others to the extent that his cause is successful. But in these plays not all well-deserving prayers are answered and we have no means of knowing whether his victory is achieved with divine assistance or not. All we can say is that Richmond has a genuine faith in providence which he shares with other characters, like Henry VI, whose trust is treated ironically.” Wilders, The Lost Garden, 58. Whether the character Richmond should be seen as believing in providence himself cannot be determined for the lack of personality. 163 J. W. Allen, A History of Political Thought in the Sixteenth Century (London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1977): 128. At this specific point, the play obviously makes a very strong point for tyrannicide, as Robin Headlam Wells points out: “Though it used to be widely accepted that Shakespeare was expressing his own views in John of Gaunt’s emotive speech on political obedience in Richard II, an equally persuasive argument, this time for tyrannicide, is put by the Earl of Richmond in his oration to his troops in the final act of Richard III. Where the Homilie Agaynst Disobedience and Wylful Rebellion made it clear that tyrants were to be seen as God’s way of punish-

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mond is not only leading a just war, but a humanitarian intervention, since Richard tyrannises his own people and has no support from within. Richmond’s intervention is then logically turned into a war of defence due to the threat that Richard poses and the soldiers are given a personal interest to fight. Richmond turns to the soldiers’ own concerns, which are the questions of responsibility and guilt, patriotism and defence of their own lives and families. First of all, he assures them that they are free of guilt when they fight, for they will be fighting a just and holy war, carrying out God’s will (“Then if you fight against God’s enemy, | God will, in justice, ward you as His soldiers …”). Secondly, their war is intended to protect their country, which is their patriotic duty (“If you do fight against your country’s foes …”). Thirdly, Richard’s unlawful aggression poses a direct threat to the soldiers’ families, so that they gain a personal interest to fight in order to protect their own (“If you do fight in safeguard of your wives …”). The fact that the aggression against Richard is of personal interest to the soldiers is even more important in order to demonstrate to them that this is a just war and no unlawful rebellion.164 As Ornstein points out: “In his oration to his army, Richmond does not offer a theoretical justification for rebellion; he portrays the battle against Richard as an act of self-defense by which Englishmen protect their homes and families against a ravening predator.”165 Through his speech, Richmond therefore delivers almost a textbook definition of just causes still valid today: While just war theorists are virtually unanimous in the belief that national self-defence may provide a just cause for war, there is little agreement beyond that. Other candidates for just cause include the defence of another state against unjust external aggression, the recovery of rights (that is, the recovery of what may have been lost when earlier unjust aggression was not resisted, or when earlier resistance ended in defeat), the defence of fundamental human rights within another state against abuse by the government, and the punishment of unjust aggressors.166

Almost all of these causes can be applied to Richmond’s endeavour and have been pointed out by him in his oration, but his just cause is then further supported by his intentio recta:

ing a wicked people and therefore never to be resisted, Richmond claims, like Parsons, that in exceptional circumstances tyrannicide may receive divine approval.” Robin Headlam Wells, Shakespeare’s Politics. A Contextual Introduction (London: Continuum Books, 2009): 125. 164 The same phenomenon is reflected in Morton’s speech in 2Henry IV: “My lord your son had only but the corpse, | But shadows and the shows of men, to fight; | For that same word ‘rebellion’ did divide | The action of their bodies from their souls […].” (2Henry IV, 1.1.192–195) See chapter 4.1.2. 165 Ornstein, A Kingdom for a Stage, 81. 166 McMahan, “War and Peace,” 386/387.

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For me, the ransom of my bold attempt Shall be this cold corpse on the earth’s cold face; But if I thrive, the gain of my attempt The least of you shall share his part thereof. (Richard III, 5.3.266–269)

As if the dream sequence, the divine authorisation of his war and his careful demonstration of the justice of his cause were not enough, once again attention is drawn to Richmond’s genuine intentions: he wants to depose the tyrant to restore justice in the kingdom, which even “the least” shall profit from. Clearly, the concluding lines of his speech form a stark contrast to the numerous instances in the preceding plays of characters formulating their ambition and desire to gain the crown for no ulterior motive. In diametrical opposition to all of the other characters involved in the Wars of the Roses, Richmond fully dedicates himself to the public good without a selfish agenda and thus restores the order of the public sphere. Ever since Henry VI had picked the red rose in 1Henry VI, thereby giving “national scale to what had been a private conflict,”167 the balance between the two distinct spheres has been progressively destroyed until it is here restored by Richmond.168 Considering all of the above, it turns out that Richmond’s war against Richard is indeed a just war, as critics have begun to claim in recent years, and this is due to the fact that the text seems to follow St Thomas Aquinas in the three fundamental principles obligatory for a just war: legitimate authority, just cause, and right intention: If a war is to be just, three things are required. First, the authority of the prince by whose command war is to be waged. For it does not pertain to a private person to declare war, because he can prosecute his rights at the tribunal of his superior […]. Second, a just cause is required: that is, those against whom war is to be waged must deserve to have war waged against them because of some wrongdoing […]. Third, it is required that those who wage war should have a righteous intent: that is, they should intend either to promote a good cause or avert an evil.169 167 Leggatt, Shakespeare’s Political Drama, 22. 168 Carroll interprets Richmond’s right to the throne slightly differently: “Written and performed during a period of extraordinary urban unrest […] Richard III seems in many ways a rejection of disorder and a reaffirmation of law: the soon-to-be Henry VII puts an end to the civil violations of Richard. Yet it is the bloody butcher himself, Richard, who most clearly aligns himself with the ideology of legal and ‘natural’ succession; and it is the re-sacramentalized emblem of ‘ceremonious’ order, Richmond, who intervenes when the ‘chair’ of state is not ‘empty,’ when the ‘empire’ is not ‘unpossess’d.’ Richmond’s own actions – the killing of Richard – finally bring about the conditions which allow him to be termed not a usurper but one of the ‘true succeeders’ to the throne.” Carroll, “‘The Form of Law’,” 217/218. Nevertheless, it is the justice of Richmond’s war that should be emphasised here. 169 Aquinas, Political Writings, 240/241.

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Prior to the Battle of Bosworth, all those principles for a just war according to Aquinas are established. Richmond has legitimate authority, a just cause and the right intention. This is the first instance in Shakespeare’s plays that the discourse of the theory of just war is incorporated in the drama in such logical, reflected, and informed manner. Both of Richmond’s speeches and the dramatic structure of the whole act form a stringent jus ad bellum approach, which stands in stark contrast to the sophistry of former justifications. Those serve as flimsy disguises of personal ambition, whereas Richmond’s argumentation “is a model of justification for war and the cause.”170 The philosophical considerations revolving around the concept of the just war are further developed after the Battle of Bosworth, when it turns out that Richmond adheres to the rules of jus post bellum as much as to the rules of jus ad bellum. After the final victory the surviving soldiers receive mercy and the bodies of the dead are treated honourably. Richmond asks “What men of name are slain on either side?” (Richard III, 5.5.12), clearly intending to distribute justice not only to his own but also to the enemy soldiers, and then orders that they be treated equally and justly: Inter their bodies as become their births. Proclaim a pardon to the soldiers fled That in submission will return to us […]. (Richard III, 5.5.15–17)

Again, the contrast to the characters’ behaviour in previous plays is evoked, since Richmond’s conduct is contrary to the mistreatment of soldiers and desecration of bodies before. As Goy-Blanquet points out, Richmond’s behaviour is in line with the general return to humanity: His order to give them a decent burial glosses over the indignities inflicted on Richard’s corpse, and signals a return to proper decorum: the desecration of dead bodies had been an important fact of war since Wakefield, when Margaret had the heads of her Yorkist enemies planted on pikes overlooking York town.171

Richmond’s adherence to jus post bellum is then followed by his final oration, rounding up the restoration of order:

170 Barker, War and Nation, 125. From his expression it is not entirely clear whether Barker means to say that Richmond’s speeches are a justification for war in general, not only this particular one, wherefore it must be pointed out that the justification is seen by the present author as merely serving this particular war against Richard III. 171 Goy-Blanquet, Shakespeare’s Early History Plays, 231.

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Each line of this speech invokes a different ritual or principle of order: the decorum of funeral rites; the royal pardon; the subject’s obedience of hierarchical authority; the ritual of the “sacrament”; and the union of opposites. Richmond says all the right things that could be said.172

Only now, in his final speech, does Richmond refer to himself as the “true succeeder” of the throne, something that was avoided up to this point in order to make sure that there is no hint of personal ambition.173 As the “true succeeder” Richmond has officially stopped the endless spiral of moral decay. The aftermath of Bosworth thereby forms “climax and closure not only of Richard III but for the whole history play series and the wars it has dramatised.”174 The initial conflict is purged, for he will “unite the white rose and the red,” (Richard III, 5.5.19) and the division of state and families belongs to history: The brother blindly shed the brother’s blood; The father rashly slaughtered his own son, The son, compelled, been butcher to the sire. (Richard III, 5.5.24–26)175

Thus, not only is this war justified before the aggression, but it also has the required outcome: it has eliminated the injustice in the world to restore the conditions for perpetual peace, which is why the rest of Richmond’s last speech of the play concentrates solely on the future of England with “smooth-faced peace,

172 Carroll, “‘The Form of Law’,” 211. 173 Howard and Rackin have claimed that it is “only by appropriating Elizabeth’s genealogical authority as the last survivor of the House of York that Richmond can authorize himself as king and authorize the legitimacy of the Tudor dynasty, only by becoming a paterfamilias that he can secure his new identity as king.” (Howard and Rackin, Engendering a Nation, 116) I have, however, pointed out before that Richmond’s legitimacy is first and foremost morally confirmed and not genealogically. 174 Grene, Shakespeare’s Serial History Plays, 93. This refers only to the four plays constituting the first tetralogy and does not relate forward to the later second tetralogy, as Kelly claims: “Richard III does not extend back beyond the time of the Wars of the Roses, which, of course, began in the time of Henry VI. Richmond is summing up Shakespeare’s early tetralogy here without including the earlier period covered by the series he was still to write.” Kelly, Divine Providence, 295. 175 This scene, which dramatised the final and complete disruption of family bonds is referred to, because Richmond, amongst other things, embodies the restoration of long lost family virtues, as Howard and Rackin have pointed out: “Assuming the role of benevolent paterfamilias, Richmond constructs himself in direct antithesis to the solitary individualism of the tragic hero he supplants, the murderer of the young princes, the character who defined himself from the beginning by his contempt for women and his separation from the loving bonds of kinship.” Howard and Rackin, Engendering a Nation, 117/188.

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| With smiling plenty and fair prosperous days.” (Richard III, 5.5.33/34) Juxtaposing the time to come with the time that has been, “smooth-faced peace” with “grim-visaged war,” Richmond proclaims that this particular war has indeed ended the cycle of violence: Now civil wounds are stopped; peace lives again. That she may long live here, God say amen. (Richard III, 5.5.40/41)

A just war is required to bring about a better state of peace: “And better, within the confines of the argument for justice, means more secure than the status quo ante bellum, less vulnerable to territorial expansion, safer for ordinary men and women and for their domestic self-determinations.”176 From Richmond’s first appearance on stage to the final lines of the play it is clear that this kind of status quo post bellum will be achieved, because the character’s behaviour is in perfect accordance with the rules of war. R. S. White has claimed that “it is arguable that no war in Shakespeare is either unequivocally necessary or provides a solution to a problem.”177 Hopefully, the analysis of Richard III has proved the opposite. The final restoration of order at the end of the first tetralogy presents a most elaborate approach to just war theory and the final battle is characterised as an unmistakably just war. It is morally required and provides a solution to a problem: the problem of the state of war. This is a war that is intended to end the violence and restore peace and justice, which is successfully achieved at the end of the play. Just war theory thus dominates at the end of the tetralogy over pacifism and realism. It becomes clear throughout the four plays of the sequence that war sometimes is inevitable, but that there must be complex moral considerations prior to aggression. This assumption concludes the early plays and it turns out that the establishment of war as a moral phenomenon has a fundamental impact on the later plays. From hereon, there is a clear distinction between jus ad bellum and jus in bello, of legitimate versus illegitimate authority, just versus unjust cause and right versus wrong intention. The struggle between the Houses of York and Lancaster is the struggle between pacifism and realism – all of the later plays to be considered here are dominated by just war theory. In the same way that the Tudor Henry VII bridges the gap between York and Lancaster, just war theory bridges the gap between pacifism and realism. The third approach to war is the one to work with, since it is evidently the most prominent in Shakespeare’s drama.

176 Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 121/122. 177 White, Pacifism and English Literature, 140.

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4 Just and Unjust Wars in Shakespeare 4.1 Jus ad Bellum Aggression is a crime because it violates the territorial integrity and political sovereignty of another state. This is why it must be undertaken for the right reasons, which Aquinas conceptualised in the three principles. The case lies somewhat different, however, when the state that is liable to aggression is governed by a tyrant. Richmond is therefore morally obligated to free England from Richard’s tyrannous rule and more than ten years later, Shakespeare dramatised a very similar scenario in Macbeth. As David Bevington has shown, it was widely believed in the Renaissance that a tyrant might not be removed by secular means: “Only God could dispose of an evil yet legitimately established monarch. Since God might choose to inflict an evil ruler on a wayward people for their punishment, rebellion against His scourge would only increase divine wrath.”1 Neither Richard nor Macbeth, however, are “legitimately established.” They are “rais’d in blood” and “in blood establish’d” (Richard III, 5.3.247)2 and hence both are removed by secular powers.3 While Richmond is also a divinely sanctioned aggres-

1 David Bevington, Tudor Drama and Politics. A Critical Approach to Topical Meaning (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1968): 157. 2 Blood is of course one of the central images of Macbeth. See William Blissett, “The Secret’st Man of Blood. A Study of Dramatic Irony in Macbeth,” Shakespeare Quarterly 10.3 (1959): 397–408, esp. 400ff.; Francis Barker, The Culture of Violence. Tragedy and History (Manchester: Manchester UP, 1993): 58ff.; Foakes, Shakespeare and Violence, 149–156. 3 The plays bear many more similarities but the general parallels do not fit the focus of this discussion. See Marta Gibinska, “Villains on the Throne. Some Remarks on the Dramatic Craft of Richard III and Macbeth” in Word and Action in Drama, eds. Günter Ahrends, Stephan Kohl, Joachim Kornelius and Gerd Stratmann (Trier: WVT, 1994): 81–91; Margaret Hotine, “Richard III and Macbeth – Studies in Tudor Tyranny?” Notes and Queries 38.4 (1991): 480–486; Evalee Hart, “A Comparative Study: Macbeth and Richard III,” The English Journal 61.6 (1972): 824–830; Daniel E. Hughes, “The Worm of Conscience in Richard III and Macbeth,” The English Journal 55.7 (1966): 845–852; Fred Manning Smith, “The Relation of Macbeth to Richard the Third,” PMLA 60.4 (1945): 1003–1020. Robert Logan traces the similarities back to Christopher Marlowe’s influence: “The progression of influence of the villain-hero from Marlowe to Shakespeare begins with Tamburlaine whose oscillation between acts of heroism and villainy is still, arguably, the chief source of critical controversy in the two plays, especially for those who wish to resolve and thereby oversimplify the combination of apparently contradictory actions in the Scythian conqueror. […] Faustus follows in Tamburlaine’s footsteps, because his efforts as blasphemer are viewed at times as Promethean; […] Richard III, whose energies and daring are as astonishing as his evil acts are heinous, follows from the characterizations of Tamburlaine and Faustus and leads eventually to the most complex representation of the villain-hero in Macbeth.” Robert A. Logan,

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sor, however, Malcolm and Macduff argue exclusively from a secular perspective, although their aggression is equally just.4 Both Richard and Macbeth murder their way to the throne, but it has to be said that Macbeth is a more refined, complex and intellectual character: he is aware of the wrongfulness of ambition, which is his ultimate motive: I have no spur To prick the sides of my intent, but only Vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself And falls on th’ other […] (Macbeth, 1.7.25–28)5

Another important difference is the fact that Richard ascends the throne out of chaos, while Macbeth kills not only a “gracious” king (Macbeth’s own words at

Shakespeare’s Marlowe. The Influence of Christopher Marlowe on Shakespeare’s Artistry (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007): 199. 4 In fact, the early Richard III and the late Macbeth do have something very important in common: both plays depict events crucially related to the respectively reigning monarch at the time. Richmond is of course Elizabeth I’s grandfather and Malcolm will eventually secure the Stuart line on the Scottish throne that has been interrupted by Macbeth and will thus lay the basis for the contemporarily reigning James I of England. For this reason, Macbeth has often been seen as celebrating “James’s lineage,” in Barker’s words (Barker, War and Nation, 181). A very convincing counter position, which thoroughly scrutinises Macbeth in the Jacobean political context can be found in Alan Sinfield, “Macbeth: History, Ideology and Intellectuals,” Critical Quarterly 28.1–2 (1986): 63–77. For the discussion on the impact of the historical Jacobean context on the play see also David Norbrook, “Macbeth and the Politics of Historiography” in Politics of Discourse. The Literature and History of Seventeenth-Century England, eds. Kevin Sharpe and Steven N. Zwicker (Berkeley et al.: University of California Press, 1987): 78–116; Robin Headlam Wells, “Historicism and ‘Presentism’ in Early Modern Studies,” Cambridge Quarterly 29.1 (2000): 37–60; Richard Wilson, “‘Blood Will Have Blood’: Regime Change in Macbeth,” Shakespeare Jahrbuch 143 (2007): 11–35. Robert Reed, on the other hand, has put a Christian emphasis on the rightness of Malcolm’s cause: “[The play] speaks repeatedly of Christian dogma, of both Satanism and a watchful Providence. It is, I think, a sophisticated morality play, in which the justice of God, although long discomfited, is fulfilled.” Robert Rentoul Reed, Jr., Crime and God’s Judgment in Shakespeare (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1984): 195. In a similar spiritual vein, Paul Jorgensen saw the predominant theme as “the theme of Innocence: that of the innocent Malcolm who will soon be victorious. […] In the earnestness of his dramatic message, Shakespeare almost overstates the theme of Innocence violated. […] At the risk of making his saviour of Scotland Innocence personified rather than a real character, Shakespeare lays on the childlike qualities relentlessly.” Paul Jorgensen, Our Naked Frailties. Sensational Art and Meaning in Macbeth (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971): 105/106. 5 All quotations from Macbeth are from the following edition and will be given parenthetically: William Shakespeare, Macbeth, ed. Kenneth Muir. The Arden Shakespeare Second Series (London: Methuen & Co. Ltd, 1962).

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3.1.65),6 but moreover a lawfully established one.7 Macbeth thus murders God’s representative on earth, which is why the justice of Malcolm’s intervention should be evident and yet the play goes to great lengths in the attempt to display the moral obligation of aggression. This is pointedly brought to the fore in scene 4.3, which is usually cut in performance and while Kenneth Muir believed that the scene’s “main purpose is obscured,”8 it evidently functions as a forum for an ethical debate concerning jus ad bellum. On the one hand, Malcolm’s argumentation results from the attempt to lay out the qualities of a good ruler and Arthur F. Kinney has remarked that the scene “takes its basic form […] from the classical structure of political treatises on right and wrong rule.”9 On the other hand, the reluctance of the future Scottish king to march against Macbeth also provides the ground for Macduff to lay out just reasons for aggression. Playing devil’s advocate, Malcolm suggests that they had better “[h]old fast the mortal sword” (Macbeth, 4.3.3) than choose aggression, “driving Macduff to indignant despair,”10 so that it becomes necessary for the latter to lay down all the reasons why they are morally obligated to intervene. David Scott Kastan claims the implication to be that “Macbeth’s savagery demands and legitimates any and all savagery in the

6 For a full account of Macbeth’s honestly felt respect for Duncan see his famous soliloquy in 1.7: “Besides, this Duncan | Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been | So clear in his great office, that his virtues | Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongu’d, against | The deep damnation of his taking-off […]” (Macbeth, 1.7.16–20). 7 Harry Berger, in a specific analysis of the early scenes of Macbeth, claims that at the beginning of the play “something is rotten in Scotland,” and that Duncan’s last words “reflect the plight of the king in this society: the more his subjects do for him, the more he must do for them; the more he does for them, feeding their ambition and their power, the less secure can he be of his mastery.” But nevertheless, Duncan is a good and “gentle” king, which increases the horror of the regicide. Harry Berger, Jr., “The Early Scenes of Macbeth: Preface to a New Interpretation,” ELH 47.1 (1980): 1–31, 5/24–26 8 Muir, “Introduction,” 122. Muir considers its function to be “choric commentary.” 9 Arthur F. Kinney, “Scottish History: The Case of Macbeth,” Renaissance Culture in Context. Theory and Practice, eds. Jean R. Brink and William F. Gentrup (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1993): 18–53, 42. Kinney believes that this is the “crucial scene of the play,” because he suggests that it is directed at James I himself (Kinney, “Scottish History,” 47) but the historical relevance is not central to my argument. 10 Grene, Shakespeare’s Tragic Imagination, 214. Grene rightly points out, that this is a test of loyalty: “In accusing himself of sin after sin, Malcolm succeeds in driving Macduff to indignant despair. The whole exercise is a test of loyalty – loyalty not only to the rightful king but to the principle of right he is bound to embody […]. This test Macduff passes in refusing to support Malcolm, however just his claim to the throne, when convinced that the Prince is not ‘fit to govern! No, not to live!’ (IV.iii.102–3). At this point Malcolm can ‘unspeak [his] own detraction’ and hail Macduff as true champion of his true cause.”

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campaign to dethrone him,”11 but the justifications laid out for this war make clear that this is not a savage enterprise. The suffering of the Scottish people under Macbeth’s tyranny exceeds the suffering that will be caused by war, which makes it not only just but necessary: Alas, poor country! Almost afraid to know itself. It cannot Be call’d our mother, but our grave; where nothing, But who knows nothing, is once seen to smile; Where sighs, and groans, and shrieks that rent the air Are made, not mark’d; where violent sorrow seems A modern ecstasy: the dead man’s knell Is there scarce ask’d for who; and good men’s lives Expire before the flowers in their caps, Dying or ere they sicken. (Macbeth, 4.3.164–173)

The focus thus lies on the violence Macbeth inflicts daily upon Scotland and Rosse personifies the country in order the enforce the moral urgency of intervention, which is then strengthened by the fact that Malcolm has moral support from the Scottish people: Now is the time of help. Your eye in Scotland Would create soldiers, make our women fight, To doff their dire distresses. (Macbeth, 4.3.186–188)

The evident need of the Scottish to be rescued and the aptness of both soldiers and civilians to fight with the foreign force against Macbeth demonstrate the justice of Malcolm’s war: the objectively justifiable cause for intervention is thus established through the juxtaposition of arguments for and against aggression and the three Aquinian principles are included: Malcolm is a legitimate authority because of his place in the line of succession, the right intention becomes clear through his reluctance to invade and the just cause is represented through the human suffering that must be prevented. Like Richmond, Malcolm is morally obligated to avert the evil embodied by Macbeth and the discursive nature of the scene allows profound moral consideration. Jus ad bellum is of course characterised by consideration prior to aggression, which is given such elaborate reasoning in this scene that it has sometimes been criticised as “digressive.”12 This seeming digression, however, obviously results from the aspects of jus ad bellum laid

11 David Scott Kastan, Shakespeare After Theory (New York and London: Routledge, 1999): 178. 12 Kinney, “Scottish History,” 42.

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out here, despite the brevity of the scene. The principles that were given such a wide scope of consideration in Richard III are here presented in a nutshell and yet the justice of Malcolm’s cause is entirely convincing.13 Macbeth’s ambition is thus put into stark contrast to Malcolm’s hesitation, since it must be indubitable that he does not lead the aggression in order to gain the throne himself.14 As it is, Malcolm has a similar function as Richmond: he must restore justice and order by means of war and the justice of both cases of aggression is strongly emphasised in both plays. Considering the unmistakable crime that Macbeth has committed and his rule of tyranny, it could be argued that it is unnecessary to include the scene at all, but it will turn out that the debates about the justice and injustice of wars are almost always exempt from the plot of the plays in general, which suggests a striking intentionality in their inclusion.

13 It has been pointed out by several critics that Malcolm’s war against Macbeth lends a certain circularity to the plot: “Macduff at the end stands in the same relation to Malcolm as Macbeth did to Duncan in the beginning. He is now the king-maker on whom the legitimate monarch depends, and the recurrence of the whole sequence may be anticipated.” (Sinfield, “History, Ideology and Intellectuals,” 70) The apparent similarity is also noted by Berger: “Macduff’s killing Macbeth recalls Macbeth’s victory over Macdonwald. […] This may be viewed as poetic justice, the wheel come full circle. But it may also be simple recurrence, more of the same. In killing Macbeth, Macduff steps into his role. Will he become Malcolm’s Macbeth?” Berger further claims that “Macduff is also a regicide,” because “having killed the king [Macbeth] did not have to steal or usurp the throne because the flight of the king’s sons, and their suspicious behaviour, left him the next in line. Thus in purely political terms, Malcolm’s leading the English army to Dunsinane is no less disloyal to the Scottish throne than Cawdor’s treacherous assistance to Norway.” Berger, “Early Scenes of Macbeth,” 4/5. Although my perspective on Macduff is a slightly different one, I am far more inclined to agree with Vincent Petronella, who sees Macduff as a morally crucial figure: “In his complex role as parallel-figure, respondent to death, and center of truth, Macduff acts aesthetically as a unifying force in the play. His dramatic journey is an epitome of the main human relationships and some of the main themes found throughout the play. He, in fact, becomes the moral center around which dramatic events revolve, and although not the central figure of the drama, Macduff differs considerably to the tragic force of Shakespeare’s Macbeth.” Vincent F. Petronella, “The Role of Macduff in Macbeth,” Etudes Anglaises 32.1 (1979): 11–19, 19. 14 This is why Cordelia in King Lear says “No blown ambition doth our arms incite, | But love, dear love, and our aged father’s right […].” (William Shakespeare, King Lear, ed. R. A. Foakes. The Arden Shakespeare Third Series [London: Thomson Learning, 1997]: 4.4.27/28) Since she is Queen of France at this point, this is strictly speaking an international war. But it is not personally motivated, because the underlying intention is the restoration of her father’s royal rights, as she herself credibly remarks: “It is thy business that I go about.” (King Lear, 4.4.24) At the same time it must be considered to be disproportional to its aim, since the play leaves no doubt about the fact that Lear is no longer fit to be king. However, Cordelia’s war is overshadowed by the impact her return to the stage has after such a long absence, so that the ethical implications are no further discussed in this play.

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Due to the moral urgency that the tyrannous rules of both Richard and Macbeth cause, the wars that are waged against them may be clearly justified from the perspective of just war theory. However, included in the Shakespearean canon are also wars, which seem to represent aggression as a crime, since they violate another’s territorial integrity and/or political sovereignty. Since in these plays, there is no moral obligation for aggression, the need for justification becomes proportionally more important and simultaneously more difficult. This is evident from the scope the discussion of the Aquinian principles is given in the plays. As it turns out, in those cases where aggression might indeed be considered a crime, the focus on the ethics of war is even stronger and the analysis of the justice of aggression more complex.

4.1.1 Legitimate Authority According to Thomas Aquinas, the auctoritas principis is the first fundamental principle necessary for the justification of a war, which entails that only the prince is in the position to rightfully declare war: “For it does not pertain to a private person to declare war, because he can prosecute his rights at the tribunal of his superior […].”15 Hence, prior to any declarations of the justice of the cause or the right intention on the part of the aggressor, Aquinas postulates that as a first step the legitimacy of the superior declaring war must be ensured, which necessarily begs the question of which obligatory parameters such authority rests on. This question is pursued in Shakespeare’s Richard II through the opposition between the King and Bolingbroke. It has been claimed that Richard II is the only one of Shakespeare’s kings who has an entirely unquestionable right to the throne, as for instance Leonard Tennenhouse attests: “It is significant that few if any monarchs in the entire sequence of history plays are represented at the outset of their dramas with a more secure claim to the throne.”16 This assumption is confirmed by the opening of the play, whose first scene contains no less than 28 references to the order of the state, Richard’s sovereignty and Bolingbroke’s subordination, which creates the illusion of a well-ordered state and presents Richard as the auctoritas principis of England.17 However, simultaneously the legit15 Aquinas, Political Writings, 240. 16 Leonard Tennenhouse, “Rituals of State/Strategies of Power” in Shakespeare’s History Plays. Richard II to Henry V, ed. Graham Holderness (London et al.: Macmillan, 1992): 50–63, 53. 17 See Richard II, 1.1.2; 10; 11; 14; 21; 24; 24; 31; 32; 34; 45; 54; 58; 59; 67; 109; 111; 122; 129; 134; 151; 152; 163; 165; 166; 174; 181; 196. All quotations from Richard II are from the following edition and will be given parenthetically: William Shakespeare, Richard II, ed. Charles R. Forker. The Arden Shakespeare Third Series (London: Thomson Learning, 2002).

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imacy of Richard’s rule is questioned from the outset of the play, because the intrinsic nature of legitimate authority is the actual concern of the play, which pits a divinely sanctioned but incapable king against a secularly installed but capable one. Michael Manheim has claimed that in this play, Shakespeare is “fundamentally concerned with the insoluble problems which ensue when a youthful, pleasure-loving monarch is unwilling to do his job […],”18 but Richard’s shortcomings as a king are shown to be more severe than that. He is not as passively incapable as Henry VI, although the parallel is certainly evident, but he makes graver, for more intentional, political mistakes, the fatality of which is then increased due to Bolingbroke’s political talents.19 Richard’s downfall results from his ignorance of certain political principles that Bolingbroke adheres to as Leggatt points out: “[T]he myth of kingship as a divine office and stylized forms that go with it are tested against the realities of politics and personality.”20 King Richard actively forfeits his rightful rule and thereby enables Bolingbroke to establish himself as the legitimate authority by the right political maneuvers. In stark contrast to the personal ambitions and selfish motives put forward by the characters of the first tetralogy, Bolingbroke’s grounds for acting as he does are far too inscrutable to determine them as equally selfish. His first address of Richard as “[m]y gracious

18 Manheim, Weak King Dilemma, 54/55. 19 Robin Headlam Wells has pointed out that according to contemporary thought, Richard even counts as a tyrant: “Richard is not simply a weak and ineffectual king like Henry VI: he is a tyrant – at least according to most contemporary definitions of the term – who thinks more about his own needs than his country’s.” Wells, Shakespeare’s Politics, 114/115. Wells here quotes Bodin for a contemporary definition of a just ruler in contrast to a tyrant: “Now the greatest difference betwixt a king and a tyrant is for that a king conformeth himself unto the laws of nature, which the tyrant at his pleasure treadeth under foot: the one of them respecteth religion, justice, and faith, whereas the other regardeth neither God, faith, nor law. The one of them referreth all his actions to the good of the commonweal, and safety of his subjects, whereas the other respecteth nothing more than his own particular profit, revenge, or pleasure. The one doth all his endeavour for the enriching of his subjects, whereas the other seeketh after nothing more, than by the impoverishment of them, to increase his own wealth.” Jean Bodin, The Sixe Books of a Commonweale (1576) qtd. in Wells, Shakespeare’s Politics, 104. 20 Leggatt, Shakespeare’s Political Drama, 60. This is, of course, among other things possible due to the dichotomy of body politic and body natural that Richard gradually dissolves, as Kantorowicz famously showed: “Bit by bit he deprives his body politic of the symbols of its dignity and exposes his poor body natural to the eyes of the spectator.” Ernst H. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies. A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton UP, 1957): 36. By losing the divinely sanctioned element of his kingship as Kantorowicz shows in his analysis, Richard makes himself vulnerable to the secular powers of Bolingbroke, who simply proves to be more capable in the ‘real world.’

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sovereign, my most loving liege,” (Richard II, 1.1.21) emphasises his position as a subordinate subject and this is the “official version” that is maintained throughout the play until Richard abdicates. As Brents Stirling has observed, “[n]ever, in an age of drama marked by discursive self-revelation, has a character disclosed his traits with such economy and understatement.”21 Indeed, Bolingbroke’s motives and intentions are never revealed in soliloquies or asides, so that the character gives the impression to be acting merely out of concern for the public good. The first doubt that is cast on Richard’s authority is Bolingbroke’s accusation of Mowbray as the murderer of Woodstock, which implies Richard as the actual initiator behind the crime.22 The suspicion is confirmed, when Richard abruptly stops the duel that is supposed to settle the matter, as he himself had proclaimed when ordering it: “Justice design the victor’s chivalry,” (Richard II, 1.1.203) but when Richard interrupts the duel and banishes both Mowbray and Bolingbroke the implication is clear that if justice were the decisive force indeed, Bolingbroke would win the duel and thereby prove Richard guilty of the crime, as Michael Manheim points out: Richard has his reasons, of course – reasons which accord with the slovenly Machiavellianism which governs many decisions in Shakespeare’s political drama – but they are abysmally applied. He knows that if “Right be Done,” Bolingbroke will defeat Mowbray, who is certainly guilty of complicity at least in Woodstock’s murder.23

21 Brents Stirling, “Bolingbroke’s ‘Decision’,” Shakespeare Quarterly 2.1 (1951): 27–34, 34. 22 Whether or not we are supposed to believe Richard to be at least partly guilty of this crime has been subject of much critical debate, but Gaunt’s statement in 2.1 seems to settle the matter unquestionably: “Alas, the part I had in Woodstock’s blood | Doth more solicit me than your exclaims | To stir against the butchers of his life. | But since correction lieth in those hands | Which made the fault that we cannot correct, | Put we our quarrel to the will of heaven, | Who, when they see the hours ripe on earth, | Will rain hot vengeance on offenders’ heads.” (Richard II, 1.2.1–14) See also A. L. French, “Richard II and the Woodstock Murder,” Shakespeare Quarterly 22.4 (1971): 337–344, 338. 23 Manheim, Weak King Dilemma, 56. Phyllis Rackin explains how Richard undermines his own authority by interrupting the duel: “When Richard stops the trial by combat he interferes with a symbolic embodiment of his own authority. Trial by combat is a ritual based on the assumption that right makes might, an assumption that underlies the authority of the whole feudal system, including the authority of God’s anointed king. In preventing the symbolic ritual of chivalry, Richard attacks the source of the only authority that makes him king.” Rackin, Stages of History, 49.

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Hence, Richard makes the first crucial contribution to undermining his own authority, which is followed immediately by his second mistake of banishing Bolingbroke and seizing his inheritance for his own purposes, therefore directly provoking the latter’s act of aggression. Thus, when Bolingbroke returns prematurely and thus illegally from his banishment in order to regain his possession, Richard’s previous mistakes enable the former to declare his act of aggression as a subject’s right of self-defence: Will you permit that I shall stand condemned A wandering vagabond, my rights and royalties Plucked from my arms perforce and given them away To upstart thrifts? […] I am a subject And I challenge law. Attorneys are denied me, And therefore personally I lay my claim To my inheritance of free decent. (Richard II, 2.3.119–122; 133–136)

Officially Bolingbroke returns as a subject wronged by his king with a right of recompensation that Richard is obliged to fulfill, if he wants to maintain his rightful authority. Thus, Bolingbroke acts in perfect accordance with the Aquinian precept that any private person should prosecute their rights by an appeal to their superior. However, as convincing as Bolingbroke’s arguments here may seem, his rights are somewhat clouded by the fact that he is not only a subject, but he is a subject accompanied by an entire army. The blame that York lays upon him in the scene of confrontation is therefore not so much for his return from banishment, but for the fact that he has returned with an army, which immediately poses the threat of civil war: Why have those banished and forbidden legs Dared once to touch a dust of England’s ground? But then, more why – why have they dared to march So many miles upon her peaceful bosom, Frighting her pale-faced villages with war And ostentation of despised arms? (Richard II, 2.3.90–95)

What Bolingbroke here claims to be an attempt to gain the rights he has been denied seems to be an unlawful act of aggression against the king. At the same time, he manages to distract everyone’s attention from the fact that he is armed by his stubborn insistence on his status as a subject that must be justly treated by the king, so that it is Richard’s faults that are emphasised here, not Bolingbroke’s aggression, as Donna Hamilton has argued:

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Bolingbroke’s re-entry into England […] must be judged illegal because it defies the order of banishment. But it also serves as a reminder that Richard has furnished his subject with a precedent for side-stepping the law. Moreover, because some of Richard’s abuses have been particularly at Bolingbroke’s expense, the latter’s return directs attention quite specifically to the consequences of Richard’s disregards of a subject’s right under the law.24

Bolingbroke’s aggression therefore seems to be self-inflicted by Richard’s mistakes and simultaneously, Bolingbroke never expresses any other motives than gaining his rights, so that it is generally agreed upon that the army is unnecessary, but the endeavour valid. York is the only character who insists that “in this kind to come – in braving arms | Be his own carver, and cut out his way | To find out right with wrong – it may not be.” (Richard II, 2.3.143–145) However, York’s fear is of course greater than that Bolingbroke may gain his rights – the underlying fear is that of civil war. York assumes that Bolingbroke attempts to gain not only his possessions but also the crown, which might cause civil strive, but this suspicion never falls on fruitful ground. Bolingbroke refuses to express any desire other than that for his inheritance, as A. L. French has observed: This is his story, and he sticks to it with dogged pertinacity right up to the point in Act IV where, after York has told him that Richard has adopted him heir ‘with willing soul’, he exclaims ‘In God’s name, I’ll ascend the regal throne’ (IV. i. 113). At no point before this does Bolingbroke give the least hint that he is aiming at the crown.25

The only hint that Bolingbroke might aim for more than his possession is the army he has levied, which gives the impression that he attempts to “find out right with wrong” but at no point does he make the mistake of admitting anything of the kind, which creates the difference to the first tetralogy: strictly speaking, Bolingbroke also pursues a private interest on the public scale, but he does not seem to be driven by ambition and he has the law on his side due to Richard’s misdemeanour. The two opposing sides in this tetralogy are therefore more equally balanced and the question of justice more difficult to decide as Phyllis Rackin argues:

24 Donna B. Hamilton, “The State of Law in Richard II,” Shakespeare Quarterly 34.1 (1983): 5–17, 14/15. 25 A. L. French, “Who Deposed Richard the Second?” Essays in Criticism 17.4 (1967): 411–433, 415/416. French further points out convincingly that the play could easily have Bolingbroke disclose his real intentions like the characters of the first tetralogy do: “If Shakespeare had meant us here to suspect that Bolingbroke was being disingenuous he could have easily suggested it. He does not. Bolingbroke is unique among Shakespeare’s ambitious men (if he is an ambitious man) in that he is never given any opportunity to open his mind to us; long before Shakespeare wrote this play, he let the go-getting Lords in Henry VI disclose their ambitions – Suffolk and York, for instance.” French, “Who Deposed Richard the Second?” 416/417.

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Richard, the hereditary king who believes heaven will protect his divine right to the throne, is still depicted as being largely at fault in his deposition. Bullinbrook, the usurper, is an enigmatic figure, clearly at fault at taking a throne that he has not inherited, but otherwise not obviously reprehensible, and certainly endorsed with the warrant of success.26

Bolingbroke’s success, gaining the crown without specifically reaching out for it, is first of all based on Richard’s failure and secondly confirms what must be understood as auctoritas principis. York’s concern about Bolingbroke’s act of aggression is first and foremost based on the fear that a civil war may break out, but despite the fact that the scenario created resembles that of a cold war, where the outbreak of violence is immanently possible, the whole transition of power from Richard II to Bolingbroke happens as peacefully as no other succession in Shakespeare’s plays. Richard’s downfall and Bolingbroke’s ascent cause no open violence, but appear as a natural process, which is emphasised by the juxtaposition of scenes alternating between the two sides, the one losing, the other gaining power. The moment York joins Bolingbroke is followed by the moment Richard loses support of the Welsh and Bolingbroke’s strong appearance back in England is juxtaposed with Richard’s feeble return from Ireland. It is here that the term “usurpation” is uttered for the first time, but it is Richard who speaks of Bolingbroke’s “treacherous feet” and “usurping steps,” (Richard II, 3.2.16/17) and it is Richard, who seems to have accepted an impending defeat where no direct threat has been issued, as Winny points out: “Richard surrenders himself to Bolingbroke as though he wished to ensure his political abasement, hinting broadly at Bolingbroke’s larger ambition before there has been any show of an attempt on the crown.”27 French also remarks that “so far as the audience are concerned, it is Richard himself who first expresses the idea that his crown is at stake.”28 It seems as if the mere news of Bolingbroke’s return were enough to make Richard believe that he is defeated because he is aware of Bolingbroke’s capabilities and popularity. At the end of the scene, he unofficially abdicates without even having confronted the opponent and his willful resignation thus clearly disqualifies him as rightful king: “From Richard’s night to Bolingbroke’s fair day,” (Richard II, 3.2.217) the final lines of

26 Rackin, Stages of History, 68. This is also maintained by Michael Manheim: “The ambition Bolingbroke represents is not thereby made incontrovertibly an evil one. The play suggests no final opinion as to whether he was right or wrong in doing what he did. […] He obviously has qualities of leadership Richard lacks, but whether those qualities are enough to justify the deposing of a weak king is not decided in this play.” Manheim, Weak King Dilemma, 74. 27 Winny, The Player King, 58. 28 French, “Who Deposed Richard the Second?” 419.

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this crucial scene, imply three things: they foreshadow what will follow, they represent Richard’s conviction that Bolingbroke’s success of gaining the crown is a foregone conclusion and thereby they render Richard an ineffectual and irresponsible king. As early as 2.1, Gaunt had proclaimed Richard “Landlord of England” (113) and not king. Considering how easily Richard gives up his reign, this assessment is correct. Through his behaviour he forfeits his rights and his legitimate authority, which is almost automatically passed on to Bolingbroke. As French rightly points out, “Shakespeare puts all the talk about deposition in Richard’s own mouth,”29 but this must not lead to the assumption that Bolingbroke unwillingly accepts the crown. The point is that in contrast to the nobles of the first tetralogy, Bolingbroke employs entirely different means in order to ascend the throne, the most important of which is to avoid the outbreak of civil war. He never discards the official version of his concerns, which are his possessions on the one hand, but the public good on the other hand, and thus the transition of power takes place without a single battle, as Alexander Leggatt points out: “Richard II is unique among Shakespeare’s earlier history plays in having no battle scene. Bolingbroke’s armies march and Richard’s armies desert; that is what the military action comes to.”30 Thus, Bolingbroke’s right to the throne is grounded not only in Richard’s incapability, but also in the fact that he is capable of deposing a king without causing a civil war, although his readiness to fight as proved by the accompanying army also functions as evidence for his secular power as opposed to divine right. Richard, on the other hand, only relies on his divine right: For every man that Bolingbroke hath pressed To lift shrewd steel against our golden crown, God for His Richard hath in heavenly pay A glorious angel. Then, if angels fight, Weak men must fall, for heaven still guards the right. (Richard II, 3.2.58–62)

This speech is clearly reminiscent of the assurance in Richard III that “God, and good angels fight on Richmond’s side,” and thus the difference between the two is pointedly brought to the fore: Richmond has divine sanction, because he has a just cause – Richard believes that he has a just cause because he has divine sanction. Thus, legitimate authority does not simply rest upon divine right; it must be secularly proved. James Winny points out that “[a]lthough [Richard] has insisted that his rights and title are inviolable, he is not prepared to undertake the sim-

29 French, “Who Deposed Richard the Second?” 424. 30 Leggatt, Shakespeare’s Political Drama, 56.

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plest physical measure to defend them […],”31 which constitutes the greatest of all of Richard’s mistakes. Due to Richard’s refusal to defend his throne violently and Bolingbroke’s concern not to gain the throne violently, the actual “deposition” is entirely anti-climactic despite the politically and historically crucial event. According to the skills Bolingbroke shows in ascending the throne, he proves himself to be a capable king and displays a behaviour that, in Barbara Baines’s words, “sharply contrasts with the whimsical, capricious behaviour of Richard” and “suggests clearly that the right to power goes hand-in-hand with the ability to use it properly.”32 In her opinion, the “dominant theme of Richard II is the incompetence of Richard, not the ambition of Bolingbroke,”33 which forms the exact opposite to the first tetralogy, where the nobles’ ambitions dominate over the theme of Henry’s incapability. In this later play, the assumption clearly seems to be that the good ruler is a legitimate ruler, not the divinely appointed one; and one of the most important aspects of good rule is the capability of avoiding civil war. Thus, despite the many ambiguities of Richard II, the nature of the auctoritas principis is not only discussed at length but is also given a straightforward answer: legitimate authority derives from good rule and good rule grounds in the capability of preventing war. This assumption may be further underlined by a brief consideration of another Shakespearean play which also focuses on royal authority. Here the illegitimacy of the ruler is indubitable, because King John is not a divinely anointed king like Richard II; John is an illegitimate ruler from the start, which suggests a comparison between him and Bolingbroke and the difference between their authorities. King John is among those plays that are particularly difficult to date and the matter will probably never be satisfyingly settled.34 Most editors have in recent

31 Winny, The Player King, 59. Moreover, Grene comments on the particular irony that arises from this scene’s emphasis on the bond between land and nation, kingship and nationhood: “The irony here, as elsewhere in the play, is that Richard is the best spokesman for those very principles of kingship and nationhood that he himself has done most to subvert. […] In farming the royal realm, in leasing it out, the King has traduced his own position as sovereign and the sovereignty of the relationship between king and land.” Grene, Shakespeare’s Serial History Plays, 169. 32 Barbara Baines, “Kingship of the Silent King. A Study of Shakespeare’s Bolingbroke,” English Studies. A Journal of English Language and Literature 61 (1980): 24–36, 29. 33 Baines, “Kingship of the Silent King,” 29. 34 For an overview of scholarly approaches towards the date of the play see Jean-Christophe Mayer, Shakespeare’s Hybrid Faith. History, Religion and the Stage (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006): 80–83. Alongside the development in critical discussion of the date of King John, its ‘quality’ has also been discussed frequently and simultaneously to the growing tendency to consider it a later play than previously assumed, it increasingly became more valued as a ‘good’ play too. For an overview of this development see Willy Maley, “‘And bloody England into England

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years assumed, however, that it must have been composed in the mid-1590s, which would place it chronologically very shortly after King Richard II and the emphasis both plays place on the aspect of a ruler’s legitimate authority might be supportive of such an assumption.35 While the depiction of Bolingbroke has led some critics to believe that the play supports Machiavellian ‘might makes right’-policy, although the true implication is quite to the contrary, the character of King John certainly acts according to ‘might makes right,’ which is emphasised from the earliest lines of the play. King John might be considered an evil version of Bolingbroke, for while the latter manages to establish a rightful authority peacefully, the former abuses his unlawful authority violently, culminating in the murder of the heir apparent. At the outset of the play King John is addressed by the French ambassador trying to negotiate in the conflict between England and France, as “borrow’d majesty” (King John, 1.1.4) and while this is certainly meant as a provocation, it becomes immediately clear that John is a usurper. John opposes the French claim to the throne on behalf of the boy Arthur, John’s nephew, by reference to his “strong possession” and his “right,” (King John, 1.1.39) which is immediately relativised by his own mother:

gone’: Empire, Monarchy and Nation in King John” in This England, That Shakespeare. New Angles on Englishness and the Bard, eds. Willy Maley and Margaret Tudeau-Clayton (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010): 49–61. Whether or not King John is a good play is not central to my argument, but the sophisticated analysis of the nature of legitimate authority that it displays would suggest that it is. 35 There are certain similarities between the plays both thematically and stylistically which have been noted by several editors, which also confirm the dating of King John around 1596. L. A. Beaurline notes that “[t]he only certainties about the date of King John are that it was first printed in the 1623 Folio and written sometime after the second edition of Holinshed’s Chronicles (1587) but before 1598, when Francis Meres listed it in Palladis Tamia among Shakespeare’s tragedies. […] But signs of an increasingly mature style may be found in some of John’s and the Bastard’s speeches, which create the illusion of a person thinking and comprehending, like certain speeches by Richard II.” William Shakespeare, King John, ed. L. A. Beaurline. The New Cambridge Shakespeare (Cambridge: CUP, 1990): 194. A. R. Braunmüller agrees that “[s]ince the play apparently uses information from the second edition of Holinshed’s Chronicles, it must post-date 1587,” and confirms that “the play has been closely associated with Richard II (1595),” assuming that it must have been “composed and performed in the mid-1590s, most probably 1595–6.” William Shakespeare, The Life and Death of King John, ed. A. R. Braunmüller. The Oxford Shakespeare (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989): 2, 15. The Arden editor, however, concludes that “John was written in the winter/spring of 1590/91.” William Shakespeare, King John, ed. E. A. J. Honigmann. The Arden Shakespeare Second Series (London: Methuen & Co. Ltd, 1954): lviii (All quotations from King John are taken from this edition and will be given parenthetically). I do not attempt to contribute to this particular discussion but according to the strong thematic connection between Richard II and King John, I will consider the latter as post-dating the former around 1596.

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Your strong possession much more than your right, Or else it must go wrong with you and me: So much my conscience whispers in your ear, Which none but heaven, and you, and I, shall hear. (King John, 1.1.40–44)

This is a clear and reliable statement that John has usurped the throne, since it is uttered in confidentiality and honesty, as Virginia M. Vaughan makes clear: “If John’s mother’s conscience doubts his claim, then his legitimacy is also doubtful to the spectator.”36 Furthermore, both John and Eleanor are aware of the immorality of his position as Camille Slights points out: “[H]er reference to her conscience lets us know that in pursuing John’s political goals, she and, perhaps, John deliberately act against their own moral judgments.”37 Slights’s “perhaps” is putting the matter too carefully, since John’s abuse of his political power is even stronger than Eleanor’s, as the development of the scene makes clear. France threatens England with “[t]he proud control of fierce and bloody war, | To enforce these rights so forcibly withheld,” (King John, 1.1.17/18) which, strictly speaking, constitutes an unlawful act of aggression as long as the matter of the rightful succession to the throne of England is not decisively settled. Thus, if he had any confidence in his rightful legitimacy, John could easily allow the aggression in order to have at least the right of self-defence, but instead he decides on aggression, in modern terms a pre-emptive strike, and sends the French ambassador back: Be thou as lightning in the eyes of France, For, ere thou canst report, I will be there: The thunder of my cannon shall be heard. So, hence! Be thou the trumpet of our wrath And sullen presage of your own decay. (King John, 1.1.24–28)

As Ken Jackson remarks, “John certainly recognizes Arthur’s substantial claim to the throne, a claim that threatens his reign,”38 and therefore he chooses aggression in perfect accordance with the realist ‘might makes right’-doctrine. There is no doubt, however, that this is an unlawful aggression, because first, his cause

36 Virginia M. Vaughan, “King John: A Study in Subversion and Containment” in King John. New Perspectives, ed. Deborah T. Curren-Aquino (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1989): 62–75, 65. 37 Camille Slights, “When is a Bastard Not a Bastard? Character and Conscience in King John” in Shakespeare and Character. Theory, History, Performance and Theatrical Persons, eds. Paul Yachnin and Jessica Slights (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009): 214–231, 216. 38 Ken Jackson, “‘Is It God or the Sovereign Exception?’ Giorgio Agamben’s Homo Sacer and Shakespeare’s King John,” Religion & Literature 38.3 (2003): 85–100, 85.

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is the attempt to secure his reign and second, he has no authority to declare this war, as even Eleanor is aware of: This might have been prevented and made whole With very easy arguments of love, Which now the manage of two kingdoms must With fearful-bloody issue arbitrate. (King John, 1.1.35–38)

Eleanor’s statement draws on the doctrine of war as a last resort. War must be the last means of settling a conflict and can only be begun, when all other means are exhausted; the first scene of this play, however, is dedicated to the depiction of the exact opposite.39 As Laurence Lerner explains, this enables the audience to evaluate war as a means of solving international conflicts. He terms this a pacifist reading of the play, which it is not, since pacifism would not allow war as a method in the first place, but Lerner somewhat refines his terminology: By calling these values ‘pacifist’, and using the shorthand term ‘pacifist reading’ I do not of course mean to claim that all modern readers are pacifists, but to call attention to the crucial point about political conflict, that it presents us with two sides, each claiming to be in the right, and each trying to defeat the other. A conventional representation of this invites us to decide which side we support; in contrast, what I have called a pacifist reading directs our attention to how the dispute is to be settled. Settling it by war could cause more suffering than the victory on either side. The crucial moments in such a reading, then, will not be the moments of choice between the two sides (should John or Arthur sit on the English throne?) but the moments of choice between ways of settling the matter (war or diplomacy, war or compromise).40

The crucial point the play makes here is indeed that of morally evaluating war as a means to settle political conflicts and it is exactly those “moments of choice” Lerner refers to that are so indispensable and yet so absent in the play. Eleanor claims that diplomacy or compromise could prevent all of the following; an assumption that will be frequently recalled during the rest of the play, which em-

39 In the first depiction of the French side of the conflict, Constance is given a speech seemingly equally committed to the policy of appeasement: “Stay for an answer to our embassy, | Lest unadvis’d you stain your swords with blood: | My Lord Chatillon may from England bring | That right in peace which we here urge in war, | And then we shall repent each drop of blood | That hot rash haste so indirectly shed.” (King John, 2.1.44–49) This is a straightforward argument for war as a last resort and the preferable means of solving the conflict peacefully by negotiation. However, later on she will inconsistently exclaim: “War! war! no peace! peace is to me a war.” (King John, 3.1.39). 40 Laurence Lerner, “King John, König Johann: War and Peace,” Shakespeare Survey 54 (2001): 213–222, 217.

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phasises that such a peaceful solution would be far preferable. If war is a last resort, it may be morally justified, but King John demonstrates how futile war can be, if it is not the last resort, but rather the result of premature aggression. John’s behaviour is thus reprehensible from several angles in exactly those points that Bolingbroke’s is not: he is an illegitimate authority, who declares an unjust war without showing any consideration for the consequences this will have or trying to prevent them and, in Berry’s words, “John’s every act is tainted by his false position.”41 Thus, King John does not scrutinise the intrinsic nature of legitimate authority as Richard II, but regards the consequences of illegitimate authority in execution, which finds its first climax in the confrontation of both armies outside Angiers: both the French and the English lay claim to the city based on their assumption to have a right to the English throne and the scene visually demonstrates the stalemate situation as either army are denied entrance by the citizens. Hubert’s speech delivered from the city walls finally puts an end to the assumption that might may make right: [F]rom off our towers we might behold, From first to last, the onset and retire Of both your armies; whose equality By our best eyes cannot be censured: Blood hath bought blood and blows have answer’d blows; Strength match’d with strength, and power confronted power: Both are alike, and both alike we like. One must prove greatest: while they weigh so ever We hold our town for neither, yet for both. (King John, 2.1.326–333)

Reminiscent of Henry’s description of the two armies in 3Henry VI that oppose each other like natural forces without dominance of one over the other, Hubert makes clear that sheer martial strength will not determine whose claim is rightful. One must prove “greatest,” i.e. worthy of taking the town and this right is necessarily intertwined with the legitimacy of their claim. Sigurd Burckhardt claims that the “town of Angiers is the embodiment in dramatic fact of a crucial dilemma,”42 because there is no divine intervention to determine who is right: It would appear – it must at any rate appear to the citizens of Angiers – that Almighty God hath assigned, all in good and necessary order, at least one king too many. The citizens are

41 Berry, Patterns of Decay, 115. 42 Sigurd Burckhardt, Shakespearean Meanings (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968): 125.

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not rebellious or unwilling to listen; they positively beg to be instructed. But before Angiers all such instruction turns into empty noise, for lack of the one thing that alone could give it meaning: the truly authorized spokesman, the man bearing the warrant.43

This lack of a “truly authorized spokesman,” in other words a legitimate authority, emphasises that this war is unjust on either side, because neither King John nor King Philip are authorised to declare it. Virginia Mason Vaughan, on the other hand, claims that the juxtaposition of the two sides is a product of Shakespeare’s increasing political sophistication that demonstrates the arbitrariness of a political conflict, where both sides are right: King John conveys Shakespeare’s growing political sophistication by changes in dramatic technique. Increasingly, Shakespeare experiments with representational tactics. In the clashes between John and Arthur, the Bastard and his brother, Constance and Elinor, Pandulph and John, Lewis and John, the barons and John, and finally, Pandulph and Lewis, each side has some legitimacy. The scenes are arranged so as to give the audience divided loyalties: politics becomes embedded in personal relationships rather than abstract ideas. True, civil war is still a major concern, but the moral – that England must be true to itself – is openly stated only in the play’s last lines. Until then, through a series of debate-like scenes, […] the play probes rather than pronounces. What does it mean to be “true”? Should a nation be true to an untrue king? Is there a higher authority than the king’s, moral or religious? In King John the issues of sovereignty and legitimacy cloud any facile moralizing on the evils of civil war and hence represent a deeper exploration of political realities.44

The dualism of the scenes and approaches and the focus on the legitimacy of a king in the play are well observed, but the arbitrariness is not derived from the fact that both sides are right. It arises from the fact that both sides are wrong. Both Arthur and John may have some proof of lineage, but the crucial point is that their claims on the throne are not strong enough to wage war over them. David Scott Kastan regards this stalemate as follows: Before Angiers neither Arthur’s right by the rule of representative primogeniture (as the son of Geoffrey, fourth son of Henry II) nor the de facto right of John (who was Henry’s fifth son) is sufficient to command the loyalty of the city; or, rather, the right of each is sufficient. […] Each claimant has a recognized and substantial right to the throne, but whose is “worthiest” resists determination.45

43 Burckhardt, Shakespearean Meanings, 126. 44 Virginia Mason Vaughan, “Between Tetralogies: King John as Transition,” Shakespeare Quarterly 35.4 (1984): 407–420, 441/412. 45 David Scott Kastan, “‘To Set a Form upon that Indigest’: Shakespeare’s Fictions of History,” Comparative Drama 17.1 (1983): 1–16, 8.

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Kastan’s reference to Hubert’s “worthiest” is telling: the stalemate arises not out of a legal, but a moral dilemma. It cannot be determined who should have the English throne because John has already immorally usurped it and Arthur’s claim is first and foremost pursued by Constance, who shows no scruples as to the means employed. When the conflict of Angiers is temporarily resolved through the marriage between English Blanche and French Lewis, Constance’s unethical perspective on the situation makes clear that this is an equally immoral claim: You have beguil’d me with a counterfeit Resembling majesty, which, being touch’d and tried, Proves valueless: your are forsworn, forsworn! You came in arms to spill mine enemies’ blood, But now in arms you strengthen it with yours. The grappling vigour and rough frown of war Is cold in amity, and painted peace, And our oppression hath made up this league. Arm, arm, you heavens, against these perjur’d kings! A widow cries; be husband to me, heavens! Let not the hours of this ungodly day Wear out the day’s in peace; but, ere sunset, Set armed discord ’twixt these perjur’d kings! (King John, 3.1.25–37)

Reminiscent of the voice of Queen Margaret, Constance’s mode of expression is significant: first of all, she draws attention to the two “counterfeit” kings and secondly denies Philip his legitimacy, because he has not spilled blood for her, a clearly immoral demand. Thirdly, she desires war, specifically asking for the loss of human lives in order to gain her son’s rights, which very much resembles the indifference towards human suffering of the first tetralogy. Her insistence on war rather than negotiation or any other more peaceful means to gain the English throne for her son thus only emphasises the injustice of declaring war in a universe where there is no rightful authority to do so.46

46 The inconsistency of this reaction with her earlier argument for appeasement is not resolved within the play but may be explicable due to the waning hope with which Constance pursues her son’s rights. The Bastard shows a similar reaction to the truce in his famous speech on commodity: “And this same bias, this commodity, | This bawd, this broker, this all-changing word, | Clapp’d on the outward fickle eye of France, | Hath drawn him from his own determin’d aid, | From a resolv’d and honourable war, | To a most base and vile-concluded peace.” (King John, 2.1.581–586). The Bastard is the most ambiguous and problematic character of the play and seems to undergo an apparently incomprehensible development and the most interesting aspect of this speech is that by attesting that France’s war is honourable, one might think that the Bastard himself regards John’s claim as unjust. However, the particular character of the Bastard, despite his choric commentary and his bastardy as a reflection of John’s illegitimacy, is not central to my ar-

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The main force for the prevention of peace is shown throughout the play to be King John himself, who finally falls victim to his attempts to publicly secure his legitimacy, which culminate in the murder of Arthur. A. J. Piesse has shown that the entire play is characterised by a “lack of clarity” concerning John’s possession to the throne, which he tries to compensate by finding “external legitimation” in three crucial scenes: at Angiers, in confrontation with the dissident English nobles and in his conversation with Hubert about Arthur’s death: […] John’s inability either to act independently or to present appropriate images of either his public or his private self at crucial moments in the play is telling. […] Incapable of inscribing a clear version of himself, he is incapable of strong leadership. John continually seeks external legitimation, and uses that externalising to refuse responsibility.47

These attempts of seeking external legitimation manifest themselves in different choices he makes throughout the play: the choice to attack France and turning a war of defence into a war of aggression, the act of supremacy over papal authority, the murder of Arthur and the second coronation upon his return from France. All choices are motivated by the attempt to secure his right to the throne, but simultaneously those choices demonstrate in a clear light that he has no right. Apart from the war with France and the conflict with Rome, John then evokes discord among his own people, because those nobles first disapprove of the second coronation, which they regard as “double pomp” and “wasteful and ridiculous excess” unfitting for a king (King John, 4.2.9/16) and second, they are shocked at the murder of the innocent child. Robert Ornstein has claimed that this aspect does not elevate John to the status of a tragic hero, because he fails to feel remorse: [T]hough we are led to expect that John’s responsibility for Arthur’s death will be as crucial an issue as Richard’s responsibility for the death of his nephews, we discover that Arthur’s fate has no bearing on John’s ultimate destiny and no effect on the judgment of John as a

gument here. For a good analysis of this character see Julia C. van de Water, “The Bastard in King John,” Shakespeare Quarterly 11.2 (1960): 137–146. The immorality of the war is further emphasised by another woman, whose personal dilemma of the conflict embodies the insolubility of the moral one. When the truce is broken despite the marriage due to John’s declaration of his supremacy over the Pope, the newly made bride Blanche represents the injustice of the conflict (see King John, 3.1.253–262). Like Henry VI wishing that one rose wither without favouring either side, Blanche here captures that neither side has a right that is predominant over the other. Moreover, she expresses her dilemma in exclusively negative terms: she cannot, may not, will not choose, which emphasises that it is not desirable that either party begin or win the war and she cannot be loyal to either due to their equal illegitimacy. 47 A. J. Piesse, “King John: Changing Perspectives” in The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare’s History Plays, ed. Michael Hattaway (Cambridge: CUP, 2002): 126–140, 134/135.

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tragic hero. […] Had John genuinely repented of his plot to murder the boy and yearned to free him, Arthur’s death might appear a pathetic mischance. At no time is John remorseful, however; at no time does he think of Arthur’s welfare.48

Ornstein rightfully points to a lack of anagnorisis in the conception of the character, but the fact that John does not recognise his guilt does not mean that Arthur’s death is not crucial for the development of the play and John’s in particular, as Edward Berry points out: It is his victory against the French, paradoxically, which insures his downfall, for with Arthur in his possession he cannot resist the impulse to destroy him. […] With Arthur’s death John’s authority collapses: the nobles rebel in protest and join forces with the French invasion.49

Despite the fact that Arthur does not die by John’s or Hubert’s hands, but in the attempt to escape them, the association is so strong that it seems not only to the nobles, but also to the audience as if John had killed the boy. Thus, John himself dies as an illegitimate king who has gained nothing in his life despite waging wasteful wars. The fatal consequences his illegitimacy and his ensuing decisions have throughout the play find their epitome in a speech delivered by Salisbury after defecting to the French army attacking England. Finding himself in an act of aggression towards his own nation, he resumes what unnatural discord John’s struggle for legitimacy has caused: But such is the infection of the time, That, for the health and physic of our right, We cannot deal but with the very hand Of stern injustice and confused wrong. And is’t not pity, O my grieved friends, That we, the sons and children of this isle, Was born to see so sad an hour as this; Wherein we step after a stranger, march Upon her gentle bosom, and fill up Her enemies’ ranks – I must withdraw and weep Upon the spot of this enforced cause […]. (King John, 5.2.20–30)

As often as this speech has been read as representing an early tendency towards nationalism, not unlike Gaunt’s speech in Richard II, what Salisbury describes here more specifically is war as an act of force that coerces the other into re-

48 Ornstein, A Kingdom for a Stage, 96/97. 49 Berry, Patterns of Decay, 115.

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ciprocating equally violently as Clausewitz would describe it several centuries later. And this dilemma can be ultimately traced back to John’s illegitimate reign, which makes him declare war on France until the developments lead to Englishmen attacking England alongside the French. This dilemma forcefully demonstrates what happens when war is not declared by a legitimate authority. As stated earlier, John is an evil version of Bolingbroke and the parallel becomes especially evident in the comparison of the deaths of the former King Richard and the heir apparent Arthur. Richard II is reported dead by his murderer, who claims to have acted according to Bolingbroke’s demands: “From your own mouth, my lord, did I this deed.” (Richard II, 5.6.37) This exchange, however, is not included in the play – it is only referred to when Exton describes how he believes to have been issued by Bolingbroke to kill Richard: And speaking it, he wishtly looked on me, As who should say, ‘I would thou wert the man That would divorce this terror from my heart’, Meaning the King at Pomfret. Come, let’s go. I am the King’s friend, and will rid this foe. (Richard II, 5.4.7–11)

John, on the other hand, explicitly orders Hubert to kill Arthur and it is only when he hears of the boy’s (accidental) death that he wishes Hubert had shown as much initiative as Exton, only to a different end: Hadst thou but shook thy head or made a pause When I spake darkly what I purposed, Or turn’d an eye of doubt upon my face, As bid me tell my tale in express words, Deep shame had struck me dumb, made me break off, And those thy fears might have wrought fears in me […]. (King John, 4.2.231–236)

This lamentation and John’s attempt to place the blame on Hubert is as pathetic on the one hand, because he orders Arthur’s death as explicitly as he does (“Death. […] A grave.” King John, 3.2.76), and secondly because the audience knows that Hubert had enough human compassion to spare the boy. Bolingbroke, on the other hand, is not as straightforwardly reprehensible, which is why his reaction shows authoritative and credible sternness when he dismisses the murderer: “Exton, I thank thee not, for thou hast wrought | A deed of slander with thy fatal hand | Upon my head and all this famous land.” (Richard II, 5.6.34–36) On the subject of the murder itself, however, he is silent, as Barbara Baines remarks: “Bolingbroke does not deny this assertion, nor does he try to justify Richard’s murder on

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the grounds of political necessity.”50 His state of mind still remains inscrutable, which makes this character so immune to reprehension; while John displays his weakness, his illegitimate reign, by waging war with France unlawfully, Bolingbroke brings about a transition of power and still prevents a civil war. John’s attempts to secure his legitimacy remain entirely ineffective throughout the play: For all the talk of war deciding the fate of great nations, the battles in King John decide nothing. John loses French territory but only by giving it away at Blanche’s wedding. He loses his crown by yielding it to the Pope, but only with the assurance that he will get it back again. And despite the Bastard’s closing moral, the English nobles return to the fold not because they are true but because they discover that Lewis is untrue.51

Bolingbroke, on the other hand, is most effective: he gains the crown, avoids civil war, avoids evident guilt and although in 1 and 2Henry IV the nobles also turn against him, he maintains the crown. Richard II thus demonstrates how legitimate authority over a state can be acquired, because it scrutinises what legitimate authority is: the political capability of ruling a state without unnecessary bloodshed and a seemingly clean record. King John shows the negative side of this: the abuse of illegitimate authority and the futile wars and conflicts that derive from it. John therefore fails, where Bolingbroke does not and his adherence to his policy makes it quite difficult for the nobles in the following plays to find a just cause for their rebellion.

4.1.2 Just Cause “So shaken as we are, so wan with care,” (1Henry IV, 1.1.1)52 are Henry IV’s opening lines that suggest that despite the smooth transition of power in the former play, the permanent stability of his reign is not automatically preserved. David Scott Kastan points out that “Henry recognizes the fragility of his delegitimized political position. In deposing Richard, exposing the insubstantiality of the assertions of sacred majesty, Henry’s own claims of rightful authority ring hollow.”53 Therefore Michael Manheim has stated that “[e]ven under so different a monarch, the dilemma must begin anew. What the nation gains through Bolingbroke’s more

50 Baines, “Kingship of the Silent King,” 31. 51 Vaughan, “Between Tetralogies,” 419. 52 All quotations from the first part of King Henry IV are from the following edition and will be given parenthetically: William Shakespeare, 1Henry IV. Part 1, ed. David Scott Kastan. The Arden Shakespeare Third Series (London: Thomson Learning, 2002). 53 Kastan, Shakespeare After Theory, 130.

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kingly personality, it loses through his faulty title. He is still the weak king, and the conflict between rebellion and obedience goes on.”54 Manheim claims that the dilemma must necessarily prevail because of Henry’s “weak title” – but it turns out in both parts of King Henry IV that his reign is not as fragile as these opening lines suggest. The first signs of conflict appear when Henry sends Worcester out of the room, for he sees “danger and disobedience” in his eyes. (1Henry IV, 1.3.16)55 But the first time that the rebels actually articulate the real reasons for their disobedience is delayed until act 4.56 And here, their reasoning seems somewhat dubious. La Branche identifies two possible views of the rebels’ complaints: either “they are rationalizations of an evil cause, or they are refurbishings of a cause that is simply untenable”57: [Henry] deposed the King, Soon after that deprived him of his life, And in the neck of that tasked the whole state; To make that worse, suffered his kinsman March (Who is, if every owner were well placed, Indeed his king) to be engaged in Wales, There without ransom to lie forfeited; Disgraced me in my happy victories, Sought to entrap me by intelligence, Rated mine uncle from the council board, In rage dismissed my father from the court, Broke oath on oath, committed wrong on wrong, And, in conclusion, drove us to seek out This head of safety and withal to pry Into his title, the which we find Too indirect for long continuance. (1Henry IV, 4.3.90–105)

54 Manheim, Weak King Dilemma, 55. 55 Henry opens the scene with the following words: “My blood hath been too cold and temperate, | Unapt to stir at these indignities, | And you have found me, for accordingly | You tread upon my patience; but be sure | I will from henceforth rather be myself, | Mighty and to be feared, than my condition, | Which hath been smooth as oil, soft as young down, | And therefore lost that title of respect | Which the proud soul ne’er pays but to be proud.” (1Henry IV, 1.3.1–9) Henry’s resolution to be himself already draws on the recurring image of counterfeiting so prevalent in the play, which continuously draws attention to the question of Henry’s right to the throne. See also chapter 4.2.5. 56 The problem that has caused this acute quarrel is that Henry has demanded all of Hotspur’s prisoners; an action that turns out over the course of the play to have hurt Hotspur’s pride, but it is evidently not the fundamental cause for the rebellion. 57 Anthony La Branche, “‘If Thou Wert Sensible of Courtesy’: Private and Public Virtue in Henry IV, Part One,” Shakespeare Quarterly 17.4 (1966): 371–382, 374.

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As long as his list of single complaints is that add up in his mind to one decisive just cause, the enumeration only points out clearly that the rebels lack one legitimate cause of war and as La Branche has pointed out, “[w]e are left with the problem of determining in what precise sense the ‘right’ cause is right.”58 This problem is not made any easier to define, since we know that the inofficial cause for their rebellion is the concern for their own lives, as Worcester remarks as early as act 1, scene 3: And ’tis no little reason bids us speed To save our heads by raising of a head; For, bear ourselves as even as we can, The King will always think him in our debt, And think we think ourselves unsatisfied, Till he hath found a time to pay us home. (1Henry IV, 1.3.278–283)

The rebels’ concern is therefore that since they helped Henry to the crown, he will try to resolve his debt to them by eliminating them. Due to this concern for their own lives, the official justifications of the rebel cause are characterised by duplicity, “sometimes explained as retributions for Bullingbrook’s crime against Richard, sometimes explained as the ambitious strivings of power hungry nobles,” as Phyllis Rackin points out.59 According to these uncertainties, the myriad of causes Hotspur refers to does not add up to one just cause and the only discernible motive seems to be revenge or self-preservation. La Branche claims that Hotspur’s reproach is at least emotionally, if not legally comprehensible: Hotspur’s grievances […] do suggest, dramatically at least, some historical justification of his discontent. Hotspur’s basic argument rests on shaky legal grounds, Henry’s violation of the oath sworn at Doncaster, but on strong emotional grounds – that it is impossible for those who have served Henry to know where they stand after they have served him.60

However, the emotional comprehensibility of the rebels’ grievances cannot serve as a valid justification for war. This is why Hotspur tries to “fashion” their cause in Brutus’s words by approaching it from different angles. First of all, he refers to Richard’s deposition as the initial crime – a crime that Henry should be punished for, but a crime that the Percies are also culpable of. Thus, Hotspur cannot credibly claim that Henry must be deposed for his crime, if he and his followers are equally guilty. Secondly, he accuses Henry not only of deposing but moreover

58 La Branche, “Private and Public Virtue,” 376. 59 Rackin, Stages of History, 69. 60 La Branche, “Private and Public Virtue,” 373.

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of murdering Richard, which is, however, never proven in the preceding play and did not stop the rebels from supporting Henry before.61 In addition to this, Hotspur accuses Henry of not having paid a ransom for Mortimer, demanding the captured soldiers, dismissing his father and uncle from positions at court, of being dishonest and breaking oaths, until the argument comes full circle: Henry’s illegitimacy due to Richard’s deposition. He is a capable king, however, which is why the rebels persistently fail to identify an objectively comprehensible just cause. This is further emphasised by the rebel faction’s key figure, Hotspur, himself, who has another motive for revenge. Hotspur’s official version is that Henry “disgraced him in his happy victories,” but underneath lies his “obsessive desire for honour,” as Lordi has it.62 La Branche states that Hotspur’s cause is “punctuated by selfish wrong-thinking […],”63 because Hotspur abuses the grander political scale in order to advance his personal achievements. His reasons for rebelling against Henry can thus be described as twofold: on the one hand, he claims that he wants to avenge the wrong of Richard’s deposition and rebel against the usurper, but on the other hand, his real concern seems to be his own good.64 He

61 It must be suspected indeed that Henry asked Exton to murder Richard at the end of the play, but no opposition from the nobles is staged there. Their previous deliveries of “heads” in the same scene do not suggest strong objections to murder, so that the charge laid at Henry’s feet now seems flimsy. See Northumberland: “The next news is, I have to London sent | The heads of Salisbury, Spencer, Blunt and Kent”; and Fitzwater: “My lord, I have from Oxford sent to London | The heads of Brocas and Sir Bennet Seely, | Two of the dangerous consorted traitors | That sought at Oxford thy dire overthrow.” (Richard II, 5.6.7/8; 13–16) 62 Robert J. Lordi, “Brutus and Hotspur,” Shakespeare Quarterly 27.2 (1976): 177–185, 179. In his essay, Lordi compares Brutus and Hotspur as victims of their accomplices’ manipulation, stating that “[t]he character and role of Cassius in inciting Brutus to join the conspiracy against Caesar in I.ii is similar in broad outline, if not in detail, to the character and role of Worcester in inciting Hotspur to rebellion against King Henry. Both Cassius and Worcester play the role of Machiavellian intriguer, although Worcester’s manipulation of Hotspur is much less subtle than Cassius’ manipulation of Brutus, mainly because of the almost opposite characters of those they work upon.” Lordi, “Hotspur and Brutus,” 178. While Lordi has a point when it comes to Brutus, as shall be seen later on, he is wrong in perceiving Hotspur as a victim of manipulation, for in actual fact, he is the driving force of the rebellion in the first part of King Henry IV and he embodies this role due to his personal interest in achieving honour. This interest lies at the heart of Brutus’s and Hotspur’s “almost opposite characters,” for Brutus actually believes that he is pursuing the public good, while Hotspur pursues his own. See chapter 4.1.3. 63 La Branche, “Private and Public Virtue,” 374. 64 Pugliatti claims that “weighty reasons are given to justify his rebellion and we may think that the accusations of tyranny made by the rebels against Henry are not wholly unreasonable.” Pugliatti, Shakespeare and the Just War Tradition, 144. Honour, however, is ridiculed throughout the play, so that it becomes clear that this cannot count as a weighty reason, and there are no indications that Henry might be a tyrannous ruler – certainly not towards the common people.

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wants to take personal revenge for Henry’s patronising behaviour65 and at the same time, he pursues his own reputation for honour: By heaven, methinks it were an easy leap To pluck bright honour from the pale-faced moon, Or dive into the bottom of the deep, Where fathom-line could never touch the ground, And pluck up drowned honour by the locks, So he that doth redeem her thence might wear, Without corrival, all her dignities. (1Henry IV, 1.3.200–206)

Although Hotspur’s desire for honour sets him apart and makes him “the most attractive of the rebels because of his ingenuous, if misguided, motives for lending his name and arms to the self-interested rebel cause […],”66 as Lordi has pointed out, it must be kept in mind that even honour constitutes a private motive that cannot function as a just cause for the rebellion against the king.67 The fact is, as La Branche has stated, that as a relict of “the older chivalric order, Hotspur has constantly confused personal with public welfare, personal with public conduct […].”68

65 This is comically ridiculed in the remainder of scene 1.3, where Hotspur is so “drunk with choler” (128) at Henry’s treatment that it is impossible for all of his fellow rebels to talk to him and he keeps ranting totally unawares of their interruptions, which has a comic effect as in the following lines: “He said he would not ransom Mortimer, | Forbade my tongue to speak of Mortimer; | But I will find him when he lies asleep, | And in his ear I’ll holler ‘Mortimer!’ | Nay, I’ll have a starling shall be taught to speak | Nothing but ‘Mortimer’ and give it him | To keep his anger still in motion.” (1Henry IV, 1.3.218–224) For an overview of the different generic readings Hotspur has inspired over the last decades see Roberta Barker, “Tragical-Comical-Historical Hotspur,” Shakespeare Quarterly 54.3 (2003): 288–307. 66 Lordi, “Brutus and Hotspur,” 179/180. 67 Lordi correctly distinguishes between Hotspur’s “private and egocentric” concept of honour in contrast to Brutus’s “public and unselfish” concept of honour. Lordi, “Brutus and Hotspur,” 179. That Hotspur’s obsession with honour is not only insufficient as a just cause for war, but also outdated and therefore fundamentally contributive to his downfall will be shown in chapter 4.2.2. 68 La Branche, “Private and Public Virtue,” 379. See also Phyllis Rackin’s comment: “In the world of Henry IV […] the only character who is thoroughly animated by the old feudal values is Hotspur, and it is in the name of those values, of personal honour and Mortimer’s hereditary right to the throne, that Hotspur rebels against the king.” Rackin, Stages of History, 77. The lack of a just cause on the rebels’ side is further emphasised by the lack of unity and solidarity among them. Hotspur stands out as an enigmatic figure we like, even if we don’t agree with him, but his rash and egocentric character is also portrayed as a problem preventing him from forming a unified opposition to the King. This discord among the Percies is most graphically pointed out in 3.1 of the same play, which culminates in Worcester’s lecturing Hotspur: “In faith, my lord, you are too

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Thus, through the course of the play, no matter how elaborately the rebels try to argue for the justice of their cause, it is emphasised that it is highly questionable. Additionally, Northumberland’s withdrawal from the rebel faction leads to the loss of his men and a weaker rebel army. This cannot be ignored even by the rebels themselves, who grow progressively more uncertain of the reasonableness of their endeavour, as is unmistakably pointed out by Worcester’s speech in reaction to the news: […] I would your father had been here. The quality and air of our attempt Brooks no division. It will be thought By some that know not why he is away That wisdom, loyalty and mere dislike Of our proceedings kept the Earl from hence; And think how such an apprehension May turn the tide of fearful faction And breed a kind of question in our cause. (1Henry IV, 4.1.59–67)

In contrast to the first tetralogy, the need for a publicly justifiable cause is thus brought to the fore, which begs the question, what might be understood as a just cause. Worcester shows a strong awareness for the fact that proportionally to the degree of discord among the rebel faction, doubt will arise about their intention of pursuing the public good – the more their motive seems to be ambition, the more they are likely to fail. Exactly at this point, the rebel’s demise begins, for it is the very lack of the objectively justifiable cause that causes their failure. Winny points out that the “uncertainty of purpose in the rebels, and the absence of any persuasive moral argument to strengthen their public cause, […] constitute a political weakness which Bolingbroke had never allowed himself […]”69 and this is the core of the problem. They do not have a just cause and the realisation of this fact among the characters as well as the audience is from now on inexorable.70

wilful-blame | And, since your coming hither, have done enough | To put him [Glendower] quite beside his patience. | You must needs learn, lord, to amend his fault. | Though sometimes it show greatness, courage, blood | (And that’s the dearest grace it renders you), | Yet oftentimes it doth present harsh rage, | Defect of manners, want of government, | Pride, haughtiness, opinion and disdain, | The least of which haunting a nobleman | Loseth men’s hearts and leaves behind a stain | Upon the beauty of all parts besides, | Beguiling them of commendation” (1Henry IV, 3.1.173–185). 69 Winny, The Player King, 152. 70 See also Lordi’s comment: “It is a normal practice of Shakespeare to associate disharmony, disease, and other attendant ills with the cause he wants to depict as failing in the presence of a superior, and most often, better cause.” Lordi, “Brutus and Hotspur,” 184.

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Thus, due to the questionable nature of the rebels’ cause and their proclaimed justifications, Henry’s repeated statements for the justice of his cause are more appealing than they would otherwise be conceived. He argues first and foremost for peace – peace that is based on obedience, but peace nevertheless: How now, my lord of Worcester? ’Tis not well That you and I should meet upon such terms As now we meet. You have deceived our trust And made us doff our easy robes of peace To crush our old limbs in ungentle steel. This is not well, my lord; this is not well. What say you to it? Will you again unknit This churlish knot of all-abhorred war And move in that obedient orb again Where you did give a fair and natural light, And be no more an exhaled meteor, A prodigy of fear and portent Of broached mischief to the unborn times? (1Henry IV, 5.1.9–21)71

Winny claims that in “both Richard II and Henry IV [Henry] seems to have justice on his side if not the strict approval of the law, and he speaks as though sincerely concerned for the well-being of the kingdom whose moral health he destroys.”72 This concern for the public good, which is consistent within the character, leads to Henry’s preservation of the peace and thus the strongest argument in his favour; simultaneously, the rebel cause rapidly decreases in integrity.73 The arbit-

71 Richard Eastman has noted that the “familiar planetary metaphor embodies the medieval conception of human society as ordered like the celestial system, revolving about the monarchy just as the planets center on the governing sun,” and that “although the arguments for hierarchy do enter Shakespeare’s plays from many points of view, they are almost always treated as respectable statements.” Richard M. Eastman, “Political Values in Henry IV, Part One: A Demonstration of Liberal Humanism,” College English 33.8 (1972): 901–907, 904–905. Despite Henry’s valid point that Worcester disturbs the peace, however, it must be noted that his reference to such a universal order does nevertheless create dramatic irony considering his own ascent to the throne. 72 Winny, The Player King, 152. 73 Winny further claims that the “seeming genuineness of this concern runs deep enough for Bolingbroke himself to be convinced of his good intentions, and incapable of recognizing himself as a rebel. His old confederates, much more thinly disguised as public benefactors and more blatantly intent upon enriching themselves, reveal the character from which Bolingbroke attempts, never quite successfully, to dissociate himself. Beneath the regalia and majestic manner of a king his effrontery is greater, if less obvious than theirs, and his fundamental purpose no different. Their presence, and their efforts to attract support to a morally worthless cause, provide a recurrent reminder of the dishonourable background which Bolingbroke seems to have thrust out of

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rariness, even incoherence of the rebel cause, is further emphasised, when it’s justification is repeated by Worcester. Again, he blames Henry for his deposition of the King and ungratefulness for the nobles’ support in it (1Henry IV, 5.1.30–71). This contradictio in re is almost comical, especially in the light of Falstaff’s diagnosis of Worcester’s motive: “Rebellion lay in his way, and he found it […].” (1Henry IV, 5.1.72/28) Ornstein has claimed that when “Worcester and Hotspur declare the wrongs that the Percies have suffered, they remind us yet again of the dubieties of Henry’s motives and character […],”74 but instead they remind us of the dubieties of their own motives. Robert Fehrenbach also states that “Worcester’s accusation cannot be entirely dismissed as an argumentum ex nihilo”: Henry’s self-serving description of Worcester’s disruption of the King’s peace and his call for his cousin’s obedience, to say nothing of his attempt to elicit sympathy as an aging man reluctantly but dutifully suffering the discomforts of war […], contrasts sharply with Worcester’s detailed, substantive charge that Henry is responsible for the civil strife because he broke faith with his early supporters […].75

If Henry is responsible for civil strife, it would certainly be because of his ‘rebellion’ against Richard. The fact that he now faces rebellion himself, is more the Percys’ fault than his, although Fehrenbach attests that Henry “disdainfully and sarcastically charges that Worcester has merely found a deceptively plausible justification for rebellion […].”76 This charge is more profound than Fehrenbach would make it seem: Henry explicitly states that they try to modify their cause into a just one and “face the garment of rebellion | With some fine colour that may please the eye | Of fickle changelings and poor discontents.” (1Henry IV, 5.1.74–76) This may be hypocritical arrogance, but the implication is fitting: the rebels have no just cause for war. This is emphasised by Worcester’s refusal of Henry’s reconciliatory offer by deceiving Hotspur. The King provides the rebels with an oppor-

mind.” Winny, The Player King, 152/153. I would argue, however, that, on the one hand, the ever fading potential to convince the audience of the rebel cause combined with first of all, Henry’s continued public appearance and secondly, his repeated emphasis on the necessity to maintain a general peace decide the question of who has the upper moral hand. 74 Ornstein, Kingdom for a Stage, 146. 75 Robert J. Fehrenbach, “The Characterization of the King in 1Henry IV,” Shakespeare Quarterly 30.1 (1979): 42–50, 47. Similarly, Gilian West attests that “[Worcester] is allowed to vent all his long-repressed fury on the great sins that the King cannot begin to deny: his ingratitude and his perjury […].” Gilian West, “Bolingbroke at Shrewsbury: The Recreant King of 1Henry IV,” Neophilologus 60 (1976): 460–465, 461. One can only wonder how it is possible to regard Henry’s supposed ingratitude towards his former allies as not only “a great sin,” but more importantly apparently as a just cause for war. 76 Fehrenbach, “The Characterization of the King,” 47.

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tunity to avoid bloodshed, which is a moral obligation rejected by the rebels, so that the royal conclusion of the parley, “God befriend us as our cause is just,” (1Henry IV, 5.1.120) gains considerably more credibility. By rejecting appeasement, the rebels increase their own culpability and, in turn, render Henry’s cause just instead of their own.77 Fehrenbach has claimed that “[d]espite his dishonesty, even his treachery, Worcester offers a plausible justification for his refusal to convey the King’s offer of pardon to the rebels […],”78 which is surprising when Worcester’s reasons for this deceit are actually taken into consideration: It is not possible, it cannot be The King should keep his word in loving us. He will suspect us still and find a time To punish this offence in other faults. […] My nephew’s trespass may be well forgot; It hath the excuse of youth and heat of blood, And an adopted name of privilege: A hare-brained hotspur governed by a spleen. All his offences live upon my head And on his father’s. We did train him on, And, his corruption being ta’en from us, We as the spring of all shall pay for all. Therefore, good cousin, let not Harry know In any case the offer of the King. (1Henry IV, 5.2.4–7; 16–25)79

77 As Ornstein points out, “[o]ne does not have to be as politic as Worcester to doubt that Henry, who would not ransom Mortimer, would not honor the fair terms of peace he offers the rebels […],” (Ornstein, A Kingdom for a Stage, 146) but this depends entirely on one’s perspective on the King and does not provide Worcester with a just cause. How unscrupulous his behaviour is, is further emphasised when he defends his decision for selfish reasons even after Hotspur has tragically died: “What I have done my safety urged me to […].” (1Henry IV, 5.5.11) Ironically, as Alexander Leggatt has pointed out, this strategy of saving his own life results in his death (see Leggatt, Shakespeare’s Political Drama, 87). 78 Fehrenbach, “The Characterization of the King,” 50. He further claims that “[o]ne must wonder why Shakespeare chose to relate the history of the usurpation and of Henry’s ingratitude to his supporters twice in less than a hundred lines […] if not to impress us with the plausibility, perhaps even veracity, of the Percies’ perspective on Henry.” 79 Taking the sophistry and dishonesty of Worcester’s reasons into consideration, it is incomprehensible how West can claim that in deviating from his sources, Shakespeare intended to point out that the rebels’ cause is justified in contrast to the King’s: “Whereas Holinshed provides no motive for Worcester’s ‘double dealing’ in concealing from Hotspur the King’s conciliatory offers attempting to avoid bloodshed, Shakespeare allows him to give his reasons, and his argument in Act V Scene ii convinces us, as well as Vernon, that the King’s assurances most prove worthless, and that the rebels, ostensibly forgiven, will really be ‘the better cherished still the nearer death’.” West, “Bolingbroke at Shrewsbury,” 462.

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Since Worcester fears that Henry will betray him and that Hotspur might be pardoned, but not he, he refuses the offer of peace, thereby sacrificing thousands of lives ultimately for his own safety. As doubtful as Robert Ornstein considers Henry’s right to the throne or his moral integrity to be, he analyses the moral misdemeanour Worcester commits here correctly: [I]t is one thing to speculate about Henry’s possible duplicity; it is another thing to see Worcester’s betrayal of Hotspur at Shrewsbury. Sick though the King may be in body (and in soul), the rebel cause is sicker still, infected with opportunistic motives, vainglory, and falsehood. Thousands more are willing to defend Henry’s right than to oppose him, and his cause is, in a very literal sense, the nation’s, for a rebel victory will mean the dismemberment of England.80

Recalling that a just cause must have the realistic potential to re-establish and maintain the peace, it is impossible to regard the aggression of the rebels as just.81 Henry still has the strongest arguments on his side – national peace and public welfare. Therefore, Hotspur’s resolution is tragically ironic: Now, for our consciences, the arms are fair When the intent of bearing them is just. (1Henry IV, 5.2.87/88)

Hotspur clearly expresses the Aquinian principle of the prerequisite right intention for a just war. The statement as such cannot be morally refuted therefore, but nevertheless creates dramatic irony. First of all, a right intention alone does not constitute a just war. Secondly, Hotspur is not aware of Henry’s offer of peace. Thus, the moral truth of his statement lends a tragic undertone to the following battle. Despite the emphasis the play places on the just cause, there are no speeches before the battle; the rebels have said all they had to say and got tangled up in contradictions. Henry on the other hand, does not have anything to say, because by now his just cause is self-evident. As Leggatt points out, “[Henry] is for the time being the true king of England, and not just because he wins battles. The impression is aided by the fact that the rebels exert no effective counter-claim, either politically or theatrically.”82 This impression is confirmed by Henry’s conduct

80 Ornstein, A Kingdom for a Stage, 146/147. 81 Lordi has shown that we sympathise with Hotspur, who is almost a tragic character, but this does not make the rebel cause any more just. See Lordi, “Brutus and Hotspur,” esp. 180. 82 Leggatt, Shakespeare’s Political Drama, 84/85.

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post bellum.83 His opening line of the last scene, “Thus did rebellion ever find rebuke […],” certainly has an ironic ring to it in view of the circumstances,84 but his reproach against Worcester for deliberately causing bloodshed and Hotspur’s death must be considered sincere. West claims that the King’s “words must be taken as gross hypocrisy, and, at the moment when Worcester resigns himself with dignity to his fortune, even the most ‘malevolent’ of the rebels seems less culpable than the King who judges him without the right.”85 The setting, however, is the battlefield of the war the rebels began and despite the fact that hundreds of soldiers have died, they have been defeated, which means that those soldiers have died in vain. Henry’s moral judgement is called for. Moreover, he pardons all surviving soldiers, since they are not responsible for the rebellion. His behaviour here is in perfect accordance with the rules. Ornstein has stated that “even though Shrewsbury does not bring an end to civil war, it leaves no doubt of Henry’s right as king […],”86 which makes it just as difficult for the remaining rebels to lay down a just cause in the second part. While Hotspur’s arguments for the justice of his cause were morally unconvincing, his reasoning at least had certain logic and honourable intentions to it. The second part of King Henry IV, however, sets out on a different note: Let heaven kiss earth! Now let not Nature’s hand Keep the wild flood confin’d! Let order die! And let this world no longer be a stage To feed contention in a ling’ring act; But let one spirit of the first-born Cain Reign in all bosoms, that, each heart being set On bloody courses, the rude scene may end, And darkness be the burier of the dead! (2Henry IV, 1.1.153–160)87

Northumberland’s speech is reminiscent of the willful destruction of the first tetralogy – he wants the brother to blindly shed the brother’s blood in civil war. The tone of the play is set and the following attempts to assign morality to rebellion

83 For the particulars of Shrewsbury, such as Henry’s “counterfeiting,” the opposition between Hal and Hotspur and Falstaff’s particular views on honour and soldiers see chapters 4.2.2 and 4.2.5. 84 As Winny has pointed out, “[o]nce possessed of the crown, Bolingbroke chooses to forget that he was ever a rebel […].” Winny, The Player King, 151. 85 West, “Bolingbroke at Shrewsbury,” 462. 86 Ornstein, A Kingdom for a Stage, 149. 87 All quotations from the second part of Henry IV are from the following edition and will be given parenthetically: William Shakespeare, King Henry IV. Part 2, ed. A. R. Humphreys. The Arden Shakespeare Second Series (Walton-on-Thames: Methuen & Co. Ltd, 1966).

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must be judged before the backdrop of Northumberland’s “diabolical nihilism,” as H. M. Richmond has termed it.88 While at Shrewsbury the rebels had at least still argued for self-defence, this statement presents brutal aggression and cannot be regarded under the aspect of self-preservation.89 And yet, the play continues with the search for a just cause: My lord your son had only but the corpse, But shadows and the show of men, to fight; For that same word, ‘rebellion’ did divide The action of their bodies from their souls, And they did fight with queasiness, constrain’d, As men drink potions, that their weapons only Seem’d on our side; but, for their spirits and souls, This word ‘rebellion’ – it had froze them up, As fish are in a pond. (2Henry IV, 1.1.192–200)

However, the implication of this is once again that there is no just cause, which is why the rebels have failed before. Morton here draws on two essential points: a rebellion constitutes no just cause in this case, which is reflected in the soldiers’ reaction and the question of the justice of the war is essential to boost their morale, as Evans explains: Morton means that because the men conceived of their action as it was – namely, a rebellion – they could only fight half-heartedly, without conviction. But Morton also attributes their half-heartedness to the very ‘word “Rebellion.”’ The power thereby invested in a word is further emphasized when we understand the ‘division’ of souls from bodies not merely as a disjunction between inner conviction and external action resulting in death, but as death itself. In this case, it does not matter whether there is conviction to fortify bodies. A mere word is enough to undo them.90

The heavy impact this particular word has, however, is the fact that a rebellion against a legitimate king is no just war and no soldier wants to die in an unjust

88 Richmond, Shakespeare’s Political Plays, 161. 89 As Winny points out, “Bolingbroke’s enemies lack his politician’s talent for passing off private ambition as disinterested concern for the public good, and the meanness of their intentions is never well concealed. The idea of exacting punishment for the murder of Richard is soon abandoned for the more attractive prospect of winning a share in a stolen kingdom, though at Shrewsbury the rebels claim only to be acting in self-defence.” Winny, The Player King, 152. 90 Meredith Evans, “Rumor, the Breath of Kings, and the Body of Law in 2Henry IV,” Shakespeare Quarterly 60.1 (2009): 1–24, 10. In 3Henry VI, Warwick also tries to boost the soldiers’ morale with the acclaimed justice of the Yorkist cause but fails (see 3Henry VI, 2.1.132–135 and chapter 4.2.3).

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war. This is why the rebels believe that it must appear to be a divinely sanctioned war: The gentle Archbishop of York is up With well-appointed pow’rs. He is a man Who with a double surety binds his followers. […] Suppos’d sincere and holy in his thoughts, He’s follow’d both with body and with mind, And doth enlarge his rising with the blood Of fair King Richard, scrap’d from Pomfret stones; Derives from heaven his quarrel and his cause […]. (2Henry IV, 1.1.189–191; 202–206)91

The argument that is supposed to lend morality to their cause runs as follows: the Archbishop of York turns the rebellion into a holy war for two reasons: first of all, the sanctity of his ordination lends itself to their cause, i.e. his status as a clergyman suggests that he executes the divine will. Secondly, revenging the deposition of God’s anointed representative on earth must also be considered as a an execution of the divine will. Therefore, the rebels are fully justified in waging this war and this will also be discernible to all of the soldiers, who will happily die in a just war. But in actual fact both strains of the argument are characterised by a central error in judgement: a just cause must substantially exist, it cannot be “fashioned” and the rebels are presented to be fully aware of this, as J. M. Gregson has noticed: “Morton frankly admits the dressing of the rebels’ squalid cause in high thoughts which none of them now treat seriously; even Richard is now reduced to a propaganda emblem.”92 The dichotomy of appearance and reality, the attempt to conceal the immorality of the cause under a moral cover, is also reflected in reference to Hotspur’s failure. The analysis of the previous play, however, shows that it is not the word ‘rebellion’ that causes the failure, but the inherent injustice of the cause. The second part of Henry IV therefore shows that the Archbishop’s leadership

91 Henry Kelly has suspicions about Morton’s sincerity here: “It would appear from Morton’s tone that though the people suppose the archbishop sincere and holy, Morton himself does not believe it is so. This, of course, may be the wrong interpretation, and it may be that Shakespeare intended Morton and the others to look upon their cause as completely righteous. It is to be noted that there is no repetition of the revenge motive in Archbishop Scrope, either here or elsewhere in the play.” Kelly, Divine Providence, 223. The ambivalence Kelly detects is definitely existent, but it does not result from Morton’s disbelief; the underlying problem is rather that the rebels struggle persistently throughout the play to formulate a cause at all, let alone a just cause, which results in their general uncertainty and lack of persuasiveness. 92 J. M. Gregson, Public and Private Man in Shakespeare (Beckenham: Croom Helm Ltd., 1983): 69.

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cannot divert the attention from unlawful aggression either.93 The method employed here is indeed congruent with common practice at the time, as Christoph Tyerman points out. He has shown that there were “repeated attempts in the later middle ages to elevate national secular conflicts into holy wars, analogous or, occasionally, synonymous with crusading […].”94 Thus, through the evident lack of the secular justice of their cause, the rebels try to declare it as a holy one, which is, however, unconvincing within the play as well as for the audience. Blair Worden sums up the hollowness of the rebel cause: The archbishop’s case is unimpressive: his vindication of the uprising uses metaphor not to illustrate an argument but as a substitute for one, and – not alone among Shakespeare’s conspirators – he tacks an appeal to the common good on to statements of sectional grievance that seem more keenly felt.95

As elaborate as the discussion of the just cause is in this play, it clearly points out on several levels that it is simply not given. Irving Ribner has stated that “Shakespeare was interested in condemning civil disorder, no matter in what cause it were raised.”96 These plays, however, focuse profoundly on the exact nature of just and unjust causes. Gregson claims that in the second part “[e]thics will be almost entirely absent,”97 but although there is unethical behaviour, the ethical implications of war are always present. The discussion is given the most complex consideration in act 4; Westmoreland demands a morally justifiable reason why the rebels risk human lives for their selfish cause: Wherefore do you so ill translate yourself Out of the speech of peace that bears such grace Into the harsh and boist’rous tongue of war […]. (2Henry IV, 4.1.47–49)

93 Evans has claimed that the Archbishop “is then called in as the figure in the play able to alchemize rebellion into righteousness, or might into right, and hence to engage both body and mind […],” but the very expression “alchemize” points to the artificiality which is supposed to form the basis for a just cause. Evans, “Breath of Kings,” 10. 94 Tyerman, God’s War, 906. See also Johnson, Ideology, Reason and the Limitation of War, 81: “Holy war doctrine in the early modern period is fundamentally a form of just war doctrine inherited from the late Middle Ages, and it takes its bearing from the idea, at least as old as Augustine, that God himself inspires and commands some wars.” 95 Blair Worden, “Shakespeare and Politics” in Shakespeare and Politics, ed. Catherine M. S. Alexander (Cambridge: CUP, 2004): 22–43, 25/26. 96 Irving Ribner, “The Political Problem in Shakespeare’s Lancastrian Tetralogy,” Studies in Philology 49.2 (1952): 171–184, 183. 97 Gregson, Public and Private Man, 69.

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Again, the emphasis is on aggression as a disturbance of the peace, since Henry’s reign is still peaceful, which is why the Archbishop feels obliged to refer to the principle of proportionality: I have in equal balance justly weigh’d What wrongs our arms may do, what wrongs we suffer, And find our griefs heavier than our offences. (2Henry IV, 4.1.67–69)

His claim constitutes a central argument of just war theory: their war is just, because its costs are outweighed by the injustice ante bellum and any other means would fall short of correcting those wrongs. Thus, the war is proportional as a means of fighting for justice and he claims that it is the last resort: We see which way the stream of time doth run, And are enforc’d from our most quiet there By the rough torrent of occasion […]. (2Henry IV, 4.1.70–72)98

Furthermore, York draws on yet another principle, which is the implied obligation to intend the establishment of peace, even if it is by war – a just war can only be initiated due to an earnest desire and a realistic possibility of peace. Peace must be the end of every war: The dangers of the days but newly gone, Whose memory is written on the earth With yet-appearing blood, and the examples Of every minute’s instance, present now, Hath put us in these ill-beseeming arms, Not to break peace, or any branch of it, But to establish here a peace indeed, Concurring both in name and quality. (2Henry IV, 4.1.80–87)

Prima facie, his arguments might seem justified: having experienced the consequences of the first war, the rebels intend to prevent further suffering and establish a long-lasting peace, which is in perfect accordance with the rules of military aggression and scholars such as Henry Kelly take the statement at face value:

98 Pierre Sahel sees this passage as a confirmation that the rebels here “express their awareness that their struggle is a losing fight […]” and he is certainly right, considering that the rebels’ attempts at justification become increasingly more desperate. See Pierre Sahel, “Coup d’État, Rebellion and Revolution” in Shakespeare and Politics, ed. Catherine M. S. Alexander (Cambridge: CUP, 2004): 130–41, 135.

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It seems evident that the archbishop and his allies are sincere in declaring the sum and scope of their motives, since they agree to disband when they receive guarantees that their complaints will be honored and their wrongs remedied; and the expression of their intents when they discuss them among themselves in private remains the same as it is when they state them to the opposing captains.99

There is a central point, however, that Kelly misses: the rebels clearly state that they intend to fight against the personal injustice they suffer. There is no mention of the people, the state or the public welfare: their aggression is based on selfinterest. There is no implication of tyranny or liberation of the people. York claims “the commonwealth […] | I make my quarrel in particular […]” (2Henry IV, 4.1.94/96), but it is not at all clear, which interests of the commonwealth are so grossly neglected. Henry is a capable king and it seems evident that it is quite impossible for the rebels to “construct a high-minded cause,” as Gregson puts it.100 Thus, Westmoreland’s offer of royal pardon must immediately create suspicion in the audience, since no indication has been given as to its justification.101 Two things Westmoreland says before he promises the rebels royal pardon allude to the anticlimactic and morally offensive solution of the conflict looming on the horizon. The first is his reference to Henry’s just cause: Our battle is more full of names than yours, Our men more perfect in the use of arms, Our armour all as strong, our cause the best. (2Henry IV, 4.1.154–156)

Westmoreland claims that the King’s cause is just, but surprisingly he does not argue for their right of self-defence – his argument is that their cause is not morally just but lawful simply due to their superior military power. Thus, he speaks from a ‘might makes right’-perspective, although the moral argument that the rebels endanger the public good would be much more convincing. The second statement that should alert the rebels because it congruently foreshadows the impending deceit is a classic case of confusing jus ad bellum and jus in bello: when Mowbray opposes a parley with the King’s general, Prince John, Westmoreland answers:

99 Kelly, Divine Providence, 226. 100 Gregson, Public and Private Man, 74. 101 See 2Henry IV, 1.4.140–146: “Here come I from our princely general | To know your griefs, to tell you from his Grace | That he will give you audience; and wherein | It shall appear that your demands are just, | You shall enjoy them, everything set off | That might so much as think you enemies.”

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That argues but the shame of your offense: A rotten case abides no handling. (2Henry IV, 4.1.160/161)102

The implication of this provocation is that since the rebel cause is unjust, their conduct will be equally unjust. The moral reality of war, however, gives no reason for this inclination – jus ad bellum and jus in bello are logically distinct, which is why his statement already foreshadows the immorality of Prince John’s conduct. John’s address to the Archbishop at the beginning of 4.2, which points out the rebels’ unjust aggression against the king, has often been criticised for its hypocrisy in view of the events that follow: Lancaster’s long moralising address to the Archbishop which opens the following scene is the rankest hypocrisy, concerned only with the basest of the politician’s effects, creating an impression which is exactly the opposite of his real intentions so as to bemuse the opposition.103

The crucial aspect of John’s speech that is usually overlooked, however, is that he not only clearly points out that pretending to be carrying out the divine will through appointing a bishop as the leader of the rebellion does not turn it into a holy war, let alone a just one, but secondly also draws on the Aquinian principle that clergymen should not partake in martial action: O, who shall believe But you misuse the reverence of your place, Employ the countenance and grace of heav’n As a false favourite doth his prince’s name, In deed dishonourable? You have ta’en up, Under the counterfeited zeal of God, The subject of his substitute, my father, And both against the peace of heaven and him Have here up-swarm’d them. (2Henry IV, 4.2.22–29)104

102 Gregson has pointed out that Mowbray’s claim that the offer of peace stems from “policy, not love,” shows him suspicious of Westmoreland’s proceeding indeed (Gregson, Public and Private Man, 74) and Winny notes that Mowbray is the only one who shows actual skepticism: “Mowbray alone stands out against the agreement with Prince John, objecting that Bolingbroke will not easily forget their rebellion; but he is overruled by his confederates, who promise themselves a more favourable future. […] It is again only the mistrustful Mowbray who resists the hypocritical promise, becoming ‘on the sudden something ill’ when he has allowed his confederates to silence his misgivings.” Winny, The Player King, 163/164. 103 Gregson, Public and Private Man, 74. 104 The general reproach against York as a clergyman in a martial context had also already been pointed out by Westmoreland in 4.1: “You, Lord Archbishop, | Whose see is by a civil peace maintain’d, | Whose beard the silver hand of peace hath touch’d, | Whose learning and good letters

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John thus draws attention to the fact that the holiness of the rebel cause is a mere pretense, an “emblem of propaganda” and that the bishop’s function on earth is to promote divine peace and not act as a man of war, as Aquinas had already stated in his Summa: [I]t is proper for [clerics] to be prepared to pour out their own blood for Christ, and so imitate in deed what they represent in their ministry. And it is for this reason decreed that those clerics who shed blood even without sin become irregular. […] And so it is entirely unlawful for clerics to wage war, because war is directed to the shedding of blood.105

As hypocritical as John might be in this instance, his point of criticism against the Archbishop is nevertheless justified and makes the latter’s defence of his action sound even more hollow than the rebels’ previous attempts to justify their cause, for he claims “I am not here against your father’s peace […]” (2Henry IV, 4.2.31); a statement that is diametrically opposed to the entire action of the play. Unfortunately, Prince John forfeits the morality that seems to be so clearly on his side. Due to Prince John’s behaviour, Gaultree has become one of the most infamous episodes in the Shakespearean canon, for he claims to accept their conditions and demands (“I like them all, and do allow them well,” 2Henry IV, 4.2.54), and he swears “by the honour of [his] blood” (55) to pardon the rebels, only to have them executed the moment they are defenceless. This aspect of the play has provoked many scholarly comments over the years. While Alexander Leggatt only wonders “which is more irritating, Prince John’s deviousness or his victims’ stupidity,”106 Gregson sees the perfidy of the scene as straightforwardly evil: “There is no attempt at ambivalence: straightforward deceit will serve the purpose.”107

peace hath tutor’d, | Whose white investments figure innocence, | The dove and very blessed spirit of peace, | Wherefore do you so ill translate yourself | Out of the speech of peace that bears such grace | Into the harsh and boist’rous tongue of war; | Turning your books to graves, your ink to blood, | Your pens to lances, and your tongue divine | To a loud trumpet and a point of war?” (2Henry IV, 4.1.41–52). 105 Aquinas, Political Writings, 244. Aquinas also attested that “[p]relates and clerics may take part in wars by the authority of their superiors: not, however, by fighting with their own hands, but by giving spiritual assistance to those who fight justly, by exhortation and absolution and other such spiritual aids.” (Ibid.) York’s offence against his own profession is thus twofold: first of all, he is leading the troops himself and secondly, he is leading them against his superior, King Henry. 106 Leggatt, Shakespeare’s Political Drama, 87. He claims that this “anticlimax of Gaultree seems designed to counter and parody” (87) the Battle at Shrewsbury, but considering the generally more perfidious morality of the play, one should probably regard Gaultree as graver than mere parody. 107 Gregson, Public and Private Man, 74/75.

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H. M. Richmond sees political necessity as the guiding principle of John’s behaviour: The kingdom has sunk into such moral apathy that any means to secure peace now appears to be justified […]. Prince John meets the Archbishop’s inevitable reproaches for treachery with frigid sophistries, clearly backed by his inflexible will to preserve the vestiges of effective government at any political price […].108

Richmond here seems to attest that John’s outrageous behaviour is nevertheless not condemned in the play. Tom McAlindon, on the other hand, explains the lack of judgement within the play differently: It is true that in the play there is no direct condemnation of John’s deceit, whereas the rebellious conduct of the Archbishop is subjected to fierce criticism in the orotund rebukes delivered by Westmoreland and John. Shakespeare, however, chose not only to dramatise the treacherous action when he had no real need to do so but also to make its treacherous character both extreme and gratuitous. His comment on it is arguably all the more eloquent for being articulated only in the dramatic presentation and its attendant ironies.109

It is not entirely correct, however, to claim that Shakespeare could have ommitted the episode easily, since the dramatic action of the play requires a resolution of the conflict. But, McAlindon is surely right in pointing out that moral judgement is passed on John for the means by which he achieves peace. As Hawkins remarks, we must differentiate between the sentence that is passed on the rebels and the perfidious strategy John employs in order to defeat them. The death sentence passed on all the rebels is shocking, but the crucial offence of the scene is a different one:

108 Richmond, Shakespeare’s Political Plays, 163. 109 Tom McAlindon, Shakespeare’s Tudor History. A Study of Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001): 106. McAlindon further supports his argument by the deviation from the sources at this point: “A clue to his attitude and how an audience is supposed to respond can be found in the relative strength of the two armies. If Shakespeare had presented the King’s forces as being seriously outnumbered and in danger of defeat (and the nation in danger of collapsing into anarchy), we might well have felt that John had no alternative but to act as he did. This would have been historically justified, too, for Holinshed reports that the rebels were ‘farre stronger in number’ than their opponents. […] But Shakespeare reverses the chronicled situation and not only makes the royal force numerically greater but gives their leaders a complacent sense of their own military superiority while showing the rebel leaders demoralised by the recent news of Northumberland’s defection from the alliance. […] A change of this nature can only have been intended to create a negative impression of John’s stratagem.”

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[I]t is not so much the harshness of the sentence that disturbs us: justice gives each his due, and the death that befalls the Archbishop and his accomplices is, as Lancaster points out, “the due / Meet for rebellion.” What offends us here is the pretense of justice, the legal trickery by which Prince John accomplishes his ends.110

Similarly, Norman Rabkin points out that we condemn John’s behaviour and his character as too ruthless and politically pragmatic: “the priggish treachery by which Prince John overcomes the rebels arouses in us a distaste for political action, even when it is necessary, such as no previous moment in the play has occasioned.”111 However, the actual problem that lies at the heart of this episode is not only John’s treachery, it is more importantly the fact that both John and Westmoreland are shown to be convinced of the rightness of their actions, which is why John is able to react so coolly to the Archbishop’s reproach that he has broken faith: I promis’d you redress of these same grievances Whereof you did complain; which, by mine honour, I will perform with a most Christian care. But, for you rebels, look to taste the due Meet for rebellion and such acts as yours. (2Henry IV, 4.2.113–117)

The same confidence in the just nature of his actions allows Lancaster to conclude the scene with the claim that “God, and not we, hath safely fought today.” (2Henry IV, 4.2.121) Apart from the fact that actually nobody has fought today, he declares to be acting with divine approval and thus seems to make his behaviour irreproachable, although it clearly is, as Kelly points out: It is difficult to see how any audience could join with Lancaster in this righteous feeling of divine approbation and aid. Even if we were to admit that the archbishop, Mowbray, and Hastings were objectively in the wrong when they raised their army, we can hardly doubt that they did not believe themselves to be in the wrong, and, as has been pointed out above, we know for certain from their discussion alone together […] that they were sincere in their determination to uphold the peace they agreed to. Lancaster could have achieved the same

110 Sherman H. Hawkins, “Virtue and Kingship in Shakespeare’s Henry IV,” English Literary Renaissance 5 (1975): 313–343, 336. See also Meredith Evans’s comment: “The substitution of duplicitous words for action also marks Prince John’s infamous betrayal at Gaultree. […] John’s success hinges less on his willingness to revoke his promise than on his manipulation of the rebels’ demands. He neglects to fulfill the rebels’ most basic condition – that they be granted their lives. In this respect, John’s substitution of words for action partakes of rumor’s efficacy, as well as its casuistry; interpretive rigidity, the mirror image of interpretive licence, proves more effective than a show of arms.” Evans, “The Breath of Kings,” 11. 111 Rabkin, Shakespeare and the Problem of Meaning, 40.

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results of pacification by letting York and his allies return home, without resorting to a kind of deceit that could hardly be considered honourable in any age or under any circumstances.112

First of all, Kelly correctly attests that we do not agree with John’s complacency here and secondly it is true that John might have been able to solve the conflict peacefully without treachery, but due to his immoral behaviour there is a tendency to overlook the fact that the rebels’ cause is unjust. Whether they believe themselves to be in the right, as Kelly points out, is quite immaterial to the question of whether they are in the right. And they are not, which enables John to behave as he does, for what is at stake here, is a classic case of confusing jus ad bellum and jus in bello. This aspect, which has triggered such multifarious responses, is one of fundamental significance in the theory of the just war, captured in only two lines: Mowbray Westmoreland

Is this proceeding just and honourable? Is your assembly so? (2Henry IV, 4.1.110/111)

Mowbray’s justified complaint that the royal party’s behaviour is unjust is thus refuted by Westmoreland by annihilating the logical independence of the justice of war and the justice in war. He argues that since the rebels have no just cause for their war, they cannot expect just treatment. That the two spheres are independent of each is other is, however, pointed out by himself, for the just cause that the royal party evidently has does not stop them from behaving unjustly in the execution of it. Ironically, this is the same phenomenon Westmoreland accused the rebels of: through this dialogue it becomes clear that jus ad bellum and jus in bello must be regarded as two separate spheres that cannot be intertwined for the justification of actions, which influences our moral understanding of this rebellion. Sahel has made the following claim, linking the two plays on the reign of Henry IV together: In the Henry IV plays, Shakespeare dramatizes the rebels’ rising as the absurd struggles fought on behalf of a past the death of which they refuse to acknowledge. In particular he shows that the attempt of the rebels of the second Part is nearly as suicidal as the moral combat led by their predecessors in the first Part. They reiterate the doomed resistance made against Henry IV since his accession. Moreover, if the political origin of their attempt is clear, its political aim is blurred into uncertainty.113

112 Kelly, Divine Providence, 227. 113 Sahel, “Coup d’État, Rebellion and Revolution,” 134.

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However, through John’s unjust conduct the moral integrity of the King’s forces is equally blurred into uncertainty and the rules of war are disregarded in favour of the attempt to prevent an actual battle. Holstun claims that “if Shakespeare is indeed alluding critically to this account, he is the only writer, from Neville and Holinshed to present-day historians, who has sensed any conflict at all between the pardon and the gibbet.”114 In fact, the construction of the scene leaves no doubt about the implied criticism, which points to the complex distinction of jus ad bellum and jus in bello and provokes moral judgement. This sophisticated argument moreover emphasises that rebellion is not treated unanimously in the plays. Kenneth Muir attests that “[i]n the plays he wrote during the reign of Elizabeth, Shakespeare seems to have regarded civil war as an evil to be avoided at all costs […].”115 If this were true, however, we would certainly be more tempted to agree with John of Lancaster and applaud his prevention of the outbreak of an actual war. But instead it is clear that John’s conduct is not in accordance with the moral reality of war. As Ornstein points out: What is appalling is not the shallowness and blindness of the characters in Part II but rather the clarity of their pitiless calculations. […] Must rebellion be put down by treachery and massacre? The necessities of Gaultree Forest lie in the nature of John, Westmoreland, and York, not in the circumstances of Henry’s reign or in the “human condition.”116

Thus, there is a clearly detectable difference between the civil wars of the first and second tetralogy, which is due to an ever increasing complexity of the moral reality of war. Here, the rebels repeatedly attempt to create a just cause for aggression, but it becomes clear that nothing but the concern for the public good and the preservation of the peace can count as one. Thus, the attention has shifted from private to public reasons for aggression, but the just cause remains with Henry, because his priority is peace, not war.

114 James Holstun, “Damned Commotion: Riot and Rebellion in Shakespeare’s Histories” in A Companion to Shakespeare’s Works Volume II: The Histories, eds. Richard Dutton and Jean E. Howard (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006): 194–219, 209. 115 Muir, “Shakespeare and Politics,” 66. 116 Ornstein, A Kingdom for a Stage, 157.

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4.1.3 Right Intention The third Aquinian prerequisite for a just war is the intentio recta, which is also prominently discussed in Shakespeare’s plays, but features most importantly not in the histories, but in a Roman play. In Shakespeare’s plays, a character’s true intentions are generally wrapped up in the eulogy he receives: the unmistakable tyrants, for instance, are eulogised as “the bloody dog is dead,” (Richard III, 5.5.2) and “this dead butcher,” (Macbeth, 5.9.35) while Othello is declared by Cassio as to have been “great of heart,” (Othello, 5.2.358)117 and Horatio refers to Hamlet’s “noble heart.” (Hamlet, 5.2.343)118 Therefore, it is not coincidental how Hal takes his leave of Hotspur: “Fare thee well, great heart.” (1Henry IV, 5.4.86)119 As much as Hotspur might have erred, there is a hint of what might be called a right intention, for at least he fought for something greater than sheer revenge or ruthlessness. The true intentio recta, however, may be found in Julius Caesar, for Brutus is in many ways a more refined version of Hotspur;120 more refined especially in the sense that Brutus’s concern is the public good. D. J. Palmer has pointed out that in this later play, Shakespeare is more concerned with the deontological status of the protagonist’s decision than its consequences: The characterization in Julius Caesar is distinguished from that in Shakespeare’s earlier portrayals of conspiracy, rebellion, and deposition, by the focus of attention upon the conditions under which decisive judgments are made, and only to a lesser degree by the issues at stake.121

117 All quotations from Othello are from the following edition and will be given parenthetically: William Shakespeare, Othello, ed. E. A. J. Honigmann. The Arden Shakespeare Third Series (London: Thomson Learning, 1997). 118 All quotations from Hamlet are from the following edition and will be given parenthetically: William Shakespeare, Hamlet, eds. Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor. The Arden Shakespeare Third Series (London: Thomson Learning, 2006). 119 It is true that in the same address of Hotspur’s dead body, Hal also refers to “[i]ll-weaved ambition,” and sounds generally very smug that he has defeated the embodiment of chivalry, but as he identifies himself with Hotspur, which will be pointed out later on, he still pities him. As Roberta Barker has pointed out, Hal’s “words have been read as bespeaking the ‘generosity of mind’ that renders Hal superior to Hotspur, or as a sign of Hal’s assumption of Hotspur’s chivalric mantle. […] But they also constitute both Hal’s recognition both of the dead Hotspur’s place among the legends of his (and Shakespeare’s) time, and of the tragic loss associated with the death of a hero.” Barker, “Tragical-Comical-Historical Hotspur,” 308. 120 For the more general parallels between Hotspur and Brutus and between the plays 1Henry IV and Julius Caesar see Lordi, “Brutus and Hotspur,” 177–185. 121 D. J. Palmer, “Tragic Error in Julius Caesar,” Shakespeare Quarterly 21.4. (1970): 399–409, 400.

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The focus of the play lies on the reasons for Brutus’s action and the emphasis lies on his good intentions – after his death he is eulogised by his direct antagonist Antony as “the noblest Roman of them all,” (Julius Caesar, 5.5.69)122 which confirms his right intention behind the deposition of Caesar. The strongest counterargument against Brutus’s right intention is the fact that his action unleashes a civil war, which seems to be the conspirators’ fault, because as R. A. Foakes has pointed out, the “question who is to ensure peace and freedom, who is to govern after Caesar, is not discussed by them, and it lies at the heart of the play.”123 Similarly, Schanzer has claimed that despite “the best of motives and highest of principles,” Brutus “plunge[s] Rome into ruin,” which he sees as “one of the great ironies” of the play.124 However, the emphasis should be on the fact that Brutus never intends any of this – as Leggatt says, he “wanted a tight, clear, finished action.”125 The initial problem is that Brutus chooses to depose Caesar, because he is the victim of a double delusion; on the one hand, he makes a tragic error in judgement due to a belief in the wrong principles and on the other hand, he is prone to Cassius’s influence: Into what dangers would you lead me, Cassius, That you would have me seek into myself For that which is not me? (Julius Caesar, 1.2.63–65)

As a predecessor of Iago, Cassius abuses Brutus’s ear in order to use him for his own purposes. As a “Machiavellian intriguer,” in Lordi’s words, Cassius manipulates Brutus according to his own self-interest and uses him as an “idealistic instrument.”126 In scholarly criticism there has been much debate as to whether it is Cassius’s influence that leads Brutus to his tragic actions or whether those are motivated intrinsically, but from a close analysis of the play it is obvious that Brutus is concerned about the public good, his intentions honourable and it is only Cassius’s instigation that triggers the idea that Caesar must die for the sake of Rome. The first crucial moment is the conversation between Brutus and Cassius during Caesar’s coronation, which evokes Brutus’s concern that Caesar might

122 All quotations from Julius Caesar are from the following edition and will be given parenthetically: William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, ed. David Daniell. The Arden Shakespeare Third Series (London: Thomson Learning, 1998). 123 Foakes, Shakespeare and Violence, 163. 124 Ernest Schanzer, “The Tragedy of Shakespeare’s Brutus,” ELH 22.1 (1955): 1–15, 11. 125 Leggatt, Shakespeare’s Political Drama, 158. 126 Lordi, “Brutus and Hotspur,” 178.

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endanger the republic,127 a concern that Cassius ruthlessly employs for his own schemes. He takes Brutus’s exclamation “I do fear the people | Choose Caesar for their king […],” (Julius Caesar, 1.2.79/80) as confirmation of an animosity towards Caesar and not towards the general thought of absolute power. His attempt to get a corresponding statement out of Brutus (“Ay, do you fear it? | Then must I think you would not have it so.” 1.2.81), however, only confirms the latter: I would not, Cassius, yet I love him well. But wherefore do you hold me here so long? What is it that you would impart to me? If it be aught toward the general good, Set honour in one eye, and death i’th’other, And I will look on both indifferently. (Julius Caesar, 1.2.82–87)

The passage has oftentimes been misunderstood as ambition, as an obsessive desire for honour like Hotspur’s, but as Lordi has shown, “Hotspur’s concept of honor is private and egotistic […]. Brutus’s concept of honor, by contrast, is public and unselfish, and thus appropriate to his heroic image of himself as one willing to sacrifice his life to secure the general good of his country.”128 “Honour,” in Brutus’s mind is a metonomy for achieving the public good of Rome, not for increasing his reputation. Cassius thus misunderstands his underlying motives and believes to be able to move him towards Caesar’s deposition, which he desires out of envy,129 as Leggatt points out:

127 Obviously, it is a republic that is at stake, not a monarchy, but it has been pointed out numerously that Shakespeare does not actually distinguish between the two state concepts in the dramatisation of the underlying political concern about a potentially dangerous monarch. Frank Kermode points out that “Caesar was a monarch in all but name, and Shakespeare, who had written of many monarchs, stresses his human failings […].” Frank Kermode, Shakespeare’s Language (London: Penguin Books, 2000): 87. 128 Lordi, “Brutus and Hotspur,” 179. Lordi nevertheless attests that it is honour, which is Brutus’s “precipitating motive […] to join the conspiracy […]” (180), which is only true if one understands honour as a dedication to the public good. 129 Myron Taylor confirms that “accents of envy are very apparent in all that Cassius says,” (Myron Taylor, “Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and the Irony of History,” Shakespeare Quarterly 24.3 (1973): 301–308, 302) and in the play it is quite clear that Cassius merely wants to get rid of Caesar because he is dissatisfied with his status as an underling. After pointing out Caesar’s weaknesses, he protests “and this man | Is now become a god, and Cassius is | A wretched creature, and must bend his body | If Caesar carelessly but nod on him.” Later he attests that Caesar “doth bestride the narrow world | Like a colossus, and we petty men | Walk under his huge legs and peep about | To find ourselves dishonourable graves.” (Julius Caesar, 1.2.115–118; 134–137).

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[I]n fact honour is not the subject of his story at all. It is, if anything, envy. In the guise of appealing to Brutus’ honour, he tries to get Brutus to feel his own resentment at the position Caesar has attained. If the temptation works, as it seems to, Brutus thinks he is hearing one kind of appeal but the real work is done by another.130

The entire scene ultimately rests on a misunderstanding, because both future conspirators speak on different levels: Cassius wants to get rid of Caesar and believes Brutus to desire the same, Brutus believes Cassius to be concerned about the public good and thus yields to his persuasions131: Brutus had rather be a villager Than to repute himself a son of Rome Under these hard conditions as this time Is like to lay upon us. (Julius Caesar, 1.2.171–174)

Cassius, on the other hand, sees his chance for manipulation: Well, Brutus, thou art noble: yet I see Thy honourable mettle may be wrought From that it is disposed. Therefore it is meet That noble minds keep ever with their likes; For who so firm that cannot be seduced? (Julius Caesar, 1.2.307–311)

Cassius confirms in this soliloquy that Brutus is deceived in believing Caesar to be a danger to the public good, but that he nevertheless acts out of truly good intentions. Due to this, Brutus is given a similarly elevated position that sets him apart from the other conspirators as Hotspur is given among the rebels, which is strongly emphasised through the play’s structure: the conspiracy is founded

130 Leggatt, Shakespeare’s Political Drama, 142/143. 131 Taylor has claimed that Cassius successfully appeals to Brutus’s vanity: “Cassius’s seductive appeal to the vanity of Brutus is obvious, and Brutus is not sufficiently immune to flattery. Caesar is a man as Brutus is a man; why therefore should Caesar be ruler of the Roman Empire and Brutus his mere underling?” (Taylor, “Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar,” 303) With this statement Taylor attests a streak of ambition in Brutus that is not at all deducible from the text, for at no point, despite his numerous soliloquies, does Brutus ever so much as hint at a desire in himself to be the ruler of Rome. Similarly Daniela Carpi regards Cassius and Brutus both in the same light coloured by envy: “Rather than a rebellion against Caesar, who is about to take on the role of king/tyrant, the sedition of Cassius and Brutus arises from envy of Caesar’s power for which they see themselves equally suited.” (Daniela Carpi, “Law and Sedition in Julius Caesar” in Shakespeare and the Law, ed. Daniela Carpi [Ravenna: Longo, 2003]: 103–115, 107) Apart from the fact that there is no evidence for an envious disposition in Brutus, the contrast between Cassius and Brutus throughout the play makes it impossible to compare them in this manner.

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while Brutus is absent and he only reappears on stage afterwards to deliver his crucial soliloquy: It must be by his death: and for my part I know no personal cause to spurn at him But for the general. He would be crowned: How that might change his nature, there’s the question. […] Th’abuse of greatness is when it disjoins Remorse from power; and to speak truth of Caesar I have not known when his affections swayed More than his reason. But ’tis common proof That lowliness is young ambition’s ladder Whereto the climber upward turns his face; But when he once attains the upmost round He then unto the ladder turns his back, Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees By which he did ascend. So Caesar may. Then, lest he may, prevent. And since the quarrel Will bear no colour for the thing he is, Fashion it thus: that what he is, augmented, Would run to these and these extremities. (Julius Caesar, 2.1.10–13; 18–31)132

John Drakakis has claimed that Brutus “fabricates a narrative,” and “like Cassius before him, conjures here a representation of a Caesar that the play never allows us to observe as anything other than a wholly fabricated identity […].”133 Similarly Virgil Whitaker has underlined the obvious logical error Brutus makes here: “Shakespeare has done his best to make the fallacies in the reasoning obvious. Brutus says explicitly that he has no evidence to support the conclusion that Caesar will become immoral and that he must kill on an assumption without basis […].”134 Indeed, the frequency with which Brutus uses modal verbs and the subjunctive emphasises the presumptuous nature of his argument,135 for he

132 See Pugliatti, Shakespeare and the Just War Tradition, 145: “Brutus is the only character whose inner thoughts and private reactions we are allowed to visit; while his distinction between being ‘butchers’ and ‘sacrificers’ (II.i.166) and the other distinction between ‘personal’ and ‘general’, (11, 12) as well as his palpable inner torment, on the one hand, isolate him from the rest of the conspirators, on the other hand they make us perceive his different moral stature […].” 133 John Drakakis, “Julius Caesar and Theatrical Representation” in Shakespeare and Politics, ed. Catherine M. S. Alexander (Cambridge: CUP, 2004): 206–218, 212. 134 Virgil K. Whitaker, Shakespeare’s Use of Learning. An Inquiry Into the Growth of His Mind and Art (San Marino, California: The Huntington Library, 1953): 245. 135 Several critics have failed to point this out, such as Ruth Levitsky, who takes this as a diagnosis of Caesar’s actual character: “Caesar is the kind of person who […] will forget the common people […] who have helped him to the throne; the kind of person who in his perfect justice unt-

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simply does not know whether Caesar will develop into such a tyrannical danger for Rome. Paolucci has claimed that Brutus has a “divine compulsion in his soul, which blinds him to the false logic on which he finally rests his case,”136 while Alexander Leggatt finds Brutus’s reasoning comprehensible: The tyranny Brutus fears as a theoretical possibility in the future is a clear and present danger. Cassius has already insisted on it. Brutus is frequently chided by critics for killing a man for the sake of a theory; but Shakespeare is, I think, less concerned with the quality of Brutus’ reasoning than with his inability to start with the evidence under his nose.137

The crucial distinction that must be made here is of ontological character – we must see the deontological status of Brutus’s thinking and not the consequences of it. R. A. Foakes has claimed that “Brutus remains blind to the consequences of his actions,” which shows that “he is concerned only with the general idea or name of liberty in conspiring against the idea of tyranny, and has no concern for the common good.”138 The play’s plot, however, is evidently concerned with displaying the exact opposite in Brutus. Obviously, the audience is well aware of the fact that Caesar will die because it is a historical fact, so that Brutus’s argumentation and inner struggle are dramatically unnecessary. Ethically, however, they are crucial: [A]lthough he calmly reviews (in soliloquy) the reasoning behind his decision to kill Caesar, we are expressly told that he did not arrive at this decision without experiencing great mental perturbation: he has not slept, the interim has been like a hideous dream, and his whole being has been in a state of insurrection.139

It is true that the argument of his speech is purely hypothetical, but his concern for the public good is such that even hypothetical danger is enough of a

inged with mercy will be dangerous if he gains power.” Ruth M. Levitsky, “The Elements Were So Mix’d,” PMLA 88.2 (1973): 240–245, 241. 136 Anne Paolucci, “The Tragic Hero in Julius Caesar,” Shakespeare Quarterly 11.3 (1960): 329–333, 331. 137 Leggatt, Shakespeare’s Political Drama, 144. 138 Foakes, Shakespeare and Violence, 163. Other critics have also claimed that Brutus is not actually considering his actions here, but is simply trying to reason away counterarguments against a foregone conclusion. See, for instance, William R. Bowden, “The Mind of Brutus,” Shakespeare Quarterly 17.1 (1966): 57–67, 60: “The soliloquy is not a logical train of thought leading to a decision, but a rationalization of a decision already reached – and not a very good rationalization, since there would seem to be no reason not to wait and see how Caesar might behave if he became king. [… The speech] shows [Brutus] trying to convince himself of the propriety of an action he has already resolved to perform.” 139 Levitsky, “The Elements Were So Mix’d,” 241.

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threat.140 Unlike his dramatic predecessors, Brutus has “no personal cause,”141 it is the “general” that concerns him, the abuse Rome would suffer if Caesar began to abuse his power. His final decision made, he dedicates himself to the greater cause: O Rome, I make thee promise, If the redress will follow, thou receivest Thy full petition at the hand of Brutus. (Julius Caesar, 2.1.56–58)

Thus, the following events do not result from envy, ambition or sheer malice but are dominated by an unmistakable lack of self-interest.142 John Roe even sees a Machiavellian precept that Brutus here adheres to: Although we may oppose an action on the grounds of conscience, conscience in a pure, disinterested sense, Machiavelli reminds us that the conflict we experience as often as not lies in the opposing pull of various emotions. Not only conscience but also love stands in the way. Allegiance, loyalty (often carefully secured by bribery), and of course ties of blood, all serve to entrench a single group against the collective interest. In the political sphere love is interchangeable with hate, and both are equally resistant to conscience. Fear of the effects arising from this, rather than his indifference to conscience, explains Brutus’s motives in acting as he does.143

However, Shakespeare usually makes use of Machiavellianism in his characters in the worst sense possible, i.e. combined with ruthlessness, brutality and inhumanity, none of which fit Brutus’s description. The entire scene preparing us for his conclusion is set in a manner that underlines his humanity – he has not slept, he is truly concerned and moreover we find him in a domestic setting – all of which make him appear as vulnerable and sincerely scrupulous:

140 D. J. Palmer has claimed that Brutus’s problem is “a conflict between the reason and the fantasy” and he sees the speech as alternating “between rational judgements of things as they are, and the apprehensions of fantasy, operating under the sway of passion, of things as they may become.” Palmer, “Tragic Error in Julius Caesar,” 403. Despite the hypothetical nature of his speech, it is surely an exaggeration to call it fantasy. Moreover, it has been pointed out numerously that Brutus is not passionate at this moment in time but calmly considers the possible change in Caesar. 141 Kermode reads “no personal cause” as “no cause that relates to Caesar as a person rather than as an official of the state […],” but considering the following evaluation of Caesar’s person and potential character development, “personal” here surely refers to Brutus and his lack of a private grudge against Caesar in contrast to Cassius (Kermode, Shakespeare’s Language, 92). 142 In this, Shakespeare follows his major source, Plutarch, who wrote that “having no private cause of complaint or grudge against Caesar, [Brutus] ventured to kill him, only to set his country again at liberty […].” Qtd. in Levitsky, “The Elements Were So Mix’d,” 241. 143 Roe, Shakespeare and Machiavelli, 137.

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Between the acting of a dreadful thing And the first motion, all the interim is Like a phantasma or a hideous dream […]. (Julius Caesar, 2.1.63–65)

Evidently, Brutus is fully aware of his endeavour’s gravity and does not try to cover the immorality of it. However, he is aware that the public appearance might require such moral cover: “And since the quarrel | Will bear no colour for the thing he is, | Fashion it thus: that what he is, augmented, | Would run to these and these extremities.” (Julius Caesar, 2.1.28–31) Brutus not only points out that he will need a just cause for his proceedings, he also admits that he does not have one as of yet – the conspiracy is a pre-emptive strike to prevent the injustice Caesar might cause. As Ernest Schanzer has pointed out: In his soliloquy Brutus can find nothing with which to reproach Caesar except his desire for the crown. The murder is in his eyes purely preventive, designed to protect the commonwealth from the kind of person Caesar is likely to become on his assumption of greater prowess.144

Brutus’s reasoning is motivated by purely preventive strategy, as Schanzer attests, but it is also motivated by absolute necessity. The hypothetical nature of the causes that might justify pre-emptive strikes has been a problem in just war theory to this very day: Michael Walzer asks “Now, what acts are to count, what acts do count as threats sufficiently serious to justify war?”145 The majority of scholarly criticism on Julius Caesar agrees that Caesar’s character as regarded by Brutus is not a threat sufficiently serious to justify his action, that Brutus, in Paolucci’s words, “is misled into mistaking the potential Caesar for the actual Caesar,”146 and as pointed out above, Brutus himself is aware of the discrepancy between his fears and the common perception of Caesar, but he truly believes in the justice of his cause. This is not to say that his subjective perspective renders his cause also objectively just, but it does underline that his motives are honourable, as Levitsky points out: The action of Brutus has been generally proclaimed, both by historians and literary critics, as wrong, since whatever Caesar as King might have become he could hardly have brought more woe to his country than did the consequences of his assassination. As for Brutus’ spirit, however, Shakespeare was at some pains to depict it as right.147

144 145 146 147

Schanzer, “Shakespeare’s Brutus,” 2. Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 80. Paolucci, “The Tragic Hero,” 330. Levitsky, “The Elements Were So Mix’d,” 244.

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Brutus is presented as truly convinced of the justice of Caesar’s assassination, which is further emphasised when he rejects the idea of an oath. Frances Shirley has claimed that Brutus “habitually tries to make the deed seem far better than the bloody butchery it really is” and therefore “rejects Cassius’ proposed oath and attempts to raise the conspirators above a need for such things.”148 The true reason why Brutus rejects an oath, however, is that he believes in the inherent justice of their cause: […] do not stain The even virtue of our enterprise, Nor th’insuppressive mettle of our spirits, To think that or our cause or our performance Did need an oath […]. (Julius Caesar, 2.1.131–135)

In Brents Stirling’s words, Brutus rejects an oath as “an idle rite which ill befits men drawn together in the honesty of a cause.”149 Brutus’s belief in the lawfulness of his aggression against Caesar moreover manifests itself in his adherence to the principle of proportionality, for he decidedly rejects the idea of killing anyone but Caesar – his aim is to “avert an evil,” in Aquinas’s words and this evil is seen in Caesar’s power, not in those who follow him: Our course will seem too bloody, Caius Cassius, To cut the head off and then hack the limbs – Like wrath in death and envy afterwards – For Antony is but a limb of Caesar. Let’s be sacrificers but not butchers, Caius. We all stand up against the spirit of Caesar, And in the spirit of men there is no blood. (Julius Caesar, 2.1.161–167)

This decision has been pointed out by many scholars as a tragic error in Brutus’s reasoning and a constitutive element in his eventual downfall, but the tragic consequence Brutus’s decision has, has clouded his moral integrity. He truly regrets having to sacrifice Caesar for the sake of Rome and is determined to limit his actions to absolute necessity without allowing further casualties. Further, it has been pointed out, that this behaviour results from an obsessive desire to please, to appear honourable in the public perception. Such is Robert S. Miola’s interpretation:

148 Frances A. Shirley, Swearing and Perjury in Shakespeare’s Plays (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1979): 77. Despite the fact that the negligence of an oath has such a crucial function in Julius Caesar, Shirley unfortunately does not elaborate further on it, but only says that Brutus “would like, where possible, to rely on other bonds,” without properly analysing the reason for this. 149 Brents Stirling, “‘Or Else This Were a Savage Spectacle’,” PMLA 66.5 (1951): 765–774, 769.

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Brutus may believe that he acts on behalf of the Romans, but the audience, like Antony, may suspect “private griefs” (III.iii. 213). Persistent concern about the appearance of virtue, not the substance, and about the manipulation of appearances for the “common eyes” (II.i. 79) raises doubts about Brutus’ conception of himself and the assassination. […] His two major miscalculations appear in the play as attempts to curry public favor: Brutus spares Antony so the course will not “seem too bloody” (II.i. 162); […]. Such attempts to gain popular support ill sort with the conception of Brutus as public defender, as the appointed instrument of the general will.150

It is true that throughout the play Brutus is concerned with the outward appearance of the assassination, but this does not necessarily suggest that he is not acting for the public good. Lordi has pointed out that “Brutus’s awareness […] that the nature of conspiracy is such that he must condone Machiavellian policy in order to be successful seems singularly inconsistent with, and tends to blur, the republican idealism that he displays elsewhere in the play.”151 However, acting for the public good and having the support of the public are two completely different things and since Brutus is well aware of the fact that what he is planning counts as aggression against the state, he feels the need to make sure that people will be able to see the value and necessity of it: This shall make Our purpose necessary and not envious, Which so appearing in the common eyes, We shall be called purgers, not murderers. (Julius Caesar, 2.1.176–179)152

150 Robert S. Miola, “Julius Caesar and the Tyrannicide Debate,” Renaissance Quarterly 38.2 (1985): 271–289, 286/287. Similarly, John Alvis sees Brutus’s mistake in his obsessive concern about how he will appear to the public: “Brutus makes every important decision according to his view of how the assassination should appear to the public eye, as if he were constructing a train of visual rhetoric, when he should be taking care to kill a despot in such fashion as to render harmless the despot’s followers and at the same time provide for restoring a Senate and a decent populace. […] The two irredeemable mistakes which allow Antony and Octavius to conduct a successful revenge against the conspirators come about only because of Brutus’s concern to give the assassination a dignified, disinterested appearance.” John Alvis, Shakespeare’s Understanding of Honor (Durham, North Carolina: Carolina Academic Press and The Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy, 1990): 132. Alvis ignores the fact that this concern has the positive side-effect that there are no other direct casualties. 151 Lordi, “Brutus and Hotspur,” 183. 152 Lordi explains the emphasis on the outward appearance of the conspiracy quite pragmatically: “[Brutus’s] awareness of the need for disguise is perfectly consistent with the imagery associated with conspiracy throughout the play.” Lordi, “Brutus and Hotspur,” 183.

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Brutus is concerned with the public reaction because he acts in the best interest of Rome and must avoid a civil war. His failure does not retrospectively refute his right intention and his concern with outward appearances does not render him superficial or calculating. Since he tries to preserve the peace he takes precautions not to endanger the ultimately peaceful end of the tyrannicide. Subjectively, his behaviour is in perfect accordance with the requirements of Augustine and Aquinas. Joseph W. Houppert asks: If we grant that Brutus’s enthusiasm for republican ideals is real and that he genuinely believes that unless Caesar is stopped he will destroy freedom in Rome, must we also sanction the method employed by Brutus and the other conspirators? That is, in order to check Caesar is it necessary to kill Caesar?153

In truly Shakespearean manner the play does not tell us whether Caesar would have become a tyrant and whether any means short off the assassination could have been effective.154 We do not have to sanction the murder, but it is very clear that we should appreciate Brutus’s considerations and scruples.155 Here the distinction between jus ad bellum and jus in bello is fundamental: Brutus’s aggression might not be justified, but his conduct is morally just. He tries to avert an evil and takes care not to harm anyone else by double effect. Daniela Carpi claims that 153 Joseph W. Houppert, “Fatal Logic in ‘Julius Caesar’,” South Atlantic Bulletin 39.4 (1974): 3–9, 5. 154 As little evidence as the play provides for a determination of this problem, John W. Velz tries to show in reference to Senecan political thought that Caesar must be considered a tyrant indeed: “Without concluding for or against Seneca as Shakespeare’s source, we can discern in Julius Caesar a Senecan antithesis between the clement king who is motivated by just cause and the tyrant with his ‘intollerable vice of self-wille’. Caesar believes that he is the former; […] the conspirators find in him the latter. The renaissance audience, seeing that Caesar is a tyrant not only ‘in the entrance’ but ‘in the execution’ as well, would be expected to invest their sympathies on the ethical side of the conspiracy.” John W. Velz, “Clemency, Will, and Just Cause in ‘Julius Caesar’,” Shakespeare Survey 22 (1969): 109–115, 113. This conception is confirmed by Robert S. Miola, who draws on the same example in the text as evidence for Caesar’s tyrannical nature, which is his refusal to come to the Senate: “The cause is in my will, I will not come: | That is enough to satisfy the Senate.” (Julius Caesar, 2. 2. 71/72) Miola claims: “Such nonchalant substitution of personal caprice for just cause and law marks the tyrant in execution. That Caesar changes his mind once again and decides finally to go to the Senate underscores the arbitrariness of his will and, by extension, the instability of his tyrannical rule.” Miola, “Julius Caesar and the Tyrannicide Debate,” 280. 155 Houppert answers his own questions by claiming that Brutus simply falls victim to logical fallacy: “Brutus fails, then, not because he lacks ‘practical understanding’ or because he is a ‘cold, unappealing’ leader or because he commits himself to violence on the ‘highest abstract principle.’ He may be ‘trapped,’ as some critics claim, but not by Cassius and other lesser men. If Brutus is ‘trapped,’ it is by the extremes of disjunctive syllogism. His failure is, in short, a failure of logic.” Houppert, “Fatal Logic,” 7.

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“Brutus thus orchestrates the act of killing in such a way as to reach a perfect balance between an act of human envy and an act of metaphysical justice, between courage and vengefulness, between ‘purgers’ and ‘murderers’.”156 Her statement, however, considerably lessens Brutus’s moral integrity and his distinction between the actual evil and the innocent. He will not extend his aggression against Antony only because he is Caesar’s follower.157 Just as in war, non-combatants should be spared as carefully as possible and the contrast between Brutus’s scrupulous considerations and the butchery of the first tetralogy is striking. Julius Caesar thus sharply distinguishes between jus ad bellum and jus in bello, demonstrating that even if the cause of aggression is unjust, there is no need for unjust conduct.158 The fact that Brutus tries to avoid unnecessary casualties is, however, ironically reflected in the havoc of civil war that breaks out despite his careful precautions. Antony’s funeral oration drives his listeners “into mass hysteria,”159 and the immediate consequence of this is the death of the poet Cinna – the death of an innocent by-stander, a non-combatant, who falls victim to the irrational mob.

156 Carpi, “Law and Sedition,” 110/111. 157 The principle of double effect in war theory is the argument that civilian deaths may be excusable if the four following conditions prevail, as laid out by Michael Walzer: “1) The act is good in itself or at least indifferent, which means, for our purposes, that it is a legitimate act of war. 2) The direct effect is morally acceptable – the destruction of military supplies, for example, or the killing of enemy soldiers. 3) The intention of the actor is good, that is, he aims only at the acceptable effect; the evil effect is not one of his ends, nor is it a means to his ends. 4) The good effect is sufficiently good to compensate for allowing the evil effect; it must be justifiable under Sidgwick’s proportionality rule.” Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 153. Sidgwick’s proportionality rule runs as follows, referred to by Walzer: “In the conduct of hostilities, it is not permissible to do ‘any mischief which does not tend materially to the end [of victory], nor any mischief of which the conduciveness to the end is slight in comparison with the amount of mischief.’” Qtd. in Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 129. Brutus’s scruples about harming the innocent remain consistent even after Caesar’s death: “Publius, good cheer. | There is no harm intended to your person, | Nor to no Roman else” (Julius Caesar, 2.1.89–91). 158 Brutus’s concern to avoid bloodshed seems somewhat at odds with his behaviour after the murder. The ritualistic nature of the assassination has troubled many scholars, who find it barbaric (see, for instance, Gregson, Public and Private Man, 211; Leggatt, Shakespeare’s Political Drama, 155; Miola, Shakespeare’s Rome, 100/101). It is certainly true that this specific staging of the scene has a profoundly ironic implication, since the image of all the conspirators smeared with blood is reminiscent of a slaughterhouse. However, Brutus is not hysterical here, as Gregson claims. As gory as the scene might be, Brutus ceremoniously celebrates the justice of the cause in the belief that he has done the best for Rome. I agree with Stirling, who claims that the ceremonious aspect in Brutus’s mind “will purify the violent act of all taint of butchery and raise it to the level of sacrifice.” Stirling, “Or Else This Were a Savage Spectacle,” 769. 159 Gregson, Public and Private Man, 213.

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They fully intend to kill him and this casualty cannot be explained away by the principle of double effect, which makes Cinna’s death stand out in stark contrast to Brutus’s refusal to kill Antony.160 Thus, it emphasises Brutus’s just conduct, which enables him to argue for the justice of his cause still: Did not great Julius bleed for justice’ sake? What villain touched his body, that did stab And not for justice? (Julius Caesar, 4.3.18–20)

At the same time, however, the immorality of his deed begins to haunt him in the shape of Caesar’s ghost. Houppert points out that “Brutus […] is denied even a single scene of soul-searching grief after the assassination,”161 but such a scene is substituted by Brutus’s confrontation of the ghost, which embodies the guilt he finally begins to feel as it dawns on him that he might have been wrong and this fundamental doubt figures prominently in his last lines: Caesar, now be still. I killed not thee with half so good a will. (Julius Caesar, 5.5.50/51)

In consideration of these last words it is certainly impossible to believe that Brutus acts out of envy, ambition or “egotistical satisfaction of his will.”162 He sacri-

160 Gregson speaks of Cinna as “the pathetic poet,” who presents a “ludicrous victim,” and it is certainly the case that the scene due to Cinna’s rather naïve character and his profession as poet does indeed have an ironic touch, but nevertheless it depicts a ruthless and unnecessary killing of a completely innocent character. Gregson, Public and Private Man, 215. 161 Houppert, “Fatal Logic,” 8. Houppert, who regards Brutus as a tragic hero, compares the play with Macbeth, pointing out that “[l]ike Macbeth, Brutus kills a friend and a master, but, unlike Macbeth, is denied the luxury of soul-destroying grief. Time and again, before the murder, Brutus looks into the murky depths of his soul, trying to pluck from it the heart of its mystery.” The crucial difference between the two plays to my mind is, however, the different nature of the characters’ intentions in their killings. While Macbeth clearly murders Duncan out of his own self-interest and ambition, he must slowly realise afterwards that he has done wrong and suffer for it. Brutus has the common good in mind and must come to terms with his guilt of having killed “the foremost man of all this world.” (Julius Caesar, 4.3.22) The difference in the characters’ motives is clearly emphasised in the diametrically opposed eulogies they receive. 162 Gordon Ross Smith, “Brutus, Virtue and Will,” Shakespeare Quarterly 10.3 (1959): 367–379, 378. Smith regards Brutus as a tragic hero, whose hamartia is hybris: “Brutus’ character fault is overbearing will; his moral fault is Greek hybris or Christian pride – pride in his virtue and his righteousness. His specific virtues, therefore, which are in such frequent evidence, are nevertheless peripheral. He is apparently high-minded, honest, kind, and trusting; more important, he is capable of proper feelings of guilt and remorse. Whether the everyday practice of his peripheral virtues outweigh the less obvious but central faults must be a matter of private judgement.” (378)

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fices a friend for Rome and has to find that he has failed, which makes him in many scholars’ perspective a truly tragic hero.163 Bowden has claimed that at this moment, Brutus “is simply retiring from a losing game,”164 but it is the insight that he has killed a human being for a greater cause that leads to his suicide, as Anne Paolucci has claimed: He comes to realize that in upholding the sacred cause of freedom, in protecting the republic from the violence and tyranny of dictatorship, he has broken the equally binding law of humanity which demands of every man integrity in his relationship with others. Having committed himself to the cause of truth and honor, Brutus comes to realize that to uphold that cause he must sacrifice himself, just as Oedipus, having committed himself to the cause of justice, finds that to achieve what he set out to do he must punish himself.165

His suicide thus represents his faith in justice and morality, which makes him sacrifice himself in the same manner that he sacrifices Caesar. This is why he receives a eulogy that praises his honourable intentions: This was the noblest Roman of them all: All the conspirators save only he Did that they did in envy of great Caesar. He only, in a general honest thought And common good to all, made one of them. His life was gentle, and the elements So mixed in him that nature might stand up And say to all the world, ‘This was a man.’ (Julius Caesar, 5.5.69–76)166

163 See, for instance, Bowden, “The Mind of Brutus,” 64: “The argument remaining to be considered is that the true inwardness of Brutus is revealed after the assassination of Caesar rather than before – that he is tortured by the recognition of a truth which only tragedy could teach him. Such a recognition might be either that he has done a wrong deed or that his good deed has had a bad outcome. Either way, Brutus would be a good tragic hero in the eyes of those whose definition of tragedy includes the moment of recognition or failure, the flash of insight or vision, before the end.” Similarly, Paolucci and Whitaker see Brutus as a classic tragic hero: Paolucci, “The Tragic Hero,” 332/333; Whitaker, Shakespeare’s Use of Learning, 234. 164 Bowden, “The Mind of Brutus,” 64. 165 Paolucci, “The Tragic Hero,” 332/333. 166 Pugliatti asks whether this is “an implicit acknowledgement, on Mark Antony’s part, that the idea of a preemptive tyrannicide was just?” Pugliatti, Shakespeare and the Just War Tradition, 146. Such an assumption is too strong to my mind, since it should not be forgotten that Antony provoked a civil war in order to avenge Caesar and destroy Brutus, but he does acknowledge that Brutus never acted out of spite or malice, but only for the good of Rome.

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Antony thus demonstrates to the audience that even he, despite his loyalty to Caesar, believes that Brutus acted purely out of his concern for Rome. His aggression against Caesar is therefore justified at least concerning the element of right intention. Virgil Whitaker has claimed that the particular achievement of Julius Caesar in comparison to the earlier plays is the comprehensible psychological insight into a character’s mind: In comparison with the chronicle plays just preceding it and even with the comedies contemporary with it, Julius Caesar is remarkable as being the first Shakespearean play in which the motivation is really adequate and in which we become acquainted with the characters through their mental processes as well as through their actions.167

It is through this insight that the play demonstrates a classic case of intentio recta: Brutus aims at the public good and directs his aggression towards the ‘tyrant’ only, avoiding the double effect. Due to his scruples and open considerations, it is clear that he does not act out of ambition, malice or lust for blood. He is tragically misled in his belief, but committed to his cause.

4.1.4 The Principle of Responsibility Julius Caesar completes the establishment of three prerequisites for a just war according to Aquinas. Probably about the same time around 1599, the drama takes up another fundamental element of the theory of just war in Henry V: the principle of responsibility. This play focuses on a war that is entirely unnecessary, which enforces the question of the reason for aggression and the responsibility for the costs. John Mark Mattox has claimed that due to Henry’s behaviour throughout the play and especially after the crucial battles at Harfleur and Agincourt, “one can only assume that, consistent with the requirements of the just war tradition, Henry’s ultimate objective is the restoration of peace […].”168 However, Henry’s war leads to a disturbance of peace, which is why so many critics have been troubled as to what Henry’s real objective for the aggression against France is supposed to be within the play. The aggression is a historical fact, but the question is which reasons are given to Shakespeare’s Henry and the particular dramatisation of the justification of aggression makes the issue even more complex. Prior to a justification or reason given by the character himself, the clergy’s particular interest in this war lends it

167 Whitaker, Shakespeare’s Use of Learning, 246. 168 Mattox, “Shakespeare’s Just Warrior,” 46.

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a dubious nature right from the beginning. As unnecessary as Henry’s aggression against France seems to be, the clergy have a strong interest that he focus on something other than the “bill,” which they owe him, since that would “drink the cup and all.” (Henry V, 1.1.20)169 Thus, the clergy’s self-interest in this war is indubitably intended to suggest the injustice of aggression. As Gerald Gould puts it: “The cynicism of this, in the forefront of the play, needs no elaboration […]. Bear in mind that there is artistically, in dramatic construction, no reason or excuse for this scene: unless its intention is the obvious cynical one, there is no intention at all.”170 Similarly, Andrew Gurr emphasises that “Shakespeare always broaches his major themes at the start of his plays. Here the contrast of trumpeting Prologue and politic Archbishop makes the point that self interest is one motive underlying the glories of war.”171 However, it is just as evident that Henry fully intends to declare war for his own reasons, since he asks the Archbishop to provide him with a just cause: My learned lord, we pray you to proceed And justly and religiously unfold Why the law Salic that they have in France Or should or should not bar us in our claim. And God forbid, my dear and faithful lord, That you should fashion, wrest or bow your reading Or nicely charge your understanding soul With opening titles miscreate, whose right Suits not in native colours with the truth. (Henry V, 1.2.9–17)

As sincere as Henry may sound, and many critics have perceived him to be so, the justification he asks of the Archbishop cannot be taken seriously in view of the latter’s self-interest. The question that arises is, of course, whether Henry is in on the conspiracy or not. Moody Prior, for example, believes that Henry’s “clergy are shown to be politic, but he conspicuously is not. In this entire scene he is a model of correctness.”172 Paul Cantor, on the other hand, claims that “[w]e of course know from our glimpse behind the political veil that the archbishop is in fact tell-

169 All quotations from Henry V are from the following edition and will be given parenthetically: William Shakespeare, King Henry V, ed. T. W. Craik. The Arden Third Series Shakespeare (Walton-on-Thames: Thomas Nelson & Sons Ltd, 1995). 170 Gerald Gould, “Irony and Satire in Henry V” in Shakespeare: Henry V, ed. Michael Quinn (London: Macmillan, 1969): 81–94, 87. 171 Andrew Gurr, “‘Henry V’ and the Bees’ Commonwealth,” Shakespeare Survey 30 (1977): 61–72, 70. 172 Moody E. Prior, The Drama of Power. Studies in Shakespeare’s History Plays (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1973): 328.

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ing Henry exactly what he wants to hear.”173 This second view of the situation has found many more supporters in Shakespeare criticism, such as Vickie Sullivan: “A consideration of the order of events that comprise the first two scenes indicates that Henry orchestrates them, and that far from the Churchmen inducing the king to press his claims, he induces the clergy to support his own plans.”174 This necessarily raises questions about the nature of his own plans and on this scholarly opinions are also manifold. One common approach can be identified, which is the belief that in waging war with France, Henry tries to support his legitimacy as the King of England in the manner his father suggests in 2Henry IV: Henry V makes sure that the Catholic hierarchy supports his regime and especially his plans for war against France. […] The key to Henry’s uniting the nation turns out to be finding a common enemy to unite his people against. His father had already anticipated this Machiavellian strategy.175

This is considered by many critics to be the real reason for Henry’s war, and this implies that there is no just cause, which is why the whole scene focuses on the long and complicated justification. The speech is intended to demonstrate Henry’s claim to the throne of France, but the description of the complex genealogy is not

173 Paul A. Cantor, “Shakespeare’s Henry V: From the Medieval to the Modern World” in Perspectives on Politics in Shakespeare, eds. John A. Murley and Sean D. Sutton (Oxford: Lexington, 2006): 11–32, 17. 174 Vickie Sullivan, “Princes to Act: Henry V as the Machiavellian Prince of Appearance” in Shakespeare’s Political Pageant. Essays in Literature and Politics, eds. Joseph Alulis and Vickie Sullivan (Lanham et al.: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1996): 125–152, 136. 175 Cantor, “Shakespeare’s Henry V,” 16. See also Rackin, Stages of History, 79: “Henry’s struggle for France represents an effort to […] legitimate his status as King of England. […] Henry uses Agincourt as an enormous trial by combat to establish the legitimacy of his rule and earn his place in providential history.” Andrew Gurr agrees: “Foreign war has the advantage of drawing all interests into one consent, and of strengthening lenity to friends through harshness to enemies. Henry is in his more complex and secretive way following his father’s advice to busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels. That is the way he chooses to release his title from the pressure put on it by his father’s doubtful purchase.” Gurr, “Bees’ Commonwealth,” 72. See also Graham Holderness: “The subsequent achievement of Henry V as king is not to bring or restore peace, but to succeed in externalizing conflict, exporting war, as the only practicable alternative to bitter internal conflict, civil war. In doing this, he is directly following his father’s advice […].” Graham Holderness, Shakespeare Recycled. The Making of Historical Drama (New York et al.: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1992): 89. Also see Honor Matthews, “The Usurped Throne and the Ambiguous Hero,” in Shakespeare: Henry V, ed. Michael Quinn (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd, 1969): 202–227, 208: “To distract men’s thoughts from his doubtful title by foreign conquest was Henry IV’s dying advice to his son, and follow this advice is the son’s first major decision of policy after ascending the throne.”

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only confusing but also comical; it provides no discernible information and culminates in the ironic conclusion that Henry’s right is “as clear as is the summer’s sun.” (Henry V, 1.2.86) Moody Prior is one of few critics who take it seriously: Today the long harangue on the Salic law is a bore, and whether, as has been alleged, it was more interesting to an age that had to listen to long sermons can be no more than a hopeful guess. But Shakespeare introduces it as though he wished it to be taken as reasonable, and it is doubtful that he put it in for laughs […].176

Cedric Watts, on the other hand, regards it “not just as tedious but as comically tedious,”177 and Rabkin goes as far as calling it “a sardonic bit of irony.”178 Vickie Sullivan finds a middle-ground, rightly pointing out that “[a]t the very least it can be said with assurance that the Bishop’s obscure rendition of kings and queens, heirs and usurpers, cannot be said to render Henry’s right to France ‘as clear as is the summer’s sun’ […].”179 Malcolm Pittock’s comment on the speech is surely the most convincing: “However much Shakespeare might have wished to believe that the Archbishop’s arguments were sound, not only did he know they were not, but he couldn’t help showing they were not by making them ludicrously tortuous.”180

176 Prior, Drama of Power, 271. John Mark Mattox tries to read Henry V as a dramatisation of the perfectly just warrior and attests that: “Shakespeare capitalizes on the notion that the throne of France has been wrongly withheld from Henry and that this fact constitutes itself an evil worthy of punishment.” Mattox, “Shakespeare’s Just Warrior,” 32. 177 Cedric Watts, “Henry V’s claim to France: Valid Or Invalid?” in Henry V, War Criminal? And Other Shakespeare Puzzles, eds. John Sutherland and Cedric Watts (Oxford: OUP, 2000): 117–125, 119. 178 Rabkin, The Problem of Meaning, 52. 179 Sullivan, “Princes to Act,” 135. Paul Cantor also draws attention to the fact that the speech implicitly points out that Henry’s right to the throne is still debatable: “Although the archbishop claims that he is showing that Henry’s rights in France are ‘as clear as is the summer’s sun’ […], his long and convoluted speech, with its many references to depositions, usurpations, and other breaks in legitimate succession, only reveals how dubious any claim to the throne inevitably becomes if one goes back far enough in history.” Cantor, “Shakespeare’s Henry V,” 17. Watts pursues this further, claiming that “Henry’s claim to the throne of France, made suspect by the self-interest of its appointed validators, is invalidated by the illegitimacy of Henry’s title to the British throne.” Watts, “Henry V’s Claim to France,” 125. This is also Grady’s take on the scene: “Harry V’s heroic conquest of France is the fulfilment of a son’s duty and, as has long been noted, also a Machiavellian ploy to consolidate the questionable title to the throne of England by championing an equally dubious one to the throne of France.” Hugh Grady, Shakespeare, Machiavelli and Montaigne. Power and Subjectivity from Richard II to Hamlet (Oxford: OUP, 2002): 225. All of this can be strengthened by Henry’s last words immediately before he embarks on his endeavour: “No king of England, if not king of France!” (Henry V, 2.2.194). 180 Malcolm Pittock, “The Problem of Henry V,” Neophilologus 93.1 (2009): 175–190, 183.

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Apart from these very valid objections to the speech and its unconvincing argumentation, the fact remains that even if Henry has a claim to the French throne, this is not a just war, which becomes clear through the focus the play puts on the principle of responsibility – the responsibility for the casualties of war and a responsibility the character is shown to be very well aware of: For God doth know how many now in health Shall drop their blood in approbation Of what your reverence shall incite us to. Therefore take heed how you impawn our person, How you awake our sleeping sword of war: We charge you in the name of God take heed. For never two such kingdoms did contend Without much fall of blood, whose guiltless drops Are every one a woe, a sore complaint ’Gainst him whose wrongs gives edge unto the swords That makes such waste in brief mortality. Under this conjuration speak, my lord, For we will hear, note, and believe in heart That what you speak is in your conscience washed As pure as sin with baptism. (Henry V, 1.2.18–32)

In perfect accordance with the assumptions of just war theory, Shakespeare’s Henry points out that wars of aggression are first of all a crime and secondly have terrible consequences, which can only possibly be rendered worth it, if the cause is just. Michael Walzer has pointed out that “if war is not fought under the aegis of necessity but, most often, of freedom, then soldiers and statesmen have to make choices that are sometimes moral choices.”181 This moral choice and the blame that the person who makes it will be liable to create Henry’s conundrum – in order to declare war on France he must know that he is justified in doing so, for the necessity does not present itself and he will be held accountable for the suffering. However, Henry as well as the audience knows that this war is not just, as Harold Goddard has noted: Nothing could sound more moral and humane […]. But we must judge Henry by his acts, not by his words. The King must have an irreproachable reason for making war. The one thing that his claim to the French throne must be is clear. But when the Archbishop goes on to expound that claim, clear is the one thing it does not seem to be.182

181 Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 287. 182 Goddard, Meaning of Shakespeare, 220. Moreover, even if his claim to the French throne were justified, this would not render the war morally just, for it would justify it as a “dynastic war,” as Gould points out and asks in the same vein: “And are dynastic wars ever justified? –

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This is why Henry’s speech places so much emphasis on the responsibility for the consequences – he tries to escape the blame by placing all of the responsibility on the Archbishop. Thus, although his words might indeed sound “moral and humane,” the whole speech is in actual fact a casuistic argument that is supposed to absolve him of the crime of aggression, as Ornstein has noted: “Seeking vindication for a decision one feels he has already made, he finds reasons to do what he intends and scapegoats on which to place the moral burden of responsibility.”183 Obviously, Henry’s argumentation is flawed: the Archbishop may provide him with the outline of his dubious right to the French throne but the responsibility remains with Henry. As the aggressor he has the moral responsibility and his refusal to accept this implies that he will not only be responsible, but guilty. Rabkin has pointed out that “Henry’s insistence throughout the scene that the Archbishop reassure him as to his right to make the claim insures our suspicion that the war is not quite the selfless enterprise other parts of the play tempt us to see.”184 Hence, Henry’s insistence on the clergy’s full responsibility draws the attention to the injustice of his cause. Moreover, he never declares his true intentions, but it is evident that he strives for war, not peace. John Mark Mattox claims that “[g]iven this acknowledgement of the horrors of war, one certainly can conclude that, even if Henry cared nothing at all about the justice of his cause, he is by no means oblivious to the moral implications of his contemplated venture.”185 It is certainly true that Henry is not oblivious to the moral implications, which is why he so insistently tries to distance himself from them.186 This is also Ronald Reb-

seeing that they cost the blood of the common people who have nothing to do with dynasties.” Gould, “Irony and Satire,” 86. Gould also points out that “[t]o say this is not to import ‘modern’ ideas on Shakespeare: the point was fully appreciated, long before Shakespeare, by Sir Thomas More.” 183 Ornstein, A Kingdom for a Stage, 182. Sullivan also points out that Henry “endeavours to lay the responsibility of war on Canterbury,” and that despite his grave words, it is obvious that he would like to wage this war no matter what. Sullivan, “Princes to Act,” 137. 184 Rabkin, The Problem of Meaning, 53. Even Mattox, who persistently tries to argue that Shakespeare’s Henry is represented as the perfect embodiment of the rules of war, has to admit that Shakespeare does not attempt to construe Henry’s cause as just: “In the final analysis, while Shakespeare clearly recognizes the philosophical necessity of establishing Henry’s authority to declare war, he is, on this point, long on rhetoric but short on substantive argumentation.” Mattox, “Shakespeare’s Just Warrior,” 38. 185 Mattox, “Shakespeare’s Just Warrior,” 34. 186 The general awareness of the character is consistent with 1Henry IV, where he points out to the army leaders that “In both your armies there is many a soul | Shall pay full dearly for this encounter | If once they join in trial.” (1Henry IV, 5.1.83–85) This awareness, however, makes him even more culpable: willingly to endanger so many lives and refuse to take responsibility for this is worse than if he were ignorant.

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holz’s reading, who remarks that “[b]ecause Henry shares our knowledge that the war is unjust, he anxiously seeks ‘justifications’ that will convince his own people, European Christendom, and himself, in so far as he can blind himself to the unethical character of the war.”187 Henry’s negligence to account for the possible casualties is obvious in his determination to shift his own responsibility onto anyone available: first it is the clergy, who willingly accept the deal.188 When Henry concludes the morally hypocritical debate of the second scene with “May I with right and conscience make this claim?” (Henry V, 1.2.96), the Archbishop quickly accepts the role Henry has given him by responding: “The sin upon my head, dread sovereign […].” (Henry V, 1.2.97) With this statement, as Cantor has pointed out, “the archbishop explicitly takes the responsibility for the attack on France away from Henry.”189 Still, Henry officially seems reluctant, as if he needed even more convincing. Ornstein sees the complexity of the character in the fact that “though he calls solemn attention to the suffering that war inflicts, he allows Canterbury’s dusty arguments about the Salic law and Exeter’s and Westmoreland’s facile optimism to sweep away all compunction.”190 Indeed it is only after the long speeches on his supposed right to the throne and Westmoreland’s assessment that he has “cause, and means, and might,” (Henry V, 1.2.125) that he reluctantly “agrees” to go to war, but the conclusive speech he delivers has no reluctant tone to it: Now are we well resolved; and by God’s help And yours, the noble sinews of our power, France being ours, we’ll bend it to our awe Or break it all to pieces. (Henry V, 1.2.223–226)

Such aptness for brutality is not uncommon in Shakespeare, but it resembles the general tone of the first tetralogy much more than the more complex tone of the later plays. First of all, this reveals Henry’s underlying wish to conquer France for his own good with no consideration of the consequences, which renders his staged deliberation hollow and hypocritical as Pamela Jensen points out:

187 Ronald A. Rebholz, Shakespeare Philosophy of History Revealed in a Detailed Analysis of Henry V and Examined in Other History Plays. Studies in Renaissance Literature 25 (Lewiston et al.: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2003): 23. 188 Ornstein sees the clergy as rather naïve, for he claims that “[i]nnocent in their unexamined enthusiasm, Henry’s councilors do not so much evade the moral issue of the war as fail to recognize it.” Ornstein, A Kingdom for a Stage, 182. However, the scene prior to this open discussion clearly suggests their dubious motives, which they value higher than the cost of war. 189 Cantor, “Shakespeare’s Henry V,” 17. 190 Ornstein, A Kingdom for a Stage, 182.

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Appearances notwithstanding, Henry’s hesitancy concerning the war with France is dissembled. […] To insure the friendship with the church that is necessary to his designs, Shakespeare’s Henry gives the bishops the illusion that they exert […] influence over him […]. Shakespeare’s Henry allows his ostensible reluctance to be overcome by Canterbury and Ely, but only on the grounds he establishes and in a setting he completely orchestrates.191

Secondly, the degree of brutality expressed by Shakespeare’s characters is again indicative of the moral value of their true intentions, which Henry reveals through his reaction to the Dauphin’s practical joke: And tell the pleasant Prince this mock of his Hath turned his balls to gun-stones, and his soul Shall stand sore charged for the wasteful vengeance That shall fly with them; for many a thousand widows Shall this his mock mock out of their dear husbands, Mock mothers from their sons, mock castles down, And some are yet ungotten and unborn That shall have cause to curse the Dauphin’s scorn. (Henry V, 1.2.282–289)

Again, Henry shifts the responsibility for casualties from himself onto another, this time the Dauphin – the people that will suffer in the manner described, “shall have cause to curse the Dauphin’s scorn.” Thus, Henry tries to construe out of a practical joke a legitimate cause to go to war and make the Dauphin look like the aggressor, so that the latter will be the one responsible. Cantor rightly attests that the Dauphin’s joke offers Henry “a provocation for what threatened to look like an unprovoked attack on France,”192 but the hypocrisy of it is evident. The Dauphin’s practical joke can certainly not be construed as a legitimate cause for war. A challenge would be appropriate, a war is not. According to Vickie Sullivan, “Henry has orchestrated this scene in a manner that allows him to minimize his own responsibility for the invasion.”193 When he then finally embarks on his endeavour, he appeals to God: “Let us deliver | Our puissance into the hand of God, | Putting it straight in expedition.” (Henry V, 2.2.190–192) Alexander Leggatt assumes somewhat vaguely that Henry’s “occasional deference to God may be an-

191 Pamela K. Jensen, “The Famous Victories of William Shakespeare: The Life of Henry the Fifth” in Poets, Princes, and Private Citizens. Literary Alternatives to Postmodern Politics, eds. Joseph M. Knippenberg and Peter Augustine Lawler (Lanham et al.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1996): 235–269, 238. 192 Cantor, “Shakespeare’s Henry V,” 18. Similarly, Malcolm Pittock points out how welcome the provocation actually is to Henry: “The mocking gift of the tennis balls […] plays into Henry’s hands, providing him with an opportunity to declare war in an outburst of probably simulated anger.” Pittock, “The Problem of Henry V,” 182. 193 Sullivan, “Princes to Act,” 139.

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other way of easing the burden.”194 Apart from the fact that these deferences are hardly occasional but rather almost obsessive, it is most evident that Henry intends to do exactly that – ease the burden. In contrast to Richmond, who refers to himself as an executor of the divine will, Henry merely instrumentalises God as the authority to take the blame. This strategy of avoiding responsibility is also reflected in Exeter’s embassy to the King of France, who is now referred to as a usurper and unrightful king. Exeter charges him to “lay apart | The borrowed glories,” (Henry V, 2.4.78/79) threatening him in Henry’s name: [The King] bids you, in the bowels of the Lord, Deliver up the crown and to take mercy On the poor souls for whom this hungry war Opens his vasty jaws; and on your head Turning the widows’ tears, the orphans’ cries, The dead men’s blood, the pining maidens’ groans, For husbands, fathers and betrothed lovers That shall be swallowed in this controversy. (Henry V, 2.4.102–109)

Due to Exeter’s reasoning, it appears that the French in defending themselves shall be guilty of aggression, as Dollimore and Sinfield have pointed out: [Henry’s] is a power rooted in nature – blood, lineage and breeding […] but also deriving ultimately from God’s law as it is encoded in nature and, by extension, society: France belongs to him ‘by gift of heaven […]’ […]. Conversely the French king’s power is construed in terms of ‘borrow’d glories’ […]. With this theory of legitimate versus illegitimate power the responsibility for aggression is displaced onto its victims. Thus does war find its rationale, injustice its justification.195

Such casuistry is typical of Henry and his followers throughout the play and the cruel images they employ only emphasise that the guilt for the crime of war must be placed with them. They paint the most dreadful picture of the reality of war, but in the attempt to free themselves of responsibility, they only increase their

194 Leggatt, Shakespeare’s Political Drama, 133. See Curtis Breight’s comment that “Henry’s desire to displace responsibility for war onto God is a larger pattern in which he consistently attempts to blame other characters for his own actions […].” Curtis Breight, Surveillance, Militarism and Drama in the Elizabethan Era (Basingstoke and London: Macmillan Press Ltd, 1996): 224. 195 Jonathan Dollimore and Alan Sinfield, “History and Ideology: the Instance of Henry V” in Alternative Shakespeares, ed. John Drakakis (London and New York: Methuen, 1985): 206–227, 213/214.

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own culpability. This strategy finds its almost ironic epitome in Henry’s speech at Harfleur196: What is’t to me if you yourselves are cause, If your pure maidens fall into the hand Of hot and forcing violation? […] Take pity of your town and of your people Whiles yet my soldier are in my command, Whiles yet the cool and temperate wind of grace O’erblows the filthy and contagious clouds Of heady murder, spoil and villainy. If not, why, in a moment look to see The blind and bloody soldier with foul hand Defile the locks of your shrill-shrieking daughters, Your fathers taken by the silver beards, And their most reverend heads dashed to the walls, Your naked infants spitted upon pikes, Whiles the mad mothers with their howls confused Do break the clouds, as did the wives of Jewry At Herod’s bloody-hunting slaughtermen. What say you? Will you yield and this avoid? Or, guilty in defence, be thus destroyed? (Henry V, 3.3.19–21; 28–43)197

The speech is framed by the hypocritical reasoning Henry uses in comparison with a catalogue of war crimes, claiming that the citizens of Harfleur will be guilty of all of those, if they are so bold as to “presume” to defend their own town, as Alexander Leggatt dryly puts it.198 Astonishingly, there have been attempts to defend Henry’s intentions:

196 Vickie Sullivan points out that here “Henry’s strategy that blames others for his own transgressions borders on the absurd.” Sullivan, “Princes to Act,” 36. R. A. Foakes, on the other hand, takes Henry’s reasoning here at face value, strictly decreasing the important implication of the speech in the general structure of the play: “Henry’s Harfleur speeches perhaps show no more than Shakespeare’s familiarity with and exploitation of contemporary arguments that justified wars undertaken by England (punishment for sin), while condemning wars undertaken by enemies as unjust (the fruits of sin). Hence Henry’s war against the French is fought in the name of God, while if the French fight they will be ‘guilty in defence’ and engaged in an ‘impious war’.” Foakes, Shakespeare and Violence, 101. 197 Despite the fact that the atrocities described by Henry constitute war crimes that could be considered from the moral perspective of jus in bello, it is his reasoning for a general justification of his aggression that is more interesting here, which is why I have chosen to discuss the speech already, but I will come back to it for the discussion of war crimes. See chapter 4.2.4. 198 Leggatt, Shakespeare’s Political Drama, 133.

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Henry […] takes explicit measures to distance himself from any charge of disproportional or indiscriminate conduct at Harfleur. […] Conversely, Shakespeare takes full advantage of those opportunities that allow him to present Henry as a man who acts with regard to the demands of jus in bello.199

Mattox’s argument rests on the fact that Henry distinguishes between himself and his soldiers, whose actions he cannot be held accountable for, so that the war crimes they commit are theirs, not his. Clearly, this is mere question begging, because as the aggressor and leader of his troops, Henry is of course responsible for their general conduct and the distinction he makes between him and his soldiers, which Mattox finds so admirable, is merely yet another attempt to free himself from responsibility. If his soldiers commit war crimes against his orders, Henry is not responsible for those, but first of all, he has given no order to that effect and secondly, his speech comes across as if it was meant as an inspiration for immoral conduct. Derek Cohen’s argument for Henry’s justified behaviour is a little more convincing, but still refutable: It is possible to justify Henry’s use of these threats only because they are never realized. Yet the deferred reality behind them is precisely what scares the citizens. Thus, again, Henry stands squarely in the centre of ambiguity, having done a good thing by a bad means. The text will not permit a solution to this typical dilemma.200

Along these lines, one could argue that Henry’s threats are justified because they prevent real bloodshed. Harfleur yields and Henry enters the town peacefully without shedding a drop of blood. This is a consequentialist perspective, however, and from a deontological point of view, Henry’s threats must be considered immoral. He disregards the principle of discrimination, since he explicitly directs his threats at the civilians of Harfleur, the designated non-combatants such as children and old people. Moreover, he fully intends the harm done among the civilians, which makes their suffering not an unavoidable, but intended side-effect. Thus, what Henry issues here is a form of terror, because he threatens the citizens of Harfleur with a degree of violence that cannot even hypothetically be endured and leaves them in no doubt that he is willing to harm them. This is a case where, according to Michael Walzer, “from the perspective of morality, the readiness is all.”201 And Malcolm Pittock points out that “the fact that Harfleur surrendered and Henry’s threats are not put into effect does not mean that he wasn’t serious

199 Mattox, “Shakespeare’s Just Warrior,” 47. 200 Derek Cohen, Shakespeare’s Culture of Violence (London et al.: Macmillan Ltd, 1993): 67. 201 Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 272.

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about them.”202 Whether or not the outcome of this is a peaceful resolution is immaterial in view of such atrocities. Furthermore, Henry does not only make use of immoral threats in order to terrorise his opponents, he moreover claims that it will be their own fault, if he finds himself forced to execute them. The hypocrisy of his reasoning is astounding, as Simon Barker has pointed out: Henry’s threats amount to a catalogue of images and allusions that come close to contravening a majority of both the deadly sins and the Ten Commandments. Moreover, his notion that the consequences that will befall the citizens of Harfleur will be somehow their own fault is a piece of logic-chopping worthy of Richard of Gloucester himself.203

Indeed, the fact that Barker associates Henry with Richard III underlines that such readiness for brutality is reminiscent of the first tetralogy and if Henry’s aggression and conduct were just, the suggestion of such atrocities would be inconsistent.204 Furthermore, as Barker points out, it is entirely contemptible how Henry tries to cloak his own responsibility for his actions by loading it onto the people of Harfleur. This behaviour indeed “borders on the absurd” in Sullivan’s words,205 for Henry tries to pervert the very concept of war, as Rebholz rightly observes:

202 Pittock, “The Problem of Henry V,” 185. Pittock further draws attention to the fact that such conduct in war “does not even meet the current standards of the day, even though these ‘allowed’ enough barbarity in all conscience. […] Henry’s threats before Harfleur go significantly beyond what was regarded as ‘permissible’.” (185) See also John Mebane: “One can argue that this rhetoric is designed to bring surrender without further actual bloodshed, and such arguments are typically buttressed with citation of Henry’s command to ‘Use mercy to them all’ […] after the surrender. […] The fact that the images of rape and slaughter in Henry’s speech at Harfleur are not transformed at that moment into action does nothing to decrease the impact of these vivid pictures of warfare as satanic; nor does the fact of the surrender remove from our memory the remarkable biblical allusion that established the parallel between Henry V and Herod, the latter a character portrayed as the incarnation of bestial rage in late medieval theater.” John S. Mebane, “‘Impious War’: Religion and Ideology of Warfare in Henry V,” Studies in Philology 104.2 (2007): 250–266, 262/263. Clearly, the reference to Herod is yet another factor that evokes the association of the play with the first tetralogy and the character of Richard III. Mattox, however, tries to explain the brutality of the speech by historical reference: “As shocking as this might seem to the modern auditor, it would not have been so to the auditor of Shakespeare’s day.” Mattox, “Shakespeare’s Just Warrior,” 47. 203 Barker, War and Nation, 137. 204 In his argument for the irony of the play, Gerald Gould points out that Henry’s “unscrupulous brutality,” is so blatant that “it can be neither missed nor explained away.” Gould, “Irony and Satire,” 90. 205 Sullivan, “Princes to Act,” 36.

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We have become accustomed to Henry’s deflection of ethical responsibility for the war to others, but this particular attempt harbors the chillingly ironic invocation of the one undisputed cause of a just war for those who embraced that concept – defense – and turns it on its head as a source of guilt.206

Thus, Henry’s lack of a just cause becomes all the more apparent, since he considers it necessary to twist the common conception of aggression and defense to conceil the injustice of his cause. As Rebholz points out, the one just cause for war that theorists before and after Shakespeare are usually able to agree on is defence and in his attempt to find a justification for his aggression, Henry even argues away the right of self-defence of the citizens of Harfleur. This morally more than offensive behaviour cannot be rendered acceptable by the mere fact that after the capitulation of Harfleur, Henry sticks to the rules of jus post bellum by ordering his soldiers to “[u]se mercy to them all” (Henry V, 3.3.54).207 In view of the previous threats issued, this conduct cannot be esteemed as redemption. Henry’s negligence of the moral precepts of aggression is epitomised in the late-night encounter with his soldiers in a scene that draws on fundamental considerations of just war theory. The most obvious of those is the eventual focus on the common soldiers and their perspective on a war they are not responsible for, but are required to die in.208 The scene begins with the dilemma that the cause for war

206 Rebholz, Shakespeare’s Philosophy of History, 36. Rebholz further claims that “[d]espite Henry’s attempts to shift the responsibility for the war to other agents, including God, he realizes that the ethical responsibility rests on the shoulders of the king, and that he must bear alone the conflict between justice and necessity.” Rebholz, Shakespeare’s Philosophy of History, 26. However, although Henry clearly recognises his responsibility, for otherwise he would not feel the need to transfer it to others, he never acknowledges it, which is most clearly emphasised in the dialogue with his soldiers. 207 Besides, considering his former claim not to be in control of his soldiers, his order here is also rather ironic. He claimed that they would slaughter civilians like animals, but now he does not doubt that they will follow his order to be merciful. Theodor Meron acutely observes every aspect of the speech that is morally offensive, only to excuse it afterwards. First he points out that “[a] commentator on the modern law of war would be hard pressed to offer a more terrifying catalogue of violations of the law of war than that contained in the speech by Shakespeare’s Henry before the walls of Harfleur, threatening cruel retribution should Harfleur refuse to surrender: denying quarter; killing or wounding an enemy who, having laid down his arms or no longer having a means of defence, has been captured; ignoring the principle of distinction between combatants and civilians; attacking civilians; […] enforcing collective penalties; resorting to measure of intimidation and terrorism; and engaging in pillaging and rape.” Meron concludes, however, that “[o]f course, Henry cannot be judged by modern international norms, which in any case are often violated.” Meron, Henry’s Wars and Shakespeare’s Laws, 76/77. 208 Glimpses of the perspective of common soldiers were provided in earlier plays such as 3Henry VI and the two parts on Henry IV, but those shall find further consideration in chapter 4.2.3.

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is not necessarily in the soldiers’ interests and Williams and Bates are not heroically looking forward to the impending battle in a manner Hotspur would have done: “we have no great cause to desire the approach of day,” (Henry V, 4.1.88/89) says Bates, for they are both relatively sure that they “shall never see the end of it.” (Henry V, 4.1.91) Here, the focus lies most emphatically on the discrepancy between the king’s cause for the war and his soldiers’ cause for fighting, for the latter’s perspective is rather critical – more critical in fact that in any of the previous plays. This scene of confrontation is as crucial, because, as Rackin has rightly observed, “Williams is the only character in Henry V who ever manages to confront the king with a challenge to the official version of events.”209 As evident as Henry’s hypocritical attempts to shift his own responsibility for the war are for the audience, the other characters in the play have so far willingly accepted his charge – the clergy as well as the citizens of Harfleur. Bates and Williams, however, point to the moral reality of war, which relieves them as soldiers of a certain responsibility, which is the king’s: King Williams Bates

Williams

Methinks I could not die anywhere so contented as in the King’s company, his cause being just and his quarrel honourable. That’s more than we know. Ay, or more than we should seek after, for we know enough if we know we are the King’s subjects. If his cause be wrong, our obedience to the King wipes the crime of it out of us. But if the cause be not good, the King himself hath a heavy reckoning to make when all those legs and arms and heads chopped off in a battle shall join together at a latter day and cry all ‘We died at such a place’, some swearing, some crying for a surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left. I am afeard there are few die well that die in battle, for how can they charitably dispose of anything when blood is their argument? Now if these men die not well it will be a black matter for the King, that led them to it, who to disobey were against all proportion of subjection. (Henry V, 4.1.126–146)

The dialogue begins with one of the very few claims Henry makes for the justice of his cause, which is indicative of the fact that it is actually morally questioned for

209 Rackin, Stages of History, 246. Bates, however, should be included in this statement too. Rackin also points out that the fictiveness of the scene is crucial, for only a ficitious account presents the opportunity to include the common soldiers: “The fictiveness of the scene on the night before Agincourt is necessitated by the exclusions of Renaissance historiography; its theatricality invokes a dramatic tradition that transgressed the boundaries dividing subject from king in a hierarchical society. […] Only by moving beyond the boundaries of historiographic discourse into the liberties of theatrical invention can Shakespeare find a place for the common soldiers in historical drama.” Rackin, Stages of History, 226.

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the first time in the play. Disregarding the natural protestations of the French, Bates and Williams are the only ones who draw attention to the fact that they do not actually know, whether the King’s cause is just. This naturally increases the responsibility Henry has for his soldiers, as they are well aware: their obedience clears them of the general moral responsibility for the war, as Michael Walzer has pointed out in direct reference to this very dialogue in Shakespeare: [B]y and large we don’t blame a soldier, even a general, who fights for his own government. He is not the member of a robber band, a willful wrongdoer, but a loyal and obedient subject and citizen, acting sometimes at great personal risk in a way he thinks is right. […] Not that his obedience can never be criminal; for when he violates the rules of war, superior orders are no defence. The atrocities he commits are his own; the war is not. It is conceived, both in international law and in ordinary moral judgment, as the king’s business – a matter of state policy, not of individual volition, except when the individual is the king.210

This principle of distinguishing responsibilities according to authority and subjection is expressed by Bates. The dichotomy of jus ad bellum and jus in bello allows to make the distinction between the injustice of aggression that the soldiers are not responsible for, since it was not their decision to make, and the injustices they may commit in battle, which they can be held accountable for. Williams presses this point further, because if the aggression is actually unjust, the burden that befalls the king to answer for all the deaths is clearly heavier than if he could declare that every lost life is worth the cause. The justice of a cause is as essential because it puts thousands of people’s lives at risk, which can only ever be justified if they do not die in vain. Thus, the scene has a graver undertone than has previously been pointed out by critics, for not only is the king’s cause unjust, but this is also focused on by those, who will die for it. Alexander Leggatt has claimed that Williams sees the relation between authority and obedience as a relief, that he feels comfort at the thought that as an “underling” he is freed from moral responsibility.211 It should be kept in mind, though, that what Williams and Bates discuss here are their impending deaths and the question whether they will die for a good cause is certainly supposed to be of emotional concern for them. Otherwise Shakespeare had no reason to include the debate at all. Moreover, Williams’s image of the dying soldiers paints a true and thus horrifying picture of the realities of war, which the King will have to answer for. At the same time, Williams fails to make the necessary distinction in reverse: for the fact that men might not “die well” in battle the king cannot be

210 Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 39. 211 Leggatt, Shakespeare’s Political Drama, 133.

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held accountable and of course it is this detail in the argumentation that Henry then rests his response on: “Every subject’s duty is the king’s, but every subject’s soul is his own.” (Henry V, 4.1.175–177) Winny has shown where the misunderstanding in the conversation lies: Williams […] shifts attention from the King’s guilty responsibility for the deaths of his subjects, and speaks about the weight of private sin in soldiers who die unshriven. This change of subject allows the King to ignore the question of his general responsibility in a doubtful cause, and to answer only the suggestion that he is to blame when his soldiers die in battle with misdeeds on their consciences.212

Naturally, it is this flaw in Williams’s argumentation that Henry concentrates on, for it is the only moment in the play where his denial of responsibility is justified. The potential war crimes his soldiers might commit are indeed their own responsibility. This does not, however, refute his responsibility for their deaths. His argumentation therefore is equally flawed, for he claims that “the King is not bound to answer the particular endings of his soldiers,” because he does not “purpose” their deaths when he requires their services (Henry V, 4.1.155–158). Although he cannot account for their conduct in battle, it is hypocritical to claim that he does not intend them to die – since he levies them, he clearly does not intend them not to die. Rabkin points out that “the King’s answer evades the issue: the suffering he is capable of inflicting, the necessity of being sure that the burden is imposed for a worthy cause.”213 This has also been noted by Hugh Grady: When we hear King Harry’s casuistic reply to Michael Williams’s trenchant comment, we note that the King ignores the question of justice of his cause in line with the hidden logic of Machiavellianism. […] Michael Williams’s first argument, that the destruction of war can only be excused by just cause, remains unanswered and uncontested.214

And it remains unanswered and uncontested, of course, because Henry cannot justify his cause and therefore does not attempt to do so. Gurr claims that in the debate “[w]hat they have conspicuously left untouched in the light of contemporary discussions is the key question of the king’s responsibility for the deaths of good men in an unjust quarrel […],”215 but Williams does ask this question. Henry

212 Winny, The Player King, 190/191. 213 Rabkin, The Problem of Meaning, 51. 214 Grady, Shakespeare, Machiavelli, and Montaigne, 235. See also Winny’s comment: “The King has evaded the major issue; but the unanswered problem of his right to commit men to battle where justice cannot be determined continues to challenge his immediate purposes.” Winny, The Player King, 191. 215 Gurr, “Bees’ Commonwealth,” 66.

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simply chooses not to answer him because he knows that he is about to sacrifice his soldiers’ lives for an unjust cause – this is why he never actually tries to argue for the justice of his war: not at Harfleur, not in response to the soldiers, not in the immediately following soliloquy and not even in the speech before Agincourt.216 Thus, although the moral nature of his war has just been severely questioned, even Henry’s following prayer makes no attempt at its justification. He does not use the chance of this soliloquy to defend his war at least to the audience, if not to his soldiers. This omission demonstrates that there can be no justification and John Mebane points out that Henry’s prayer “strongly suggests that the king knows that his public justifications for the invasion are Machiavellian fraud […].”217 In fact, instead of presenting the justice of his war to the audience, the speech’s focus lies on the royal burden.218 Similarly, when he prays to God, he does not refer to his cause or to the customary divine blessing. Vickie Sullivan has pointed out that Henry’s prayer constitutes a “significant contrast” to the way Richmond addresses his divine authority, for “[Henry] does not declare that he believes himself to be His captain, as does Richmond.”219 She draws attention to the fact that what is missing in Henry’s prayer is actually more revealing than what he is saying: “In private converse with God, Henry does not speak of his agency in God’s purposes. One possibility for Henry’s omission is that he is not confident that his purposes warrant God’s direction, his cause not being good.”220

216 In his prayer, Henry merely complains to God about the responsibility he has as king, he never seeks divine approval for his war: “Upon the King! ‘Let us our lives, our souls, | Our debts, our careful wives, | Our children and our sins lay on the King!’ | We must bear all. O hard condition, | Twin-born with greatness, subject to the breath | Of every fool whose sense no more can feel | But his own wringing!” (Henry V, 4.1.227–233) As Robert Ornstein puts it: “Prepared even to deny his responsibility for his soldiers’ lives on the eve of Agincourt, he cries out to God against the unfairness of his fate when they refuse to confirm him the justness of his cause.” Ornstein, A Kingdom for a Stage, 182. It has often been pointed out that in the continuance of prayer, Henry confirms his father’s guilt of deposing Richard by referring to his own repentance and that “behind his apparent self-confidence was a fear that he might be punished for his complicity in his father’s usurpation […]” (Pittock, “The Problem of Henry V,” 180) but as I have tried to show, Henry’s war against France can be evaluated without drawing attention to this problem and that Henry here repents does not change the fact that he is also guilty of his own war. 217 Mebane, “Impious War,” 258. 218 As Andrew Gurr has pointed out, “Henry picks up only the original attempt to lay responsibility for everything on the king. He goes into a lengthy display of self-pity, amounting in effect to the view that the only pay-off for the burden of conscience the king carries is ceremony […].” Gurr, “Bees’ Commonwealth,” 66. 219 Sullivan, “Princes to Act,” 142. 220 Sullivan, “Princes to Act,” 143. Having referred to this possibility, Sullivan actually settles for another interpretation: “[I]t is more likely that Henry has returned to his habitual theatricality

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Considering the emphasis on divine authorisation in the earlier plays, Sullivan’s suggestion seems to explain this particular omission. In the same vein, none of the harangues draw specifically on the justice of Henry’s cause to boost the soldiers’ morale. In his prayer, instead, Henry asks God to do this for him, as Steven Marx rightly observes: [W]hat does he seek at this moment of truth? ‘Steel my soldiers’ hearts, possess them not with fear.’ His request is for morale – the very thing that his own public performance is expected to produce, the very thing that the soldiers and the lords ask of him, and that he, as Harry Le Roy, has asked of them.221

Henry needs God to steel his soldiers’ hearts, because his “public performance,” as Marx calls it, cannot deliver it; he cannot convincingly proclaim that this war is worth dying for. Instead, in his speech at Agincourt, he tries to boost his soldiers’ morale with the promise of his kinship: For he today that sheds his blood with me Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile, This day shall gentle his condition. (Henry V, 4.3.61–63)

In view of the conversation with his soldiers, it is almost cynical to claim now that they will be united in battle as brothers.222 More importantly, however, in the whole speech, Henry does not once refer to the justice of his cause. Paola Pugliatti disagrees: The final invitation to march on crying ‘God for Harry, England, and Saint George!’ […] succintly [sic] evokes all the relevant elements of a blessed and just conflict: the help of God, the authority of the king to wage war and justness of the cause in defence of one’s homeland.223

It is true that Henry pretends as if his aggression was divinely sanctioned and that there are no strong doubts about his legitimate authority, but the battle cry gives

that disingenuously ascribes roles to others, and that would, as a result, make God his instrument rather than himself God’s.” (143) Her first thought, however, seems to me to be the right one. 221 Steven Marx, “Holy War in Henry V,” Shakespeare Survey 48 (1995): 85–97, 95. 222 John Mebane draws attention to the word “vile” as giving Henry’s true attitude away: “The word is a kind of Freudian slip, a term that gives the lie to the king’s claim to respect the common soldier. The word ‘vile’ suggests that his true opinion of commoners is what he reveals to us in act 4, when he refers to the common ‘slave’ or ‘lackey’ […] who fails to appreciate the hardships the king endures as he strives to keep the peace. […] The reference of peacekeeping is strongly ironic in the context of Henry’s having endangered his followers’ lives in the invasion of France.” Mebane, “Impious War,” 265. 223 Pugliatti, Shakespeare and the Just War Tradition, 158.

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no indication whatsoever about the justice of his cause. Moreover, to construe Henry’s war in France as a war of defence is evident question-begging. Not even Henry himself tries to do that and remains silent on the justice of his cause in general. Again, one should point to the contrast to Richmond’s speeches according to Sullivan: In contrast, Richmond’s speech before the Bosworth Field dwells upon the justness of his cause. […] Richmond proclaims before God and his followers what Henry V will not: that his cause is good and in pursuing it he can regard himself as a minister of God.224

Still, after the battle of Agincourt, he declares that “God fought for us,” (Henry V, 4.8.121) which is not only reminiscent of his brother Prince John of Lancaster’s cynical statement that “God, and not we, hath safely fought today,” (2Henry IV, 4.2.121) but also allows him once more to shift the responsibility to God as his final scapegoat. There is hardly another Shakespearean play that has caused as multifarious and diverse scholarly criticism, which is very precisely wrapped up by Simon Barker: In the modern era critics have viewed Shakespeare’s portrait of the face of warfare in The Life of Henry the Fifth as a triptych. On the left have clustered interpretations that regard the play’s bellicose speeches and unjustified killings as evidence of Shakespeare’s hostility to the excesses of war, with Henry himself as their apologist as he embarks on a nationalist endeavour based on the flimsy justification for the war allowed by his advisers. Ranged to the right are those who harness the play to an earlier tradition, consolidated by the chroniclers, celebrating Henry’s achievement at Agincourt. For these observers the play is Shakespeare’s account of a triumphant against-the-odds victory with the power to inspire subsequent generations, especially at times of national emergency. Between these extremes is the familiar narrative of Shakespeare’s ‘evenhandedness’: his acknowledgement of the chaos of war and its innocent victims, but also his awareness of war’s potential for a demonstration of the determination and resilience of the human spirit. War may be brutal and often haphazard, but it distils human nature and produces some memorable lines.225

Consistent with the common approach to the general depiction of war in Shakespeare’s plays, Barker concisely describes the middle-ground that scholarly opinions try to settle for in the interpretation of Henry V. The reading from the perspective of just war theory, however, has shown that the play’s focus on the principle of responsibility actually provides a clue to the moral nature of Henry’s war. Henry’s consistent denial of his own responsibility clearly points in the right di-

224 Sullivan, “Princes to Act,” 144. 225 Barker, War and Nation, 133/134.

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rection: only someone who knows that he is doing something wrong must so urgently get rid of the responsibility for his actions. There is no doubt that this war is unjust and Henry’s character is far from presenting the “mirror of all Christian kings.” If the play in fact attempted to glorify this king and his war, it could not at the same time make so unmistakably clear that Henry avoids all responsibility for his actions. He is culpable of the crime of unlawful aggression.

4.1.5 The Principle of Proportionality The two plays that probably followed shortly after Henry V add another crucial aspect to the discussion of the morality of war: what if soldiers die in a war that is not only unjust, but also futile? War must be considered futile, if it is fought without cause or cannot be won, so that the resulting casualties are unnecessary, which creates a vast disproportion between the war and its costs. Both Hamlet and Troilus and Cressida raise the ethical concern that there must be a certain principle of proportion: the cause of war and its consequences must be in equal balance. While in the earliest plays, characters happily “blow ten thousand souls to heaven or to hell,” (2Henry VI, 3.1.349) in these later plays this aspect is under increasingly close scrutiny. It is Hamlet, who first draws attention to this problem, when he encounters the captain of Fortinbras’s troops, who has declared war on Poland without a legitimate cause: Captain Truly to speak, and with no addition, We go to gain a little patch of ground That hath in it no profit but the name. To pay five ducats – five – I would not farm it, Nor will it yield to Norway or the Pole A ranker rate should it be sold in fee. Hamlet Why then the Polack never will defend it. Captain Yes, it is already garrisoned. Hamlet Two thousand souls and twenty thousand ducats Will not debate the question of this straw. This is th’impostune of much wealth and peace That inward breaks and shows no cause without Why the man dies. (Hamlet, 4.4.16–28)226

226 Unless otherwise indicated, all quotations from Hamlet are from the following edition and will be given parenthetically: William Shakespeare, Hamlet, eds. Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor. The Arden Shakespeare Third Series (London: Cengage Learning, 2006).

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R. S. White remarks that this dialogue “is usually cut in performance, and indeed is included in only one printed text (Q2),”227 which is why it is not necessarily included in all modern editions of Hamlet and accordingly not as multifariously commented on as all of the other aspects of the play. It is crucial, however, in the way that it represents Fortinbras’s war. Martin Holmes had the impression that “[t]he captain seems quite cheerful about it, as if everybody were delighted to go on the expedition as an adventure,”228 but the Captain’s hesitant mode of expression surely refutes this impression: he opens in a confessional mode, admitting the truth, and he emphasises twice the worthlessness of the land they are about to invade. Thus, he underlines the futility of Fortinbras’s endeavour, which is motivated by a worthless cause. There is no attempt to justify his aggression and there is no doubt that this war and its costs are vastly out of proportion, which provokes Hamlet’s pointed juxtaposition of “two thousand souls” with the “straw” they fight about. According to both the Captain and Hamlet, there is no cause “why the man dies” and his reference to the numeric figure graphically brings the number of casualties to be expected to our attention. In order to emphasise the image and its morally condemnable implication, Hamlet evokes it again in his immediately following soliloquy: Examples gross as earth exhort me – Witness this army of such mass and charge, Led by a delicate and tender prince Whose spirit with divine ambition puffed Makes mouths at the invisible event Exposing what is mortal and unsure To all that fortune, death and danger dare Even for an eggshell. Rightly to be great Is not to stir without great argument But greatly to find quarrel in a straw When honour’s at the stake. How stand I then That have a father killed, a mother stained, Excitements of my reason and my blood, And let all sleep; while to my shame I see The imminent death of twenty thousand men That for a fantasy and trick of fame Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause, Which is not tomb enough and continent To hide the slain? (Hamlet, 4.4.45–64)

227 White, Pacifism and English Literature, 142. 228 Martin Holmes, The Guns of Elsinore (London: Chatto & Windus, 1964): 137.

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This second part of Hamlet’s soliloquy presents several problems of interpretation. First of all, as Holmes has noted, it is “[d]ramatically […] superfluous”: “the Folio version, with its little scene between Fortinbras and the captain, does all that is necessary in the way of changing the tension and advancing the plot, and there is no real need to bring Hamlet into the scene at all.”229 Secondly, Hamlet here raises the question of honour as a reason to justify this war, which is, of course, highly problematic. Thirdly, his admiration of Fortinbras seems to contradict his judgement of the war itself and moreover, his own feelings of incapability evoked by Fortinbras’s determination and the soldiers’ march into battle conclude the speech, so that the old problem of ‘Hamlet’s delay’ is moved into focus. As to the first problem it seems to be the case that the exact factor of the soliloquy’s dramatic superfluity only renders it all the more important, so that Hamlet’s perception of Fortinbras’s war must be seen as a significant moral judgement. The difficulty of how to read Hamlet’s reference to honour, his admiration for Fortinbras and his judgement of an obviously futile war has troubled many critics and has led to the impression that Hamlet admires not only Fortinbras, but also his endeavour, as Reuben Brower claims: Hamlet interprets Fortinbras’ challenge in his own way, seeing in young Norway, as in Horatio, an alter ego, a true Prince, tender, not ‘robust’, but of a fine (‘delicate’) nature, inspired by ‘divine’ (glorious, heroic) ‘ambition’, a motive to which Hamlet is not a complete stranger. Like the ancient hero, Fortinbras goes to meet fate, danger, and death, ‘Even for an eggshell’. Such is heroic greatness […].230

G. K. Hunter, on the other hand, takes a more refined view of things, pointing out that “Hamlet admires Fortinbras,” but that the scene clearly presents the “ambiguities of this admiration,” and that Fortinbras’s endeavour is finally seen as “expensive princely folly.”231 This latter view is also favoured by Nicholas Grene, who states that although there is an element of “envious admiration,” Hamlet’s “admiration is blended with skepticism. Fortinbras and his Polish expedition are ‘examples gross as earth’ which ‘exhort’ Hamlet because they are instances of action meaningless, motiveless, in comparison with the action he has in hand.”232 Thus, it turns out to be crucial to distinguish between Hamlet’s admiration for

229 Holmes, Guns of Elsinore, 138. 230 Reuben A. Brower, Hero & Saint. Shakespeare and the Graeco-Roman Heroic Tradition (Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1971): 303. 231 G. K. Hunter, Dramatic Identities and Cultural Tradition. Studies in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1978): 235. 232 Nicholas Grene, Shakespeare’s Tragic Imagination (London: The Macmillan Press Ltd, 1992): 49.

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Fortinbras and the judgement he passes on the war. The Arden Third Series edition notes: “Perhaps the underlying problem is that Hamlet insists on admiring Fortinbras while at the same time acknowledging the absurdity of his actions.”233 Taken together, Hamlet states on the one hand that this war is a great endeavour, because Fortinbras devotes the lives of twenty thousand men to a non-existent cause and simultaneously that this war is a horrible war because Fortinbras sacrifices the lives of twenty thousand men for a non-existent cause.234 Alexander Leggatt, who agrees that Hamlet’s admiration of Fortinbras is highly problematic, identifies the crucial point in Hamlet’s words “not to stir without great argument”: The Norwegian Captain has emphasized – and Hamlet has clearly taken the point – the absurdity of fighting for a patch of ground that is not worth renting, not big enough either to fight the battle on or bury the dead […]. When Hamlet tries to take this as an example of honourable action, his own syntax shows the strain […]. The logic requires “not not to stir”; Hamlet’s actual words declare that great actions require great arguments, yet that is not what he intends to say. His own language is trying to tell him the truth, and he refuses to listen.235

It is exactly this egocentric strain in Hamlet that Leggatt points out here, which makes it necessary to distinguish between the moral judgement that he passes on the war and his admiration for Fortinbras. It is this egocentrism that allows him to clearly see the disproportion between the war and its costs and still admire Fortinbras, who nevertheless seems heroic to him.236 Hamlet sees that the cause is

233 Hamlet, 371; n. 52–5. 234 The obvious inconsistency in the number of men, two thousand in the dialogue with the captain and twenty thousand in the soliloquy, must naturally be noted here. Harold Jenkins notes: “I fear we must ascribe the confusion to Shakespeare, often lax with numbers […].” (William Shakespeare, Hamlet, ed. Harold Jenkins. The Arden Shakespeare Second Series [London: Methuen & Co. Ltd, 1982]: 346; n. 60) Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor in Arden 3, on the other hand, speculate that “perhaps Hamlet is exaggerating again, as in his claims that his father has been dead for only A little month (1.2.147) or two hours (3.2.120).” Hamlet, 371; n. 59. Both assumptions seem equally convincing, but it is not crucial to determine this here. I would, however, argue that the increase in numbers certainly emphasises the issue of proportionality that is at stake, so that the inconsistency might be intended as dramatic hyperbole. 235 Alexander Leggatt, Shakespeare’s Tragedies: Violation and Identity (Cambridge: CUP, 2005): 78. 236 This kind of moral oblivion that characterises Hamlet is not new in the character, despite his everlasting contemplation of the murder. When he kills Polonius behind the arras, he displays no moral consideration whatsoever and he never seems to acknowledge that he has murdered someone. His deed is rash and inconsiderate, because he is indifferent. As R. A. Foakes points out, he “hopes that he may have killed the King, but really has no idea who is hiding there,”

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insufficient to justify the casualties and this is not refuted by his envy of Fortinbras; it only points out that Hamlet is oblivious to the deaths of those men, because of his self-absorption. The point that war and its costs must be in equal balance in order to render the lost lives worth it remains, however. This is not to say that this is a “pacifist point of view” as R. S. White sees it: Both Hamlet and the military Captain himself acknowledge that ‘the imminent death of twenty thousand men’ is based on no more than individual pride and misguided honour that would sacrifice lives ‘even for an eggshell’ or a straw. What they are fighting for is worthless, and more a matter of rhetoric than of substance.237

None of this can be refuted – except White’s conclusion. To regard a particular war as unjust and out of proportion is not synonymous with pacifism; this is a moral judgement passed on this particular war, which does not entail that all wars are unjust. Since the emphasis lies on the required proportionality between cause and cost and not so much on the justice or injustice of the cause itself, it can be stated that rather than implying that all wars are unjust the scene suggests that there might be just wars, if and only if the proportion between cause and cost is appropriate. Hamlet’s speech thus adds another aspect to the consideration of just and unjust wars and the fact that the scene does not properly fit into the context of the play and is often omitted underlines the fact that here an ethical debate takes place on an elevated level. Bradshaw considers the scene as an “example” that “shows why it is so important to think precisely before embarking on any course of violent action,”238 and this “example” is developed into a longer ethical debate in the later Troilus and Cressida.239 In 1973, Edward L. Hart wrote about Troilus and Cressida that it is a play “in which everything that was white in [Shakespeare’s] other plays is confounded

(Foakes, Shakespeare and Violence, 126) and it would not make a difference anyway. Foakes calls this “a primal act of violence,” (126) and it is indeed not entirely unlike killing on the battlefield. However, even if considered from the perspective of the moral reality of war (which I do not in general in this work, because the conflict in Hamlet is a domestic, not a national or international one), Polonius would count as an intended casualty. Civilian casualties may be morally justified when they are accidental but inevitable and Polonius’s death is fully intended (I am very grateful to Robert Audi, who brought this particular problem to my attention in Münster on October 19, 2009). 237 White, Pacifism and English Literature, 143. 238 Graham Bradshaw, Shakespeare’s Scepticism (Brighton: The Harvester Press Limited, 1987): 8. 239 There are many other parallels between the two plays and Bradshaw has pointed out that Troilus and Cressida “might even be regarded as [Hamlet’s] afterbirth,” (Bradshaw, Shakespeare’s Scepticism, 6) but due to this work’s focus, they must remain unconsidered for the moment.

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into black; everything that was black has become white.”240 From the perspective taken in my analysis of the play, such a perception is explicable due to a fundamental change in the moral justification of war – the war in Troilus and Cressida is an unjust war, which is not new in Shakespeare, but in this play neither side tries to argue for the justification of their cause. The origin of the conflict belongs to the antecedents of the play and the moral consideration focuses on the question of whether to continue the war or not.241 Due to this scenario, the focus of the play lies on the principle of proportionality. Greeks and Trojans alike are presented as fully aware of the “wastefulness” of this war, which causes the dark and cynical implication of the play. In fact, both sides argue for the injustice of this war and yet continue fighting, which emphasises the gruesome irony of their conflict.242 They wage war for a mere “trick of fame,” but unlike Fortinbras’s soldiers, they deliberately choose to do so. The arbitrariness and immorality of the conflict is further emphasised by inconsistencies within different characters and David Kaula has pointed out that “Greeks and Trojans as a whole are represented as two sharply differentiated cultural orders in collision, both committed to an enterprise for which neither can provide an adequate rationale.”243 The first impression that is created of this war is one of general weariness and futility embodied in the character of Troilus:

240 Edward L. Hart, “‘War and Lechery’: Thematic Unity of Troilus and Cressida,” The Bulletin of the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association 27.3 (1973): 181–186, 181. 241 It should be noted here that it is not entirely clear in the play who the aggressor is. The Greeks have declared war on the Trojans, but at the same time they consider it a reprisal for Paris’s theft of Helen. Thus, the initial offence was committed by Paris, but the Trojans clearly regard their status as a defensive one. This question is never actually resolved in the play, but some critics have claimed that the Greeks do have justice on their side, for instance the editor of the Arden Second Series (see William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, ed. Kenneth Palmer. The Arden Shakespeare Second Series [London: Methuen & Co. Ltd, 1982]: 45). A. D. Nuttall, on the other hand, points out that it might not be so easy: “Although many would say the Greeks have right on their side, they are given a style of reasoning which smells of sophistry, in the technical meaning of the term.” A. D. Nuttall, “Action at a Distance. Shakespeare and the Greeks” in Shakespeare and the Classics, eds. Charles Martindale and A. B. Taylor (Cambridge: CUP, 2004): 209–222, 218. The play makes clear, however, that no matter who the aggressor is, the war is unjust on both sides. 242 See Alice Shalvi’s comment: “The cause of war is shown here, […] as out of all proportion to the amount of slaughter and bloodshed, and there are warriors on both sides who are fully aware of the pettiness of the physical, ostensible cause of war.” Alice Shalvi, “‘Honor’ in Troilus and Cressida,” Studies in English Literature 5.2 (1965): 283–302, 285. 243 David Kaula, “Will and Reason in Troilus and Cressida,” Shakespeare Quarterly 12.3 (1961): 271–283, 271.

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Peace, you ungracious clamours! Peace, rude sounds! Fools on both sides! Helen must needs be fair, When with your blood you daily paint her thus. I cannot fight upon this argument; It is too starved a subject for my sword. (Troilus and Cressida, 1.1.85–89)244

Thus, at this early stage of the exposition it is already clear that the conflict persists between “fools on both sides.” Through the juxtaposition of fools who fight for Helen with blood that is daily shed it is immediately suggested that this war is out of proportion. Troilus points to the core of the problem: the cause for war is Helen, whose beauty is no justified cause for the lives lost in battle; especially since it relies on an entirely subjective view point. This discrepancy between subjectivism and objectivism runs through the play in order to demonstrate that conflicts between peoples cannot be justified by subjectivist view points. Troilus’s lack of motivation to fight is equally discernible on the Greek side of the conflict – they are just as weary of this war and for this reason they have not been able to succeed in their endeavour. Ulysses’s famous speech on order points this out most clearly, blaming their lack of success on their lack of political and martial strength. And again the omission of a fundamental aspect is telling: Ulysses does not argue for the justice of their cause, although this speech seems designed for such a function. Like in Henry V, the things Ulysses does not say are the crucial ones. The lack of a moral justification that is created here also extends to the other Greek leaders, as David Kaula has pointed out: Significantly, in their lengthy discussion of the tedious seven-years’ stalemate, the leaders completely disregard the fundamental issues of the war. They neither ask why it was begun in the first place nor why it should be continued: Helen is not mentioned.245

The contrast to Shakespeare’s earlier plays is striking: while the characters of the first and second tetralogy would discuss in such a council scene the subjective justice of their cause, the Greeks remain completely silent on the subject. Theirs is a war of aggression and yet the cause is never mentioned. They are concerned

244 All quotations from Troilus and Cressida are from the following edition and will be given parenthetically: William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, ed. David Bevington. The Arden Shakespeare Third Series (London: Thomson Learning, 2006). 245 Kaula, “Will and Reason,” 280. Kaula goes on by drawing attention to the very resigned mood of the scene: “Generally incapable as they are of providing a positive rationale for their presence on the Trojan plain, the Greeks seem to regard it as a more or less permanent modus vivendi, as a given, unavoidable condition which neither grew out of nor points forward to any different state of affairs.”

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with winning, but why they should remains in the dark.246 The lacking moral justification in their discourse is especially striking when compared to the first appearance of the Trojan knights, as Thomas West has pointed out: The omission obtrudes particularly because in the parallel Trojan war council in II.ii, the only subject of discussion is the purpose of the war and whether it is worth fighting to keep Helen. The Greeks talk of nothing but means, the Trojans of nothing but ends.247

More specifically, the Trojans ask if they should even still try to win the war after seven years, which already begins with Priam’s emphasis on “so many hours, lives, speeches spent” (Troilus and Cressida, 2.2.1 [my italics]). The Greeks demand Helen back and if the Trojans obliged, this would finally mean peace and “all damage else, […] | Shall be struck off.” (Troilus and Cressida, 2.2.3/7) Thus, through Priam’s beginning and the message delivered from the Greeks, both sides seem reluctant to continue the battle because they cannot account for the costs any longer, as Hector argues: Let Helen go. Since the first sword was drawn about this question, Every tithe soul ’mongst many thousand dismes Hath been as dear as Helen – I mean, of ours. If we have lost so many tenths of ours To guard a thing not ours, nor worth to us (Had it our name) the value of one ten, What merit’s in that reason which denies The yielding of her up? (Troilus and Cressida, 2.2.17–24)

246 Thomas West has pointed out that “conspicuously absent from the Greek martial deliberations is any consideration of what the war is being fought for and whether it should be continued. All participants in the argument assume the desirability of victory, but no one explains why.” Thomas G. West, “The Two Truths of Troilus and Cressida” in Shakespeare as Political Thinker, eds. John E. Alvis and Thomas G. West (Wilmington, Delaware: ISI Books, 2000): 143–162, 153. 247 West, “Two Truths,” 153. Kenneth Palmer draws attention to the deliberate parallels between the two scenes in his edition of the play: “There are five or six scenes that seem to me to be crucial to any discussion of Troilus, in the sense that one’s response to them determines very largely one’s response to the whole play; and of these, two are made deliberately to reflect one another. To say that they are symmetrical is not wholly accurate; yet the Greek council scene (I.iii) and the Trojan council scene (II.ii) are built to a similar pattern, namely, discussion/interruption/resumption or fresh topic/change of course by a major speaker – and in what follows here this near-symmetry should be remembered. These two scenes establish the conceptual terms in which, in a general sense, the rest of the play’s inaction is to be determined, but they do not, with one exception, exemplify the dramatic means to be used.” Troilus and Cressida, 41.

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The entire play is marked by such mercantile imagery,248 but the most important implication of this is that of costs in the figurative as well as the literal sense as Hugh Grady points out: The confusing repetition of synonyms for ‘tithes’, each one in turn a metaphoric vehicle for a Trojan life, underlines the strained logic of equivalence involved in all such calculations, as in any mercantile exchange: equivalences have to be posited despite all difference […].249

Helen’s person weighed against thousands of human lives constitutes a vast imbalance that her worth cannot counter, which is the immorality that lies at the heart of the play. Hector’s objective and reflected consideration of the disproportion is juxtaposed with Troilus’s and Paris’s irrational counterarguments, which creates the important ethical debate. For this reason, the first of several inconsistencies in the characters occurs: here, Troilus argues strongly for the continuance of the war despite his prior weariness. The first argumentative error he commits is that he confuses the actual conflict Hector points out – he refers to “the worth and honour of a king” (Troilus and Cressida, 2.2.26) as the cause of war, whereas Hector rightly identifies Helen as the crucial element of the conflict. Secondly, he argues simplistically against surrender to aggression: You fur your gloves with reason. Here are your reasons: You know an enemy intends you harm; You know a sword employed is perilous, And reason flies the object of all harm. (Troilus and Cressida, 2.2.39–41)

248 See Douglas B. Wilson, “The Commerce of Desire: Freudian Narcissism in Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde and Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida,” English Language Notes 21.1 (1983): 11–22, 15: “Because Cressida and Helen are dealers in the commerce of desire, Shakespeare couches his philosophic theme of value in imagery of merchandising.” C. C. Barfoot also notes “the prevalence of the mercantile metaphor that runs through the play […].” C. C. Barfoot, “Troilus and Cressida: ‘Praise us as we are tasted’,” Shakespeare Quarterly 39.1 (1988): 45–57, 46. For an analysis of the general “market atmosphere” that prevails in Troilus and Cressida see Paul Edward Yachnin, “‘The Perfection of Ten’: Populuxe Art and Artisinal Value in Troilus and Cressida,” Shakespeare Quarterly 56.3 (2005): 306–327. 249 Hugh Grady, Shakespeare’s Universal Wolf. Studies in Early Modern Reification (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996): 87. Beforehand, Grady has claimed that “[t]his discourse is formally ethical, but jarring and disturbing in its instrumentalistic attempt to quantify human lives.” Grady, Shakespeare’s Universal Wolf, 86. While Grady is right in pointing out that it might be cynical to see human lives as numbers, this perspective is surely the one that must be and is maintained here: even apart from any moral considerations, the sheer number of casualties is clear evidence that this war should not be continued.

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This point can be refuted from two perspectives: on the one hand, Troilus ignores the distinction between the international conflict at hand and the principle of self-defence in battle. Due to the different spheres, the analogy fails and from the overall presentation of Troilus in this scene, it is clear that it is intended to. Moreover, even if the analogy was valid, Troilus’s argument would still fail when regarded from the second perspective: what he is opposed to would in modern terms be called the practice of “appeasement,” i.e. the deliberate surrender to an act of aggression in order to save human lives. This policy can be morally questionable, because resistance to unlawful aggression is usually considered to be a moral obligation in order to prevent further aggression. The ambiguity of the principle is pointed out by Michael Walzer: [R]esistance to aggression is necessary to deter future aggressors. But in the context of international politics, an alternative utilitarian argument is almost always available. This is the argument for appeasement, which suggests that giving in to aggressors is the only way of avoiding war. In domestic society, too, we sometimes choose appeasement […], when the costs of refusal or resistance are greater than we can bear. But we feel badly in such cases, not only because we have failed to serve the larger communal purpose of deterrence, but also and more immediately because we have yielded to coercion and injustice.250

Troilus’s argumentation resembles the moral dilemma Michael Walzer points out here: Troilus does not want to yield to aggression because of the morally unquestionable right of self-defence and he is oblivious to the amount of human lives that would and will be lost in the persistence on resistance because he does not distinguish between the two forms of aggression. As much as his argument for self-defence might be convincing, it only emphasises that due to the international scale of the aggression, there is much more at stake than one individual life as Hector has realised: “Brother, she is not worth what she doth cost | The holding.” (Troilus and Cressida, 2.2.51) Hector therefore argues for the policy of appeasement, which has a lot more profundity in this context than Troilus’s flawed argumentation, especially when the source of the conflict is once again recalled: the Greeks demand that the Trojans “[d]eliver Helen,” (Troilus and Cressida, 2.2.3) which is presented as their only condition. The reluctance that the practice of appeasement is often met with is the submission to coercion and injustice, which would presumably lead to more injustice.251 This conflict, however, is only about

250 Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 67. 251 Later on in the scene, Paris explicitly refers to the moral dilemma between appeasement and giving in to coercion: “What treason were it to the ransacked queen, | Disgrace to your great worths, and shame to me, | Now to deliver her possession up | On terms of base compulsion.”

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a single person. If the Trojans delivered Helen, thousands of lives could be saved and this is Hector’s point, who fears “bad success in a bad cause.” (Troilus and Cressida, 2.2.117) The disproportion is increased by the fact that this one life is considered worthless in itself. Hector’s question “[w]hat merit’s in that reason which denies | The yielding of her up?” (2.2.23/24) is impossible to answer, considering that a Trojan “submission” to the Greek demands would mean the end of this war and Helen’s general “worthlessness” is a very strong point in Hector’s favour. As Edward Hart points out, “the moral purpose […] is lost in the shadow of Helen’s worthlessness […]”252 and this worthlessness is what influences Troilus’s next change of perspective in the ongoing debate. To Hector’s justified charge, Troilus replies “[w]hat’s aught but as ’tis valued?” (Troilus and Cressida, 2.2.52)253 First of all, apparently even Troilus is aware of Helen’s worthlessness,254 for otherwise he could refer to her objective value, but secondly, his recourse to moral subjectivism emphasises that there is no objective justification. Instead, as Hugh Grady points out, in Troilus’s line “value becomes baseless, independent of any intrinsic properties of the commodity, completely a function of the evaluating self and the self’s whims […].”255 Hector, “the voice of a traditional ethical rationality,”256 of course

(Troilus and Cressida, 2.2.150–154) His argument that it is dishonourable to give in to an unlawful aggressor might deserve more serious consideration, if his ‘theft’ was not the cause for war. 252 Hart, “Thematic Unity of Troilus and Cressida,” 184. 253 His statement uncomfortably recalls the irrational and subjective justifications by the nobles in the first tetralogy, where Prince Edward rebukes Warwick for moral subjectivism, which is, however, shared by all characters, as has been pointed out at length: “If that be right which Warwick says is right, | There is no wrong but everything is right.” (3Henry VI, 2.2.131/132) Hamlet expresses a similar morally relativist thought when he says “for there is nothing | either good or bad but thinking makes it so.” (Hamlet, 2.2.249–251 [These lines are only included in the Arden Second Series edition by Harold Jenkins]). 254 It has been pointed out that “[t]here are leaders on both sides who deem that Helen is hardly worth so much pain and death […],” (Shalvi, “‘Honor’ in Troilus and Cressida,” 285) but Troilus is not usually included among those, despite his desperate attempts to ascribe value to Helen. Later on in the same scene, Troilus ascribes to Helen the price of a pearl that “hath launched above a thousand ships,” but David Kaula rightly points out that “[b]ehind the allusion is the implication that in converting Helen […] into a pearl of great price and making her a pretext for the pursuit of personal glory, Troilus is looking in the wrong direction for the ultimate good and wilfully committing the error Hector defines as ‘mad idolatry’.” Kaula, “Will and Reason,” 274. Stephen Mead has claimed that “[t]he war itself has augmented the inestimable value of Helen, as each day Greeks and Trojans die in partial payment of the cost of keeping or retrieving her.” Stephen X. Mead, “‘Thou art chang’d’: Public Value and Personal Identity in Troilus and Cressida,” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 22.2 (1992): 237–259, 252. 255 Grady, Shakespeare’s Universal Wolf, 88.

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counters that “value dwells not in particular will,” (Troilus and Cressida, 2.2.53) because not only is Troilus’s moral subjectivism irrational, it is moreover insufficient as a moral justification of war. This is further emphasised by the illogical nature of Troilus’s and Paris’s ensuing arguments. In the following, Troilus argues that since they are engaged in the quarrel already, they need to continue it; in Harold Goddard’s words, he “proves the goodness of their cause by the fact that they are fighting for it!”257 Paris, on the other hand, even exceeds Troilus in his moral subjectivism, since he claims that everybody is more than willing to fight for Helen, which is evidently only a projection of his own feelings for her onto others.258 Thus, his argument is no less circular than Troilus’s, as Alice Shalvi argues: “The fallacy in his argument is the assumption that an originally wrongful act can be wiped off by valiant action in defense or vindication of that act rather than by material restitution to the wronged party.”259 Hence, the cause for war is “a cause that cannot be defended by reason,”260 which is Hector’s final conclusion in the debate: Paris and Troilus, you have both said well And on the cause and question now at hand Have glozed – but superficially, not much Unlike young men, whom Aristotle thought Unfit to hear moral philosophy. The reasons you allege do more conduce To the hot passion of distempered blood

256 Grady, Shakespeare’s Universal Wolf, 89. 257 Harold Goddard, The Meaning of Shakespeare Vol. 2 (London: The University of Chicago Press Ltd., 1951): 25. See also 2.2.123–125, where Troilus claims that Cassandra, who rightly prophesies the fall of Troy at this point, simply cannot see “the goodness of a quarrel | Which hath our several honours all engaged | To make it gracious.” The circularity of his argument is evident: their cause is just, because they fight for it, which is why it is just. Thus, he continues his logical strain of moral subjectivism only to repeatedly refute himself. Or in Gayle Greene’s words, the circularity “derives from […] Troilus’s position that the Trojans make Helen valuable by fighting for her and then continue to fight on the basis of her value.” Gayle Greene, “Language and Value in Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida, SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500–1900 21.2 (1981): 271–285, 282. 258 See also Troilus and Cressida, 2.2.156–160: “There’s not the meanest spirit on our party | Without a heart to dare, or sword to draw, | When Helen is defended, nor none so noble | Whose life were ill-bestowed, or death unfamed, | Where Helen is the subject.” Priam’s diagnosis of the situation is obviously accurate when he claims: “Paris, you speak | Like one besotted on your sweet delights. | You have the honey still, but these the gall; | So to be valiant is no praise at all.” (Troilus and Cressida, 2.2.142–145) 259 Shalvi, “‘Honor’ in Troilus and Cressida,” 287. 260 West, “Two Truths,” 144.

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Than to make up a free determination ’Twixt right and wrong; for pleasure and revenge Have ears more deaf than adders to the voice Of any true decision. (Troilus and Cressida, 2.2.167–173)

This very refined argumentation including the intended anachronism in reference to Aristotle261 thus concludes not only the debate in general but, more importantly, the irrefutable immorality of the war. As Matthew Greenfield points out, Hector displays a “well-developed theory of moral decision-making,”262 and a profound understanding of the morality of war. The more surprising and troubling has been his immediately following change in argumentation for scholars over the past decades. Hector states that the “moral laws | Of nature and of nations speak aloud | To have her back returned,” (Troilus and Cressida, 2.2.184–186) thereby rightly concluding that giving in to the coercion of the Greeks by returning Helen is from an ethical point of view the right thing to do, because continuing the war would make it progressively more condemnable: “Thus to persist | In doing wrong extenuates not wrong, | But makes it much more heavy.” (Troilus and Cressida, 2.2.186–188) The initial injustice of a cause cannot be argued away, but only make the defenders of an unjust war increasingly more culpable of their crime. And yet, inconsistently, his final assessement is the “resolution to keep Helen still.” (2.2.191) Hector’s turn in the debate has understandably caused a lot of confusion in the reception of this play. Generally, critics describe it as a “volte-face,”263 and they have been much concerned with finding a rational explanation for it that is not only psychologically comprehensible but dramatically reasonable. S. J. Lynch, for instance argues, that “[b]y ultimately siding with the extreme position of Paris and Troilus, Hector indulges in an excessive desire for honor,” and that it is this “sudden change of mind that further highlights the inadequacy of the honor he

261 See Heather James, Shakespeare’s Troy. Cambridge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture 22 (Cambridge: CUP, 1997): 98. For more general parallels between Aristotle’s EN and Troilus and Cressida see W. R. Elton, “Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida,” Journal of the History of Ideas 58.2 (1997): 331–337. 262 Matthew A. Greenfield, “Fragments of Nationalism in Troilus and Cressida,” Shakespeare Quarterly 51.2 (2000): 181–200, 195. 263 See A. P. Rossiter, Angel with Horns And Other Shakespeare Lectures, ed. Graham Storey (London: Longmans, Green and Co Ltd, 1961): 143; Shalvi, “‘Honor’ in Troilus and Cressida, 296; Tom McAlindon, “Language, Style and Meaning in Troilus and Cressida, PMLA 84.1 (1969): 29–43, 31; Mark Sacharoff, “Tragic vs. Satiric: Hector’s Conduct in II, ii of Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida,” Studies in Philology 67.4 (1970): 517–531, 520; Bradshaw, Shakespeare’s Scepticism, 133; James, Shakespeare’s Troy, 98.

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pursues.”264 Tom McAlindon similarly sees in Hector’s behaviour an “irrational but typically chivalric procedure,”265 and Thomas West argues that Hector yields according to his “passion for glory.”266 Brian Morris, on the other hand, identifies Cassandra’s appearance on stage as the crucial and moreover tragical element, for according to him “Hector finds his counsel of expediency in alliance with his sister’s madness and his cause stands upon shifting sand.”267 Morris believes that Hector finds himself “compromised by Cassandra’s attitude,” and that he is forced into his change of argument because he is “seduced by the ideal of honor.”268 Sacharoff, however, argues against a satirical reading of the play by pointing out that “the wrong choice presented here is too grave in its consequences to yield easily to satiric interpretation,”269 and that this choice makes Hector “an irrevocably doomed hero […].”270 A. P. Rossiter does not even determine the reasons why Hector changes his mind, but declares it simply to be “inexplicable” and the character’s “death-warrant.”271 While Kenneth Palmer simply attests that Hector is “swayed by impulse, and not by reason,”272 and thus deprives him of rationality, W. R. Elton does the opposite by declaring that “Hector recalls a conventional method of legal dialectic”: Arguments on opposite sides of a question took place in universities, where the process was a sharp degree, as well as in the bolts, moots and other exercises of the Inns of Court. A law-student audience could recognize in Hector’s turn-about an echo of its own exercises – a basis of legal training – arguing both sides of a question. […] His antithetical positions abruptly exchanged recall the law’s traditional training in dissoi logoi, speaking on either side.273

264 S. J. Lynch, “Hector and the Theme of Honor in Troilus and Cressida,” The Upstart Crow: A Shakespeare Journal 7 (1987): 68–79, 71/72. 265 McAlindon, “Language, Style and Meaning,” 31. 266 West, “Two Truths,” 150. 267 Brian Morris, “The Tragic Structure of Troilus and Cressida,” Shakespeare Quarterly 10.4 (1959): 481–491, 486. 268 Morris, “Tragic Structure,” 486/487. 269 Sacharoff, “Tragic vs. Satiric,” 527. 270 Sacharoff, “Tragic vs. Satiric,” 529. For a relatively recent overview of the general genre debate considering Troilus and Cressida see Dorrit Einersen, “Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida: Tragedy, Comedy, Satire, History or Problem Play?” Angles on the English Speaking World 5 (2005): 45–55. 271 Rossiter, Angel with Horns, 143. 272 Troilus and Cressida, 49. 273 W. R. Elton, Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida and the Inns of Court Revels (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000): 104. Unfortunately, Elton’s analysis only focuses on delivering proof for the thesis that Troilus and Cressida may have been intentionally written for the Inns of Court Revels, which is why there is no further assumption as to why Shakespeare would have meant Hector to argue both sides. Moreover, strictly speaking, one cannot really consider the sudden retreat from Hector’s former arguments as a full argument for the opposition.

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Along these lines, Bradshaw had already argued that Hector does not actually change his opinion, but “merely his position in a debate.”274 Bradshaw claims that the actual volte-face does not occur “at the end but at the beginning of 2.2, when Hector steps forward as the suddenly sober champion of reason, morality and Natural Law.”275 Furthermore, he attempts to show that no matter whether the inconsistency is identified at the beginning or the end of the debate, it is simply coherent with the general inconsistencies of the play and Hector’s function as a chivalric knight, who, as a genuine character, has no convictions, because “no man who was seriously committed to reason, morality and a belief in Natural Law could first deliver his ‘opinion’ and then discard the ‘way of truth’ with Hector’s light, stagy, ‘yet nere the lesse’.”276 Despite these many commentaries on the scene, only few scholars ask the fundamental question: why does the play include the debate in the first place? S. J. Lynch asks “[w]hy would Hector expound at length on moral laws only to end, finally, by agreeing with Troilus?”277 and concludes that it constitutes the attempt to show Hector in a favourable light: “It seems that his elaborate speech is primarily a rhetorical performance, done for the sake of preserving his image as a man of superior intellect.”278 The question, however, is not why Hector finally agrees with Troilus, thereby rendering his entire argumentation redundant: the question is why the sequence precedes an ending that is prone to historical necessity. Hector must agree with Troilus, if the play is supposed to be about the Siege of Troy. Hector cannot win the debate, but one must wonder why he then argues so pertinaciously against the war, as at least Lester Friedman points out: It must be acknowledged that in this scene Shakespeare thrusts himself into a somewhat confining situation. The council can end with but one decision, the continued acceptance of Helen, for the historical facts dictate the dramatic progression. Why then does the dramatist stage an elaborate scene when the outcome is a foregone conclusion?279

274 Bradshaw, Shakespeare’s Scepticism, 133. 275 Bradshaw, Shakespeare’s Scepticism, 133. 276 Bradshaw, Shakespeare’s Scepticism, 138. Further, Bradshaw claims that “[n]or is Hector clearly committed to honour, chivalry and ‘faire play’. Noble, chivalrous heroes know that ‘bad successe in a bad cause’ brings no honour: they don’t chase and butcher strangers for their ‘hide’.” He then concludes: “We might wonder how any attentive critic could resist the conclusion that the Hector-problem is properly resolved by seeing through him – as a hollow man who needs to be admired as Cressida needs to be desired.” 277 Lynch, “Hector and the Theme of Honor,” 72. 278 Lynch, “Hector and the Theme of Honor,” 72/73. 279 Lester D. Friedman, “Shakespeare’s Ambiguous Hero: A Re-Examination of Hector,” Thoth 12.2 (1972): 50–58, 52/53. Although he asks the right question, Friedman unfortunately does not arrive at the right conclusion: “The actual appeal which causes Hector to alter his position is

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The answer seems fairly obvious: in order to stage this particular ethical debate. Against historical fact and dramatic necessity, the scene characterises the Siege of Troy, one of the greatest battles in history, as an entirely unethical war. Hector’s convincing argumentation makes it impossible to regard this as one of the greatest wars of all time. His eventual resignation in the debate is due to historical necessity; but the incomprehensible volte-face only strengthens Hector’s prior arguments. Clearly, the length of the scene could have also been used for a gradual persuasion Hector’s that Troilus and Paris achieve by logical arguments – instead, both are presented as incapable of delivering convincing points. Furthermore, David Houser has drawn attention to the dramatic dynamics of the scene: The total effect is devastating visually as well as logically. On one side of the debate are an older warrior who, as the Trojan champion, must be of necessity the most physically impressive man on stage, a priest most naturally dressed in such a way that his occupation is clear, a king, and a prophetess who enters raving in a manner which marks her function. Against these opponents stand two younger and passionately irrational men, Troilus too young even for a beard, a subject for laughter earlier in the play.280

The juxtaposition of characters and their respective opinions thus reflects the two sides of the debate and it is even visually perceptible that those who argue against the war are right. Those critics who argue that the Hector who dominates the discussion on proportionality and the Hector who finally agrees with Troilus on the issue of their honour, are in fact two different characters are quite right, but in a different sense: the Hector who decides to fight for their collective honour is the Hector who tragically dies. The other Hector is not an actual character of the play, as much as scene 2.2 is strictly speaking not a part of the play’s plot. Like Hamlet, Troilus and Cressida here provides a forum for an ethical debate on an elevated

clear, yet critics smitten with the idea of Hector’s nobility and grandeur insist upon ignoring it. […] Hector’s decision is a constant and a deliberate one caused by Troilus’ skillful stripping away of his brother’s external altruism to reveal his inner drive for personal eminence. […] The reader is not meant to accept this emphasis on personal glory uncritically, and Hector becomes one with a world characterized by selfish desires and vain pretenses.” Friedman, “Shakespeare’s Ambiguous Hero,” 53/54. A more recent account by Matthew Greenfield considers Hector’s character to consist of two personalities: a modern and an old-fashioned one: “The first Hector has an identity defined in relation to a transnational community of rational men, while the second Hector identifies himself as a Trojan. The gap between sentences before the word ‘Yet’ is a gap between two emotions, two value systems, and perhaps even two different persons: suddenly an impetuous knight replaces the prudent moral philosopher, a Trojan replaces a citizen of the world.” Greenfield, “Fragments of Nationalism,” 197. 280 David J. Houser, “Armor and Motive in Troilus and Cressida,” Renaissance Drama 4 (1971): 121–134, 128.

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level exempt from the plot level of the play. It functions as a meta-commentary on the morality of the war and this is why Hector seems inconsistent as a dramatic character. His side in the ethical debate is like a choric commentary, which is completely inconsistent with the general portrayal of the character according to historical facts. Thus, the play includes a debate without either historical or dramatic necessity in order to discuss one of the most important principles of just war theory and show that the war about Helen was an unjust and disproportional war.281 This opinion is also reflected by the Greek characters without further explanation. Thersites, who has a similar semi-choric function, satirically identifies the cause of war and in Peter Scheckner’s words, “summarizes an unpleasant truth of the Trojan War”282: “All the argument is a whore and a cuckold; a good quarrel to draw emulous factions and bleed to death upon.” (Troilus and Cressida, 2.3.69–71) Greek criticism is, however, not confined to Thersites; Diomedes captures the disproportion between cause and cost as precisely as Hector. Significantly, he speaks to the one who has brought all this about: She’s too bitter to her country. Hear me, Paris: For every false drop in her bawdy veins A Grecian’s life has sunk; for every scruple Of her contaminated carrion weight, A Trojan hath been slain. Since she could speak, She hath not given so many good words breath, As for her Greeks and Trojans suffered death. (Troilus and Cressida, 4.1.70–76)

281 A difficult aspect of this scene, which is, however, not central to my argument, is that it turns out at the end that prior to the whole debate Hector sent a challenge to Achilles, so that the impression of the foregone conclusion becomes even stronger, as Greenfield, for instance, points out: “Even during the moment when he argued passionately that the Trojans should surrender Helen, Hector had already committed himself to continuing the conflict.” (Greenfield, “Fragments of Nationalism,” 196) However, first of all, there is no indication that the challenge is meant as an all-decisive duel that will conclude the war, as Sacharoff points out: “For, once we see that there is no connection between the combat and the question of continuing or ending the war, then all inferences which suggest deception on his part tend to collapse. Hector’s commitment to a harmless match in the future does not undercut or contradict his position in the debate, or hint that he secretely favours continuing the war in spite of his words.” (Sacharoff, “Tragic vs. Satiric,” 524) Secondly, the revelation of the challenge only adds to the ambiguity of Hector’s eventual change of mind, which clearly renders his decision the wrong one, but does not take away the significance of the previous ethical debate. 282 Peter Scheckner, “Renegades in the Literature of War: From Homer to Heller,” War, Literature and the Arts: An International Journal of the Humanities 21 (2009): 197–206, 201.

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The calculative rhetoric not only provides the Greek parallel to Hector’s speech but Diomedes also measures the costs of this war in the actual drops of blood that will be shed, which paints a very graphic picture of the lives that will be lost. Moreover, Diomedes here values Greek and Trojan lives as equal and equally not worth the sacrifice. The fact that he does not distinguish between “us” and “them,” but reminds Paris of the suffering on both sides, lends his argument even more complexity and moral urgency than Hector’s. Despite this strong ethical argumentation on both sides, however, the war is continued, which lends the play the dark character that has been perceived by so many critics. It is the fact that so many characters lay out very convincing reasons not to keep fighting and yet act against their better judgement that is frustrating for the recipients of the play, who witness unnecessary collateral damage.

4.2 Jus in Bello To present-day readers and audiences, love and war appear polar opposites. The Hippie slogan of the seventies, ‘Make love, not war’, still much-quoted, […] suggests that the two are mutually exclusive: if you make love, you do not make war, and vice versa. Yet to Shakespeare and his contemporaries war and love were closely related, even in real life.1

The fact that the proverb “all is fair in love and war” does indeed stem from the Elizabethan Age seems to support Draudt’s thesis of a close relation between love and war in the general perspective of the time and many Shakespearean plays deliberately juxtapose these two phenomena, such as All’s Well That Ends Well, Much Ado About Nothing and Troilus and Cressida among others. Critics have remarked, for instance, on the close connection between love and war in All’s Well That Ends Well and the particular martial imagery employed in reference to the themes of love and sex, but the play does not go into detail about the real war that is a backdrop of the main action. Bertram, the ambiguous protagonist, would like to serve in this war, but first of all this is motivated by escapism, not ideology and secondly, the play gives no further information about the cause of war. Kay Stanton points out that “[a]lthough the young men in All’s Well see war as a glamorous arena in which to prove their manliness, Shakespeare does not present it as such. The king allows his subjects to fight on either side. We are never given details of

1 Manfred Draudt, “Venus and Mars: The Relationship of Love and War in Shakespeare,” Cahiers Elisabethains: Late Medieval and Renaissance Studies 46 (1994): 9–21, 9.

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the cause of the conflict […].”2 It is true that there is no further information on this war than the brief exchange at the beginning of act 3: So that from point to point now have you heard The fundamental reasons of this war, Whose great decision hath much blood let forth, And more thirsts after. (All’s Well That Ends Well, 3.1.1–4)3

The play denies any further details, so that the audience is not given the possibility of evaluating the following comment: “Holy seems the quarrel | Upon your Grace’s part; black and fearful | On the opposer.” (All’s Well That Ends Well, 3.1.4–6) The war is therefore presented as a just one, but the actual justifications are never laid out, which makes it impossible to evaluate the morality or immorality of the conflict.4 Moreover, the war has no further dramatic function, but merely serves as a metaphor for love and sex as John Adams points out: For all of war’s innate seriousness, for Bertram and the rest, the Florentine war is nothing but a lark, a promiscuity of combat. This essentially fatuous nature of the war is emphasized by the fact that its issues are never mentioned, and that it is never made vivid by observed combat or concrete reference to wounding or killing.5

2 Kay Stanton, “All’s Well in Love and War” in Ideological Approaches to Shakespeare. The Practice of Theory, eds. Robert P. Merrix and Nicholas Ranson (Lewiston et al.: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1992): 155–163, 159. Despite its very promising title, Stanton’s article never actually concerns itself with war as such, but only love, thus never commenting on the title’s proverbial origin. For other accounts of the love-war-dualism in the play see R. B. Parker, “War and Sex in ‘All’s Well That Ends Well’,” Shakespeare Survey 37 (1984): 99–113; Alexander Welsh, “The Loss of Men and the Getting of Children: ‘All’s Well That Ends Well’ and ‘Measure for Measure’,” Modern Language Review 73 (1978): 17–28; John F. Adams, “All’s Well That Ends Well: The Paradox of Procreation,” Shakespeare Quarterly 12.3 (1961): 261–270. 3 All quotations from All’s Well That Ends Well are taken from the following edition and will be given parenthetically: William Shakespeare, All’s Well That Ends Well, ed. G. K. Hunter. The Arden Shakespeare Second Series (London: Methuen & Co. Ltd, 1959). The comment marginally draws on the principle of proportionality, for the Duke means to imply that the blood that has been shed must be considered worth it due to the justness of his cause, but since there are no further references to this cause, it is impossible to assert that his assumption is just. 4 Stanton comments that “[u]ndoubtedly these lines are meant to satirize claims made in any war by each side that God or righteousness is on its side and evil and wrong on the other.” Stanton, “All’s Well in Love and War,” 159. It should be clear from previous chapters, however, that the subject matter is treated in a far more complex manner in Shakespeare’s plays. 5 Adams, “The Paradox of Procreation,” 266.

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Those young men in the play are therefore never confronted with the reality of war, let alone with its moral reality, which is why there are no ethical considerations of warfare in the text. Due to the particular nature in which love and sex feature in All’s Well That Ends Well, the war metaphor is particularly useful to the characters in the play. This is an aspect often employed especially in Shakespeare’s comedies, but the metaphorical treatment renders the approaches to war in the plays pointless from an ethical perspective. In Much Ado About Nothing, for instance, Beatrice and Benedick are famously involved in a “merry war,” (Much Ado About Nothing, 1.1.50)6 which serves as a metaphor for the continuous flirtatious and at times aggressive banter between them as the comedy’s most appealing aspect. The play begins with the end of a real war and continues with a metaphorical one as Lodwick Hartley points out: “The immediate setting is that of two kinds of war – one happily finished and another happily continuing – the products of which are to stand in contrast in the relationship of soldier and courtier.”7 However, a war can hardly be conducted ‘happily’ and the expression ‘merry war’ is an obvious oxymoron that captures the mood of the comedy, but is not applicable to any realistic description of the nature of war. How unsuitable the metaphorical use of war as an analogy to amorous behaviour and feelings is, is most evident in Troilus and Cressida, since the play is concerned with both spheres of human interaction and demonstrates that there must be a clear distinction between the metaphorical and the concrete consideration of war. Before the backdrop of the unjust Trojan War, the love story of Troilus and Cressida constitutes the parallel plot of the play and in literary criticism it is therefore customary to distinguish between the “love and war plots.”8 At the same time, the two phenomena are closely intertwined in the play, because war imagery is frequently used in the love plot. However, the fact that the two must be necessarily regarded as very different moral spheres is captured in a crucial statement by Troilus in flirtatious banter with Cressida:

6 William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, ed. Claire McEachern. The Arden Shakespeare Third Series (London: Thomson Learning, 2005). 7 Lodwick Hartley, “Claudio and the Unmerry War,” College English 26.8 (1965): 609–614, 610. See also Barbara Everett, “Much Ado About Nothing: The Unsociable Comedy” in Much Ado About Nothing and The Taming of the Shrew, ed. Marion Wynne-Davies (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001): 51–68; Penny Gay, “Much Ado About Nothing. A Kind of Merry War” in Much Ado About Nothing and The Taming of the Shrew, ed. Marion Wynne-Davies (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001): 69–102; Harry Berger, Jr., “Against the Sink-a-Pace: Sexual and Family Politics in Much Ado About Nothing” in Much Ado About Nothing and The Taming of the Shrew, ed. Marion Wynne-Davies (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001): 13–30. 8 See for instance Greene, “Language and Value,” 271–285.

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O virtuous fight, When right with right wars who shall be most right! (Troilus and Cressida, 3.2.166/167)

Troilus seems to indicate that a war that is just on both sides is a virtuous and just war. First of all, considering the requirements of a just war it is highly dubitable, if not impossible, that the aggression is equally just on either side. Michael Walzer, in reference to Francisco de Vitoria, has shown that “[n]o war […] can be just on both sides.”9 Secondly, Troilus’s assumption is moreover particularly ironic, even cynical, because it is juxtaposed with the mutually unjust war between Greeks and Trojans.10 Therefore, the necessity to distinguish between the metaphorical and the concrete references to warfare is pointedly brought to the fore, because the metaphors related to warfare cannot be regarded as representing a significant ethical implication that could have a bearing on an evaluation of the moral reality of war. This is not to say, however, that real principles of warfare that are discussed in Shakespeare’s plays do not also have a bearing on conflicts in a state of peace. The realist principle of ‘an eye for an eye,’ for instance, is just as emphatically condemned in domestic as in martial conflicts. It features prominently in Romeo and Juliet in a tragic context, while Measure for Measure shows its unsuitability in matters of justice.11 Romeo and Juliet is set in an ordered state of society, but the vendetta between Montagues and Capulets makes the streets of Verona resemble a battlefield more than a civilian sphere. Through the generic characteristics of tragedy, the necessarily fatal outcome of a conflict conducted according to the principle of measure for measure is emphatically dramatised. All deaths in the play result from revenge with which the story of the two lovers is logically intertwined from the beginning. Their first encounter is overshadowed by Tybalt’s vow to avenge Romeo’s intrusion into the Capulet manor, which forms the immediate precedent to the lovers’ first dialogue.12 Tybalt declares that Romeo’s “intru-

9 Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 59. 10 A war that is unjust on both sides, such as this one, is possible according to Walzer: “There are, however, wars that are just on neither side, because the idea of justice doesn’t pertain to them or because the antagonists are both aggressors, fighting for territory or power where they have no right.” Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 59/60. 11 The same is, of course, also true for Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, but since I only intend to give an exemplary impression, I will not include this play in my discussion. 12 Romeo foresees the fatal consequences his appearance at the party will have in 1.5.106–111, as Nuttall points out: “Romeo was wrong if he thought that gate-crashing the Capulets’ party would prove a disaster, but he was right about the remoter consequence.” A. D. Nuttall, Shakespeare the Thinker (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2007): 118.

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sion shall | Now seeming sweet, convert to bitt’rest gall,” (Romeo and Juliet, 1.5.90/91)13 overshadowing the next line, which constitutes Romeo’s first address to Juliet. As Alexander Leggatt puts it, “Romeo’s affair with Juliet and his affair with Tybalt begin together, love born from hate and hate born from love.”14 From hereon, the escalation is a foregone conclusion, for Tybalt challenges Romeo, Mercutio answers the challenge and is slain, Romeo avenges him by killing Tybalt, which leads to his banishment and the resulting deaths of the lovers.15 The characters thus faithfully follow the revenge principle but unlike their Shakespearean predecessors, they do so in a more reflected manner, for Shakespeare has Romeo argue for peace and appeal to the law of Verona to prevent the crucial duel between Tybalt and Mercutio: Gentlemen, for shame, forbear this outrage. Tybalt, Mercutio! The Prince expressly hath Forbid this bandying in Verona streets. (Romeo and Juliet, 3.1.86–88)

When he is nevertheless drawn into the vicious cycle of the vendetta, Romeo still shows an understanding of its fatal nature and exclaims in his duel with Tybalt to avenge Mercutio’s death that “[e]ither thou, or I, or both must go with him.” (Romeo and Juliet, 3.1.131) The line is as indicative of the coercion of their conduct, because it captures the inevitable consequences of the complete extinction of human lives, if one life must pay for another. Unlike the state of war of the first tetralogy, the Verona of Romeo and Juliet is a state of society with positive laws embodied by the Prince, whose function is to comment on the immorality of the conflict.16 After

13 All references to Romeo and Juliet are to the following edition and will be given parenthetically: William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, ed. Brian Gibbons. The Arden Shakespeare Second Series (London: Methuen & Co. Ltd, 1980). 14 Leggatt, Shakespeare’s Tragedies, 39. 15 W. H. Auden has claimed that “Romeo and Juliet are idolaters of each other, which is what leads to their suicide.” W. H. Auden, Lectures on Shakespeare, ed. Arthur Kirsch (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004): 48. He certainly has a point and it must be noted that there are many more things that could be said about this love tragedy, but for the sake of the present work’s scope, I will solely focus on the aspect of escalation here. Auden’s whole point is the following: “Romeo and Juliet don’t know each other, but when one dies, the other can’t go on living. Behind their passionate suicides, as well as their reactions to Romeo’s banishment, is finally a lack of feeling, a fear that the relationship cannot be sustained and that, out of pride, it should be stopped now, in death. If they become a married couple, there will be no more wonderful speeches – and a good thing, too. Then the real tasks of life will begin, with which art has surprisingly little to do.” 16 Jessica Munns has pointed out that the character of the Prince holds himself responsible and “blames himself at the end of Romeo and Juliet for ‘winking’ (V.iii.293) at the family feud which

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the deaths of both Mercutio and Tybalt in 3.1, Lady Capulet explicitly demands the continuance of the pattern: Prince, as thou art true, For blood of ours shed blood of Montague. (Romeo and Juliet, 3.1.150/151)

Ironically, she claims to be asking for ‘justice,’ but her appeal expresses the exact opposite, because her understanding of justice is retribution: I beg for justice, which thou, Prince, must give. Romeo slew Tybalt. Romeo must not live. (Romeo and Juliet, 3.1.182/183)

Such retribution, however, is only made possible, because the citizens of Verona have taken the law into their own hands and the Prince points out that this has made it impossible to determine who is guilty of the initial crime: Romeo slew him, he slew Mercutio. Who now the price of his dear blood doth owe? (Romeo and Juliet, 3.1.184/185)

‘An eye for an eye’ evidently cannot be the guide of conduct and certainly not the general proceeding of the law, which is why Montague, arguing for Romeo’s pardon, wrongly claims: “His fault concludes but what the law should end, | The life of Tybalt.” (Romeo and Juliet, 3.1.187/188) The crucial difference is that it was Romeo and not the law that caused the death of Tybalt, so that the juxtaposition of the public and the private sphere is clear: in a state of society with positive law, citizens have to appeal to the law and cannot execute it themselves. At the same time, the character of the Prince emphasises that the revenge principle cannot be the constitutive element of punishment, because actual justice is of a very different nature – a theme which is taken up again in Measure for Measure. In this play, the central force of the principle of measure for measure is Angelo, who has an equally flawed understanding of justice, which for him, just as for Lady Capulet, means merciless retribution. Thus, when he is given temporary

has even cost him the life of one of his kinsmen. His statement involves an implicit assertion that he had the power to stop the bloodshed […].” Jessica Munns, “‘The Dark Disorders of a Divided State’: Otway and Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet,” Comparative Drama 19.4 (1985/1986): 347–362, 359. However, through the play’s emphasis on the spiral nature of revenge, it must be clear that even the Prince would not have been able to prevent the tragic outcome, especially because the character’s function is the embodiment of positive law, which is side-stepped in the play.

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executive power by the Duke of Vienna, who asks him to enforce ‘justice’ during his absence, the pattern is set in motion and the events of the play lead to increasing emotional suffering due to Angelo’s obsessive and yet hypocritical adherence to the judicial system. His merciless condemnation of Claudio is juxtaposed with Isabella’s refusal to take revenge, when the Duke offers her this opportunity: The very mercy of the law cries out Most audible, even from his proper tongue: An Angelo for Claudio; death for death. (Measure for Measure, 5.1.405–407)17

This is a juxtaposition of three principles that are very different in nature: mercy, the law and retribution are here presented as one, but the play demonstrates that they are almost contradictory principles. Angelo enforces the law without mercy and this would also be required of Isabella, if she decided for revenge, since measure for measure and mercy are mutually exclusive. Thus, mercy and revenge are juxtaposed in a non-battle situation that leaves room for deliberation and the result is a choice in favour of mercy when Isabella pardons Angelo. Her forgiveness thus “emblematizes the superiority of mercy over strict justice.”18 She does not follow the realist principle and the happy ending that results from her deescalation represents the right moral choice. Stacy Magedanz has claimed that mercy’s triumph here somehow leaves the audience unsatisfied: Given the emphasis placed on Isabella’s climactic pleas for mercy, it seems fair to say that despite the extended discussions of the right use of justice, mercy wins the play on points, in a way that a thinking audience may find unsatisfying. Angelo’s pardon is required to make Isabella’s defense of mercy something more than theoretical, but the fact that he escapes any real retribution for attempted rape and murder somehow feels wrong, however we might explain its significance in the resolution of the play.19

Another critic, however, takes the exact opposite view-point in a comparison with Machiavelli’s moral understanding in Mandragola, pointing out that Shakespeare’s ending stands in clear and intended opposition to the former: “Measure for Measure’s unsettling ending prevents audiences from concluding that evil means bring about good results. Shakespeare’s ‘un-Machiavellian’ ending dem-

17 All quotations from Measure for Measure are from the following edition and will be given parenthetically: William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, ed. J. W. Lever. The Arden Shakespeare Second Series (London: Methuen & Co. Ltd, 1965). 18 Stanley Wells, Shakespeare, Sex, and Love (Oxford: OUP, 2010): 133. 19 Stacy Magedanz, “Public Justice and Private Mercy in Measure for Measure,” Studies in English Literature 1500–1900 44.2 (2004): 317–332, 328.

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onstrates his unwillingness to fully surrender to the moral disorder of the world.”20 While this second view surely seems too romantic, the first one seems too pessimistic: what the play supports is the ability to grant another human being mercy.21 Measure for Measure and Romeo and Juliet therefore constitute two plays which, despite their setting in a state of peace, confirm the negation of the realist warfare principle and the Elizabethan proverb “all is fair in love and war” is therefore not representative of Shakespeare’s plays.22 Moreover, an analysis of the principles of jus in bello in the plays shows that there is a clear account of what must be considered just or unjust conduct in war. When it comes to a moral evaluation of Shakespearean characters’ behaviour in battle, it is crucial to distinguish between the different kinds of soldiers represented in the plays. In the following I will regard conduct in battle from three different perspectives: first, those warriors shall be taken into consideration that are singled out for exceptionally brave behaviour such as Macbeth and Coriolanus; second, the traditional knights, whose chivalrous nature grants their adherence to a code of honour shall be scrutinised and third, the common soldiers who are representative of contemporary Elizabethan troops will be taken into account.

20 Andrea Ciliotta-Rubery, “An Opposing Worldview: Transient Morality in Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure and Machiavelli’s Mandragola,” Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture 6.2 (2003): 84–107, 103. 21 At the same time, the play questions the very nature of justice, as Jeremy Tambling has shown: “Altering without having achieved anything of the justice she craved, Isabella gives up the idea of measure being followed by measure, which also means surrendering any idea that justice is what Derrida calls ‘calculable’.” Jeremy Tambling, “Law and Will in Measure for Measure,” Essays in Criticism 59.3 (2009): 189–210, 206. To discuss the full extent to which the play reconsiders the nature of justice, however, would not fit within the scope of this present analysis. 22 Shakespeare’s plays, especially the comedies, incorporate many morally questionable means when it comes to amorous conduct between lovers. Petruchio’s treatment of Katerina in The Taming of the Shrew, the so-called ‘bed-tricks’ in Measure for Measure and All’s Well That Ends Well, or the deception in Much Ado About Nothing would be cases in point and A Midsummer Night’s Dream emphasises the general irrationality of love. There are indeed underlying moral considerations in the plays, but first of all, none of those are relevant to the focus of the present analysis and secondly, from the immoral conduct in love it cannot be reasonably deduced that immoral conduct in war is simultaneously excused. For an analysis of the moral element in Shakespeare’s lovers’ conduct see especially Wells, Shakespeare, Sex, and Love.

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4.2.1 Warriors Paul Jorgensen has pointed out that “Shakespeare, unlike certain of his more spectacular fellows, did not emphasize the physical staging of warfare.”23 This is certainly true, because actual battle scenes are rare.24 There are, however, indirect descriptions of supposedly brave or honourable behaviour in battle as, for instance, in Macbeth, where the Captain of Duncan’s troops describes Macbeth’s victory over the rebel Macdonwald: For brave Macbeth (well he deserves that name), Disdaining Fortune, with his brandish’d steel, Which smok’d with bloody execution, Like Valour’s minion, carv’d out his passage, Till he fac’d the slave; Which ne’er shook hands, nor bade farewell to him, Till he unseam’d him from the nave to th’chops, And fix’d his head upon our battlements. (Macbeth, 1.2.16–23)

This passage and Duncan’s praise of Macbeth as a “worthy gentleman” certainly raises the question if this is supposed to be normative behaviour in battle, since it seems to be approved of. Equally puzzled, Simon Barker asks: Is this an Englishman’s view of Scottish tactics (Macbeth’s own head gets this treatment at the end of the play), or simply a rare representation of the reality of hand-to-hand fighting? Whatever the case, it is a stark image that reflects on the way that war legitimises activities that within the walls of castles provoke madness, hallucinations and does little for the reputation of the soldier as a figure of respect.25

Barker here claims that due to the fact that the behaviour that is described is set on the battlefield, the violence Macbeth executes is legitimized, which might be supported by David Scott Kastan’s view:

23 Jorgensen, Shakespeare’s Military World, 2. 24 Even Henry V, clearly Shakespeare’s most ‘warlike’ play, features only one actual confrontation in battle, between Pistol and the French soldier Le Fer and this is strictly speaking not a combat scene. See Andrew Gurr’s comment: “Considering all the trumpeting and morale-raising which goes into the battle at Agincourt, it is remarkable that the only actual combat on stage is Pistol’s in IV, iv. Moreover that incident involves not fighting but bargaining for a ransom […].” Gurr, “Bees’ Commonwealth,” 70. 25 Barker, War and Nation, 152.

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Certainly we are to distinguish Macbeth’s killing for the king from Macbeth’s killing of the king: in the service of Duncan, killing marks Macbeth as ‘valiant,’ a ‘worthy gentleman’ (1. 2. 24); in the service of his own ambitions, killing marks Macbeth as monstrous, ‘an abhorred tyrant’ (5. 7. 11).26

The fact that Macbeth kills in battle is legitimate due to his status as soldier, but this does not explain his extraordinarily violent behaviour. The degree of violence he applies here is not legitimised but becomes in the overall context of the play a crucial foreshadowing of his later identity as the ‘butcher.’ The description of his conduct in battle distinctly draws attention to the almost mechanical behaviour that immediately provokes the image of a slaughterhouse, because not only does Macbeth brutally quarter Macdonwald’s body, but in order to face the rebel he also “carves” out his passage, as if he did not eliminate human beings but mere objects. The only reference in the lines quoted above that suggests that he is not simply performing his tasks as a butcher is the word “execution,” which evokes the association that those are human beings who are killed intentionally and it is Macbeth himself, who has passed a death sentence on them. Thus, this is a deliberate image of an uneven battle, which leaves all of Macbeth’s opposers unable to defend themselves and they are mercilessly killed, which constitutes a parallel to Macbeth’s later tyranny. As R. A. Foakes remarks, “Macbeth begins the play as a killing machine in war, and his growth seems to depend on finding out how far he can go in confronting further and more terrible images of death in deliberate murder.”27 Therefore, as praiseworthy as Macbeth’s conduct in battle is at first sight presented to be in the early beginnings of the play, it is rendered unjust by the events following and must be regarded as the first indication of Macbeth’s later disregard of common morality. This disregard of morality and especially humanity is also what lies at the heart of the character Coriolanus, whose behaviour in battle is strikingly reminiscent of Macbeth’s: [H]is sword, death’s stamp, Where it did mark, it took; from face to foot He was a thing of blood, whose every motion Was tim’d with dying cries: alone he enter’d The mortal gate of th’city, which he painted With shunless destiny, aidless came off, And with a sudden reinforcement struck Corioles like a planet. Now all’s his;

26 Kastan, Shakespeare After Theory, 167. 27 Foakes, Shakespeare and Violence, 154.

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When by and by the din of war gan pierce His ready sense, then straight his doubled spirit Requicken’d what in flesh was fatigate, And to the battle came he, where he did Run reeking o’er the lives of men, as if ’Twere a perpetual spoil; and till we call’d Both field and city ours, he never stood To ease his breast with panting. (Coriolanus, 2. 2. 83–87; 103–122)28

Coriolanus is here described as an equally unstoppable war machine, “a thing of blood,” and the dying cries of those defeated serve as a sign of his worthiness. The soldiers he confronts are given no consideration as human beings but are compared to “perpetual spoil,” like animals that deserve no mercy or humane treatment. Resembling Macbeth’s butchery, Coriolanus is described as carving his way through the enemy troops like a “soldier-mower,” as Zvi Jagendorf has it29 and this disregard of human lives is again indicative of Coriolanus’s character. On the surface, Coriolanus is praised as a “[w]orthy man” for the success resulting from his violence, but this success ironically leads to his own downfall and death. When he is appointed tribune, it is revealed that his indifference to other people’s lives is not restricted to the battlefield. The contempt that enables him to succeed in battle is also the crucial element in his downfall, because it makes him incapable of dealing with the common people of Rome. Not only does he refuse to fulfil his public function by addressing the commons, moreover he voices his opinion of them with gross “incivility,”30 insulting them as “dissentious rogues” (Coriolanus, 1.1.163).31 It has been noted that Coriolanus’s soldier-identity makes him unsuitable for peace and that “the ‘incivility’ of the professional soldier is linked […] to his use of language,”32 because Coriolanus is extraordinarily tongue-

28 All references to Coriolanus are to the following edition and will be given parenthetically: William Shakespeare, Coriolanus, ed. Philip Brockbank. The Arden Shakespeare Second Series (London: Methuen & Co. Ltd, 1976). 29 Zvi Jagendorf, “Coriolanus: Body Politic and Private Parts,” Shakespeare Quarterly 41.4 (1990): 455–469, 463. 30 See Cathy Shrank, “Civility and the City in Coriolanus,” Shakespeare Quarterly 54.4 (2003): 406–423, 418. 31 Michael Goldman notes that Coriolanus’s choleric nature makes him entirely predictable: “Coriolanus is the most predictable of men. He is like the kind of mechanical toy that was the subject of a wave of jokes some years ago – the Coriolanus doll: wind him up and he rages […].” Michael Goldman, Shakespeare and the Energies of Drama (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton UP, 1972): 110. 32 Shrank, “Civility and the City,” 419. On the general parallel that the play points out between language and violence see Jarrett Walker, “Voiceless Bodies and Bodiless Voices: The Drama of Human Perception in Coriolanus,” Shakespeare Quarterly 43.2 (1992): 170–185.

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tied and thus entirely unsuited for politics. At the same time, it is his general inhumanity that ensures his skills as a soldier; reminiscent of the characters of the first tetralogy who dehumanise themselves for their cruel purposes, Coriolanus has not forsaken his human emotions to be successful in war; he is rather successful in war because he is presented to be devoid of human sentiments from the beginning. As Peter Leithart points out, “he is more a ‘thing’ than a man.”33 This assumption is confirmed by Volumnia: When yet he was but tender-bodied, and the only son of my womb; when youth with comeliness plucked all gaze his way; when for a day of king’s entreaties, a mother should not sell him an hour from her beholding; I, considering how honour would become such a person – that it was no better than picture-like to hang by th’wall, if renown made it not stir – was pleased to let him seek danger where he was like to find fame. To a cruel war I sent him, from whence he returned, his brows bound with oak. I tell thee, daughter, I sprang not more in joy at first hearing he was a man-child, than now in first seeing he had proved himself a man. (Coriolanus, 1.3.5–18)

Volumnia’s obsession with Coriolanus’s ‘honourable’ deeds in battle that can, according to her, be counted materially according to the wounds on his body is almost satirised and her driving force behind Coriolanus’s ‘career’ contributes profoundly to his eventual death.34 Volumnia’s focus on her son’s wounds is part of an overall theme in the play that equates Coriolanus’s wounds with his violence in battle and simultaneously constitutes them as a tragic theme, since his ultimate downfall begins with his refusal to display these wounds publicly, as Cynthia Marshall has pointed out: […] Roman custom in the play requires that anyone seeking public office display his wounds to the people assembled in the marketplace. When Martius Coriolanus refuses the custom, his downfall begins. […] The character’s identity is radically determined by the wounds that speak of his heroism, the same wounds that speak of his ultimately tragic defiance of the people.35

33 Peter J. Leithart, “City of In-Gratia: Roman Ingratitude in Shakespeare’s Coriolanus,” Literature & Theology 20.4 (2006): 341–360, 351. 34 I would not go as far as attributing all guilt of the tragic outcome to Volumnia, like Coppélia Kahn, but she is certainly a driving force. See Coppélia Kahn, Roman Shakespeare. Warriors, Wounds, and Women (London and New York: Routledge, 1997): 144–158. The dialogue between Volumnia and Menenius in act 2, scene 1 of the play makes their interest in Coriolanus’s wounds seem absurd, when they recollect and count where and how often his body is scarred (see Coriolanus, 2.1.141–155). 35 Cynthia Marshall, “Coriolanus, Gender, and the Theatrical Construction of Interiority” in Feminist Readings of Early Modern Culture. Emerging Subjects, eds. Valerie Traub, M. Lindsay Kaplan and Dympna Callaghan (Cambridge: CUP, 1996): 93–118, 102. Why Coriolanus refuses to

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Thus, through the uncommon emphasis on the physical marks on Coriolanus’s body that result from his conduct in battle and present an obstacle to his behaviour in peace, the two identities are inextricably linked or even unified,36 which creates a clearly defined connection between his violence in war and his tragic failure in peace. This is further underlined by his banishment from Rome and his service for the Volsces in their war against Rome – Coriolanus is unsuitable as a civilian, so that he must fight either for Rome or against Rome, which causes his isolation and tragic ending, as James Kuzner remarks: Being open to his own vulnerability and willing to renounce control, Coriolanus spends most of the play killing at the behest of one state or another, Rome or Antium; at the end of the play, he is himself killed. He refuses the constructs of corporeal and social boundedness; content to be a sword instead of a citizen, he becomes unrecognizable as a discrete body or a defined social individual.37

Coriolanus’s violence in battle that indicates his lack of respect for human lives thus runs through the entire play in two forms: he employs it in the war for Rome in the beginning and against Rome in the end, while in the civic sphere it entirely isolates and eventually destroys him. Paul Cantor has claimed that upon his banishment from Rome, “Coriolanus is trying to cut himself off from humanity,”38 but the character is devoid of humanity from the beginning of the play. Ironically, his banishment from Rome leads to one moment of human sentiment, when he leads the Volscian troops back to Rome but eventually yields to his mother’s plead for mercy. This moment of the most basic feeling of compassion towards his own family is presented as contradictory

display his wounds is not central to my argument here, but I find Janet Adelman’s explanation quite valid: “In Plutarch, Coriolanus shows his wounds; in Shakespeare, the thought is intolerable to him and, despite many promises that he will, he never does. For the display of his wounds would reveal his kinship with the plebeian in several ways: by revealing that he has worked for hire […] as they have (that is, that he and his wounds are not sui generis after all); by revealing that he is vulnerable, as they are; and by revealing, through the persistent identification of wound and mouth, […] that he too has a mouth, that he is a dependent creature.” Janet Adelman, “‘Anger’s my Meat’: Feeding, Dependency and Aggression in Coriolanus” in Shakespearean Tragedy, ed. John Drakakis (London and New York: Longman Inc., 1992): 353–373, 361/362. 36 See Nichole Miller’s comment that Coriolanus’s “civic identity [is] defined and ultimately effaced by his wounds […].” Nichole E. Miller, “Sacred Life and Sacrificial Economy: Coriolanus in No-Man’s Land,” Criticism 51.2 (2009): 263–310, 274. 37 James Kuzner, “Unbuilding the City: Coriolanus and the Birth of Republican Rome,” Shakespeare Quarterly 58.2 (2007): 174–199, 192. 38 Paul Cantor, Shakespeare’s Rome. Republic and Empire (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1976): 101.

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to his true character and he perceives it as defeat, foreseeing that this moment will prove “most mortal” (189) for him. Significantly he concludes “though I cannot make true wars, | I’ll frame convenient peace,” (190/191) which is the one thing he is incapable of. Coriolanus can only succeed in battle, there exceeding any ‘normal’ degree of violence and this characteristic is reflected in his death, when he is torn to pieces by the Volscian mob: Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill him! (Coriolanus, 5.6.129)

Coriolanus is killed in the same manner as he used to kill: he is slaughtered like an animal, especially since his end takes place not on the battlefield, but in the marketplace.39 Alexander Leggatt has noted that “[t]here is no indication that he fights back. His body, on which so much attention has been focused in both war and politics, is now an inert thing on the stage floor […].”40 In the same manner as he ran “reeking over the lives of men,” he is himself run over by the mob and Janet Adelman points out that “he dies as he has tried to live, heroically mantled in his self-sufficiency, alone.”41 More importantly even, Coriolanus dies in the same manner as the soldiers he used to kill in battle and through this particular depiction it is pointed out that what may be described by other characters in the plays as bravery and praiseworthy conduct in battle is merely a foreshadowment of the warrior’s own tragic death.

4.2.2 Just and Unjust Conduct In contrast to these warriors, the idea of the chivalric knight is inextricably linked to moral conduct. In the Elizabethan Age chivalry was no longer a contemporary concept, but an anachronistic ideal. Arthur B. Ferguson, who identified a revival of the medieval notion in the fifteenth century, points out that by the Elizabethan Age it had become obsolete: When, with the restoration under Elizabeth of national pride and public order, men of letters again sought inspiration (and a touch of political propaganda) in the legends of Arthur’s court, and when the Elizabethan aristocracy sought in the chivalric code an ethical

39 Robert S. Miola has noted that it is “Coriolanus’s tragedy not to die on the battlefield, but in an alien marketplace, defeated finally by the ignoble force of craft, conspiracy, and mob action. […] The marketplace, of course, suggests all his shortcomings: his ineloquence, choler, pride, and impatience.” Robert S. Miola, Shakespeare’s Rome (Cambridge: CUP, 1983): 202. 40 Leggatt, Shakespeare’s Political Drama, 212. 41 Adelman, “Anger’s my Meat,” 368.

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form for life in a new and swashbuckling society, theirs was a really nostalgic, truly romantic, at times even a frivolous attempt to re-create the spirit of an irretrievable past.42

However, Shakespeare’s plays still include truly chivalric characters, whose traditions serve as a guide of conduct in warfare. The chivalric virtues which include loyalty, mercy, courage and the avoidance of shame and dishonour43 are most obviously embodied by Hector. According to his insight into the morality of aggression, Hector has an equally profound understanding of just conduct in war. In a debate similar to the council scene, Troilus and Hector oppose their notions of how to fight: Troilus Brother, you have a vice of mercy in you, Which better fits a lion than a man. Hector What vice is that? Good Troilus, chide me for it. Troilus When many times the captive Grecian falls, Even in the fan and wind of your fair sword, You bid them rise and live. Hector O, ’tis fair play. Troilus Fool’s play, by heaven, Hector. Hector How now, how now? Troilus For th’love of all the gods, Let’s leave the hermit Pity with our mothers, And when we have our armours buckled on, The venomed vengeance ride upon our swords, Spur them to ruthful work, rein from the ruth. Hector Fie, savage, fie! Troilus Hector, then ’tis wars. (Troilus and Cressida, 5.3.31–49)44

Mercy is a crucial chivalric virtue, so that Hector’s chivalry is put into stark contrast to Troilus’s military realism or, in Grene’s words his “celebration of pure aggression.”45 The younger of the two prefers the ruthless manner of warriors like Macbeth and Coriolanus, reversing the common moral perception of virtue and

42 Arthur B. Ferguson, The Indian Summer of English Chivalry. Studies in the Decline and Transformation of Chivalric Idealism (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1960): 226. 43 See Meron, Bloody Constraint, 11. 44 David Houser also remarks on the parallel structure of the two scenes: “The issues underlying this debate are those of the Trojan council, and the particular way Shakespeare has chosen to review those issues invites blocking parallels with the earlier scene.” House, “Armor and Motive,” 132. The structure is similar and the imbalance between Troilus’s immoral and Hector’s moral argumentation equally represented, but the issues in this second dialogue are concerned with justice in war, while the Trojan council scene is concerned with the justice of war. 45 Grene, Shakespeare’s Tragic Imagination, 76.

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vice, claiming that Hector’s faith in fair play renders him a fool.46 Troilus considers war an amoral sphere where fairness must be subordinate to victory. Mercy is “fool’s play,” because it indicates effeminate pity. When in armour, a soldier has to act according to his role, which means that he must be ruthless in order to overcome his adversaries. His argument therefore reflects not only a very limited perception of what it means to be a soldier, but it also seems to say that “all is fair” in war. In war lives are at stake and soldiers cannot ‘afford’ pity – they must be ruthless, for “then ’tis wars” and moral considerations have nothing to do with the reality of the battlefield. Hector’s reply, however, brings the immorality of Troilus’s conception to our attention: he calls him savage, i.e. degenerate, inhuman, unjust. As David Houser points out, “[w]hatever one may think of the devotion to chivalry that lies behind Hector’s response to this speech […], the judgement of Troilus’ lines is accurate. They are ‘savage’ […], indeed.”47 Due to his chivalric notions, Hector demonstrates that it is in fact possible to act humanely even in the heat of battle: What art thou, Greek? Art thou for Hector’s match? Art thou of blood and honour? Thersites No, no, I am a rascal, a scurvy railing knave, a very filthy rogue. Hector I do believe thee. Live. (Troilus and Cressida, 5.4.25–29) Hector

In an attempt to prove that Hector is driven by an obsessive desire of honour, S. J. Lynch states that this is the only reason for his just behaviour: Hector has a propensity for what T. S. Eliot would call doing the right thing for the wrong reason. The generosity he displays in battle issues not so much from compassion as from a desire to elevate himself to a god-like stature. […] Hector seems at first to merit honor for not taking advantage of an unfair match, but that honor soon diminishes when we recognize that the long-term consequence of such a policy would be to exterminate all worthy men while sparing all rascals, knaves and rogues. What he perceives as honorable behaviour would ultimately deplete the world of honorable men.48

46 See Juliet Dusinberre’s comment on this particular passage: “The now commonplace expression ‘fair play’ was first coined by Shakespeare some ten years earlier in King John, where it is twice used with its modern meaning of fair dealing. […] But the fact that the compound was so new to the language allows Shakespeare to exploit in Troilus and Cressida its willingness to regress into separate elements of ‘fair’ and ‘play’. Hector uses the words in the new sense to mean ‘just behaviour’, Troilus in their separate senses of ‘beautiful sport’ or even, in the context of the play, ‘sport for beauty’.” Juliet Dusinberre, “‘Troilus and Cressida’ and the Definition of Beauty,” Shakespeare Survey 36 (1983): 85–95, 94. 47 Houser, “Armor and Motive,” 132. 48 Lynch, “Hector and the Theme of Honor,” 74.

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Lynch’s argument takes his condemnation of Hector to extremes; first of all, Hector’s determination to confront only honourable men in battle would not necessarily lead to an extermination of all those and secondly, it is certainly possible to read Hector’s questioning of Thersites’s status not only as an evaluation of how he can profit from it in honourable terms, but also as a confirmation of the equality between the contestants in a fight. Considering that Hector always argues for justice, we have no reason to believe that he spares Thersites out of purely selfish reasons. It is equally possible that the text means to imply that Hector’s conduct here is simply just. Thersites is not an equal adversary and a fight between the two would therefore not be “fair play.” Even in the heat of battle Hector is able to maintain his distinction of right and wrong. Lester Friedman has argued that both the council scene as well as the discussion of jus in bello in 5.3 create an irresolvable moral ambiguity: The young Trojan [Troilus] argues that when one engages in war there should be no quiver of mercy to stem the flow of passionate killing […]. Here the reader confronts two opposing views of war. Hector participates in the war as if competing in a knightly exhibition, whereas Troilus now accepts its horrible reality. […] Ironically, there is a total reversal of the stances noted in the Trojan council scene, where Hector argues for reality and Troilus for blind honor. Shakespeare thus establishes another dual perspective on the dramatic situation which cannot be totally resolved, and Hector again emerges from the scene as an ambiguous figure.49

Friedman commits several fallacies in this argument: first of all, to “accept” the horrible reality of war is the same as to assume that moral behaviour within this reality is impossible, which is a realist argument, not a moral one.50 Secondly, in the council scene, Hector intends to make Troilus realise the immorality of the war, which is an entirely different argument. ‘Realism’ simply has different implications and Troilus’s realist argument is diametrically opposed to Hector’s earlier moralist argument. Thirdly, Troilus’s arguments for keeping Helen are not contradictory to his view of battle: Troilus had argued for the war without any justifiable rational points and his view of the reality of war applies the same irrationality. It is obvious that he is incapable of arguing from a moral perspective in either de-

49 Friedman, “Shakespeare’s Ambiguous Hero,” 56. 50 Houser makes a point similar to Friedman’s by saying that “Troilus’ wish to abandon pity when in armor may be savage, but it is also based in a clear-sighted evaluation of battle.” (Houser, “Armor and Motive,” 133) However, this is equally just a disguised realist argument for the generally amoral nature of war. Houser thus claims that Troilus accepts the reality of war without noticing that the further implication of such a view is to confirm and excuse immoral behaviour in war.

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bate, while Hector proves his rational understanding of what is right and wrong in both debates. In this respect, therefore, he is far from ambiguous. Yet, Hector’s awareness of the principles of jus in bello is ironically overshadowed by two other instances in the play: first, when he grants Achilles the same mercy as Thersites, he contributes to his own death and second his pursuit of the Greek soldier seems to contradict his chivalric notions. The two ethically diametrically opposed actions are juxtaposed in close proximity and the first is in perfect accordance with chivalric conduct, while the second resembles Troilus’s realism. First of all, Hector’s encounter with Achilles proves that he did not spare Thersites out of selfish reasons, because he also spares Achilles. The latter would be a far more honourable opponent but he is exhausted, which is why Hector gives him the chance to rest and there is an unmistakable implication that Hector’s conduct here is an instance of “fair play.” However, it is still possible for some critics to chide Hector for his just conduct: It is evident that Hector is not particularly anxious to fight, but the implication is that the Trojan holds an advantage over the Greek. Yet Hector chooses to spare Achilles, again ignoring fate, and this rash decision proves to be his downfall. This is not a heroic action, as some critics have interpreted it, for it is not based on an inner conception of honor. Rather, Hector seems interested in the reputation gained by this deed, and he shows that he still operates under an antiquated and distorted notion of honor.51

First of all, if honour were at stake for Hector, he could still fight Achilles there and then, for a victory over the Greek would certainly be honourable. Secondly, it is curious that Friedman attests that for Hector’s actions to be heroic, they would have to be motivated by an “inner conception of honor.” The implied definition of heroic seems to be an extraordinarily narrow one, for the just conduct that Hector displays here could surely be evaluated as heroic, if regarded from a moral perspective. Moreover, what Friedman describes as a rash decision seems in actual fact like a rather cool deliberation of what is right and wrong and a refusal to be carried away by the heat of battle. The more surprising it is that Hector forsakes all of these ethical notions in the second instance, which is unjust. In his encounter with the Greek soldier, Hector acts as if all notions of chivalry were erased from his mind: Stand, stand, thou Greek! Thou art a goodly mark. No? Wilt thou not? I like thy armour well; I’ll frush it and unlock the rivets all, But I’ll be master of it. Wilt thou not, beast, abide? Why then, fly on. I’ll hunt thee for thy hide. (Troilus and Cressida, 5.6.28–32) 51 Friedman, “Shakespeare’s Ambiguous Hero,” 57.

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The image of Hector as a hunter and the soldier as a fleeing animal that is pursued and killed for its meat or fur is clearly emphasised through the choice of words, as Alice Shalvi points out: “The vocabulary and feeling are those of the chase, not of chivalrous battle, […] and the onomatopoeia and rhythm of the lines suggest force and violence.”52 Thus, there is a stark contrast to Hector’s formerly just conduct and the language foreshadows Hector’s own violent end by the hands of Achilles and his Myrmidons. Surprised by Achilles Hector asks him to “[f]orgo this vantage” since he is unarmed, but Achilles kills him unhesitatingly: “Strike, fellows, strike! This is the man I seek.” (Troilus and Cressida, 5.9.9/10)53 Not only does Hector’s death strikingly resemble Coriolanus’s,54 but it seems to be either the direct consequence of his previously just conduct or punishment for his unjust conduct. Like Hector’s infamous volte-face the juxtaposition of these aspects has provoked equally diverse commentary. Alice Shalvi, for instance, posits that Hector is a character that functions as the key to the principle of appearance versus reality: Like the other Trojan princes, he mistakes appearance for reality – mistakes reputation for true honor – and, as a result, he becomes the appearance rather than the reality: he appears to be a noble, generous, worthy knight – but we are made aware that beneath the appearance lie pride, conceit, self-esteem. Though it may strike us as pathetic, his death is the inevitable outcome of his own foolish, headstrong following of a ridiculous, anachronistic code of behaviour which has been divorced from all considerations of true morality. Hector is destroyed not only by the brutality of his opponent but by what is false within himself.55

52 Shalvi, “‘Honor’ in Troilus and Cressida,” 292. 53 West notes a deviation from the sources here, because “[i]n the Iliad, Achilles prevents them from aiding his attack on Hector, reserving the actual killing for himself. This difference permits Shakespeare to make explicit Achilles’ preoccupation with mere reputation.” West, “Two Truths,” 156. However, the deviation also emphasises that Achilles and his men murder, not kill Hector. 54 Miola notes the same parallel in his Shakespeare’s Rome, 202: “Coriolanus’s death likewise recalls Hector’s tragedy. Here (as elsewhere) Shakespeare greatly expands Plutarch’s account of Aufidius, adding in particular the gratuitous dishonoring of Coriolanus’s body: ‘Draw the Conspirators, and kills Martius, who falls; Aufidius stands on him’ (s.d. V.vi.130). These changes create a scenario that recalls visually the climactic struggle of Achilles and Hector. In Troilus and Cressida, of course, Shakespeare portrays Hector’s death (V.iii) by conflating Caxton’s account of it with his and Lydgate’s account of Troilus’s murder. […] In Shakespeare’s play Achilles and the Myrmidons surprise and murder the unarmed Hector; Achilles then orders that the body be tied to his horse’s tail. Similarly, Aufidius surprises Coriolanus, overwhelms him with numbers, and foully dishonors his body. Like the noble Trojan, Coriolanus cannot vanquish his enemies, control his fate, or participate in the new and emerging order; he can only meet his end with constancy and courage.” 55 Shalvi, “‘Honor’ in Troilus and Cressida, 293.

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Houser also draws attention to the hollowness of Hector’s values, claiming that he “pursues an emblem of his chivalry, the goodly armor, and achieving it, both metaphorically and literally, he disarms himself […].”56 Friedman believes that Hector is overwhelmed by his passion against his own better judgement: “By his action, Hector violates the code of values upon which he says his life is based, and it is quite clear that this scene represents the triumph of Hector’s negative impulses over his positive, theoretical statements.”57 Thus, the general assumption seems to be that Hector deserves to die and yet all critics regard his death as unethical. Edward Hart notes that “the heroic battle between Achilles and Hector turns into as much glory as is provided by the felling of a stalled ox,”58 which is a fitting analogy, because it emphasises the element of butchery. This conduct must hardly be pointed out as unjust behaviour in battle, since Hector is unarmed, therefore defenceless and strictly speaking no combatant in battle. Achilles attacks Hector illegitimately off the battlefield, which constitutes murder. The confusion as to how to evaluate these several actions in war from a moral perspective thus arises from the juxtaposition of just and unjust conduct that cannot be divided between the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ characters. This is emphasised by Matthew Greenfield, who tries to solve the problem by once again taking “two Hectors” into account: One of the most disturbing features of Hector’s death is, of necessity, that both the courteous Hector and the acquisitive one die together, one punished for his generosity and the other for his greed. […] Achilles’s savagery, cowardice, and hypocrisy would be enough to make this incident shocking, but what makes it so resistant to placement within a moral framework is the death’s double causation. A few minutes before his death the acquisitive Hector killed a man out of paltry self-interest. A few minutes before that the chivalric Hector allowed a winded Achilles to withdraw from combat. One Hector dies unjustly, while the other has forfeited his right to mercy.59

While the dilemma that these incidents in the play pose for any moral judgement is precisely brought to the fore by Greenfield, it may also be perceived from another perspective. If one does not take into account which character commits

56 Houser, “Armor and Motive,” 133. 57 Friedman, “Shakespeare’s Ambiguous Hero,” 57. This interpretation is also shared by J. C. Oates: “Hector’s death and mutilation by an enraged Achilles are necessary within this dramatic framework, for Hector has violated the code of values by which his life was possible; he confronts in symbolic terms the appearance-reality mockery of the Trojan war, of life, of his own soul.” J. C. Oates, “The Ambiguity of Troilus and Cressida,” Shakespeare Quarterly 17.2 (1966): 141–150, 145. 58 Hart, “Thematic Unity,” 185/186. 59 Greenfield, “Fragments of Nationalism,” 198.

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which crime, it must be nevertheless emphasised that the juxtaposition of the various forms of conduct in battle leaves no doubt as to what is just and unjust. The cautious deliberation of conduct despite the heat of battle and the adherence to mercy are just conduct in war, while the killing of retreating or defenceless soldiers is unjust. The moral implication for just conduct is therefore indisputable – the problem that remains is Hector’s ambiguity. However, this is hardly a novelty, as David Kaula notes: Although he has amply demonstrated himself to be the most rational and magnanimous character among the Trojans, in his covetous pursuit of the knight in goodly armor he repeats the same error he committed in deciding to fight for Helen even though he clearly recognized the “mad idolatry” of doing so.60

Due to the general inconsistency I would suggest that it is of greater interest to evaluate the dramatic function of the scenes than to attempt to comprehend Hector’s behaviour from a psychological perspective. The question is not why the man Hector decides to hunt the Greek soldier; the question is why the character of the play hunts the Greek soldier without any dramatic necessity and while one could claim with Peter Scheckner that the play here “expose[s] the incompatibility of war and honor,”61 it seems to me to be more striking that through the ambiguous and at times contradictory dramatisation of just and unjust conduct a clear-cut moral judgement is evoked. The short and quickly alternating battle scenes serve as prime examples to evaluate what conduct in battle is just and the psychological comprehensibility of the characters’ behaviour is secondary to the moral evaluation of warfare. It could also be possible to argue that Troilus and Cressida is a play that emphasises that chivalry is outdated and that Hector has to die, because he clings on to an old-fashioned code of conduct. It prevents him from seeking his own advantage and if he had taken Troilus’s advice to forsake his “fair play” seriously, he would not have been killed. Taking into consideration Shakespeare’s other chivalric knights, this assumption seems to be confirmed. John Talbot, for instance, is usually seen as representative of “values that seem anachronistic in the court of Henry VI.”62 He is the epitome of English chivalry, which seems to die with him, as Wineke points out: “After he is sacrificed to the York-Somerset feud, Talbot’s name, so prominent during the first four acts, is virtually forgotten as relations

60 David Kaula, “‘Mad Idolatry’ in Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida,” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 15.1 (1973): 25–38, 37. 61 Scheckner, “Renegades in the Literature of War,” 201. 62 Wineke, “The Relevance of Machiavelli to Shakespeare,” 25.

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between England and France move from a military to a diplomatic phase.”63 The particular tragedy of his death arises from the fact that he dies for England as “[t]he ideal of patriotism rendered in flesh-and-blood,” but according to McGinnis-Kay, he is “the lone representative of the past age of Henry V when England’s needs took precedence over personal aims.”64 Therefore, when Talbot and his son are trapped between enemy lines and neither consents to desert due to their chivalric ideals, the tragedy seems imminent: Talbot

John

O young Talbot, I did send for thee To tutor thee in stratagems of war, That Talbot’s name might be in thee revived When sapless age and weak unable limbs Should bring thy father to his drooping chair. But – O malignant and ill-boding stars – Now thou art come unto a feast of death, A terrible and unavoided danger. Therefore, dear boy, mount on my swiftest horse, And I’ll direct thee how thou shalt escape By sudden flight. Come – dally not, be gone. Is my name Talbot? And am I your son? And shall I fly? O, if you love my mother, Dishonour not her honourable name To make a bastard and a slave of me. The world will say, ‘He is not Talbot’s blood, That basely fled when noble Talbot stood’. (1Henry VI, 4.4.1–17)

The conflict between the chivalric code of honour and the mutual desire to save the other’s life dominates the scene until they finally both die, because they

63 Wineke, “The Relevance of Machiavelli to Shakespeare,” 30. 64 McGinnis-Kay, “Traps, Slaughter and Chaos,” 7. His ideals are of course put into stark contrast with the dissension between the nobles. See also McGinnis-Kay’s further comment: “While the nobles allow their personal interests to widen the gaps between them and eventually divide the nation, it is only Talbot who remembers that observance of degree is an inherent part of a stable world and who thus subordinates his own desires to his nation and king. While Talbot fights for England, the nobles squabble and Henry VI merely watches everyone else.” See also Nina Levine: “One important effect of the conjunction of civil dissension and foreign war in Henry VI is to expose the potentially dangerous conflict between aristocratic self-interest and the interests of the nation-state. The play’s most direct critique of aristocratic self-interest comes with the events surrounding Talbot’s death. In this instance, Shakespeare freely invents his history, not only in bringing Joan back from the dead, but also in dramatizing the feud between York and Somerset and in linking it to the death of Talbot and his son.” Nina S. Levine, Women’s Matters. Politics, Gender, and Nation in Shakespeare’s Early History Plays (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1998): 42.

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“make the traditional heroic choice to sacrifice their lives in order to preserve their honor and their heroic titles.”65 Thus, not only Talbot as the “physical manifestation of all that England might be”66 dies, but through the death of his son the chivalric values passed on to the next generation are also eliminated. These values, however, ensure their understanding of just conduct in battle, for there are no descriptions of Talbot that would resemble Macbeth’s or Coriolanus’s bloodiness. He is a true knight, “interchanging blows,” (1Henry VI, 4.4.74) with his opponents as equals and there is no trace of the butchery that warriors like Young Clifford execute. This is not to say that Talbot spares all of his opponents. Emrys Jones, for instance, emphasises his ‘bloodiness,’ particularly pointed out in the knight’s account of his revenge for Salisbury’s death: “For every drop of blood was drawn from him | There hath at least five Frenchmen died tonight.” (1Henry VI, 2.2.8/9) Jones claims that “one may have one’s doubts as to how admirable the man is who can make such a boast.”67 Simultaneously, Jones points out that “[t]o the French he has never been a hero at all, but a ‘blood-thirsty lord’,” but this is mere question-begging. As much as Talbot might be supposed to represent a heroic legend, as Jones claims, it would surely be incredible, if the French praised the valour of their arch enemy too.68 Nevertheless, his chivalric ideals do not keep him from killing his enemies. But there is a difference between the legitimised killing on the battlefield and utilising the status to slaughter other soldiers. However, from a cynical perspective it may seem that Talbot must die like Hector because his chivalric notions are not inclined to ensure his or his son’s survival, so that one may conclude with Levine that “the play shows the aristocratic code of heroic virtue to be a fiction,”69 and that the ideals of chivalry cannot provide a contemporary mode of just conduct in battle. Hotspur is another case in point to support this assumption, especially since the character is a victim of parody. I argued before with Lordi that Hotspur’s desire for honour makes him “the most attractive of the rebels […]”70 in the first part of Henry IV, but at the same time it is clearly indicated that Hotspur represents a relict of “the older chivalric order;”71 a legendary knight who shares certain ideals with 65 Howard and Rackin, Engendering a Nation, 61. 66 McGinnis-Kay, “Traps, Slaughter and Chaos,” 9. 67 Jones, Origins of Shakespeare, 159. 68 See Jones, “Reclaiming Early Shakespeare,” 43: “In 1Henry VI it is Talbot who is conceived from first to last in terms of his legend: he’s a walking historical monument; he moves in a nimbus of glory. Throughout the play we seem to view the living man through the fame he acquired after his death.” 69 Levine, Women’s Matters, 46. 70 Lordi, “Brutus and Hotspur,” 179/180. 71 La Branche, “Private and Public Virtue,” 379.

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Talbot. He is “the best representative of feudal chivalry,”72 and again it could be argued that these ideals constitute the cause of his tragic death. This point is further supported by Hotspur’s obsessive quest for honour, as David Riggs points out: [H]e gives his undivided loyalty to the disembodied ‘honor’ that dwells upon the pale-faced moon, or in the ‘bottom of the deep.’ That is his tragedy: pursuing it, he pursues something that can never be attained, and so requires a life of unrequited exertions.73

On the other hand, critics have claimed that it is in fact Hotspur’s temper that is indicated as the element that leads to his death. Alan Dessen argues that “this irascible yet charming young knight is totally committed to his personal heroic code” which clouds his understanding “at critical moments” and thus causes his “failings in the political rather than the chivalric arena.”74 Famously, Tillyard saw Hotspur as an embodiment of military excess and “honour exaggerated,”75 a shift which, according to Roberta Barker, resulted in “the transformation of Hotspur from a tragic figure into a comic one.”76 Indeed the play leaves room for both interpretations, because Hotspur’s valour and prowess are also ridiculed by Hal: I am not yet of Percy’s mind, the Hotspur of the North, he that kills me some six or seven dozen of Scots at a breakfast, washes his hands, and says to his wife, ‘Fie upon this quiet life! I want work.’ ‘O my sweet Harry’, says she, ‘how many hast thou killed today?’ ‘Give my roan horse a drench’, says he, and answers, ‘Some fourteen’, an hour after, ‘a trifle, a trifle’. (1Henry IV, 2.4.99–106)

As ruthless as Hal describes Hotspur to be, it is clear throughout the play, however, that the latter is not an indifferent butcher, but a character with a humane nature. His chivalric ideals preserve his humanity, as misguided as his prime concern with honour may be, as Richard Eastman has pointed out: If Hotspur can be ridiculed as the fire-breather “that kills me some six or seven dozen of Scots at a breakfast” and still complains of “this quiet life,” he also comes through as a wryly affectionate husband, a detester of pretense, the “theme of honour’s tongue” with the spirit to stake the whole meaning of life on a crucial combat and the soul to suffer the loss.77

72 Paul N. Siegel, “Shakespeare and the Neo-Chivalric Cult of Honor,” Centennial Review of Arts and Science 8 (1964): 39–70, 50. 73 Riggs, Shakespeare’s Heroical Histories, 159. 74 Alan C. Dessen, “The Intemperate Knight and the Politic Prince: Late Morality Structure in 1Henry IV,” Shakespeare Studies 7 (1974): 147–171, 161. 75 E. M. W. Tillyard, Shakespeare’s History Plays (London: Chatto & Windus, 1948): 265. 76 Barker, “Tragical-Comical-Historical Hotspur,” 294. 77 Eastman, “Political Values,” 903.

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Out of Shakespeare’s warriors, Hotspur is the most human, kind and likeable one and there are no accounts of bloodiness or cruelty. He has no interest in unnecessary killings, but has his heart set on the long-awaited encounter with Prince Hal. Lawrence Levin sees Hotspur as an emblem of wrath and claims that Hal’s parody is an indication of the other’s “homicidal obsession,”78 but Hotspur is not portrayed as an unjust warrior. He goes into battle with the resolution to stain his sword “[w]ith the best blood that I can meet withal | In the adventure of this perilous day,” (1Henry IV, 5.3.94/95) which is a clear reference to Prince Hal. This focus is put into stark contrast to Douglas, who has no respect for other soldiers: finding out that “[t]he king hath many marching in his coats” (1Henry IV, 5.3.25) he exclaims: Now, by my sword, I will kill all his coats. I’ll murder all his wardrobe, piece by piece, Until I meet the King. (1Henry IV, 5.3.26–28)

Through the metaphor it becomes clear that Douglas is willing to kill soldiers like inanimate objects and this indifference towards human lives is juxtaposed with Hotspur’s respect for Hal. Significantly, Hotspur is not shown in battle until this final duel. Foakes points out that “the aura of chivalry recalls the trial by combat between Mowbray and Bolingbroke at the beginning of Richard II, where Richard hopes to see justice ‘design the victor’s chivalry’.”79 Indeed, this battle scene is presented as honourable conduct and Hal defeats Hotspur due to his superior abilities. The tragic implication that arises is due to Hotspur’s moment of anagnorisis: Hotspur

Prince

O Harry, thou hast robbed me of my youth. I better brook the loss of brittle life Than those proud titles thou hast won of me. They wound my thoughts more than they sword my flesh. But thoughts, the slaves of life, and life, time’s fool, And time, that takes survey of all the world, Must have a stop. O, I could prophesy, But that the earthy and cold hand of death Lies on my tongue. No, Percy, thou art dust And food for – [He dies.] For worms, brave Percy. Fare thee well, great heart. (1Henry IV, 5.4.76–85)

78 Lawrence L. Levin, “Hotspur, Falstaff, and the Emblem of Wrath,” Shakespeare Studies 10 (1977): 43–65, 56. 79 Foakes, Shakespeare and Violence, 94.

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Thus, Hotspur must come to realise that his chivalric ideals are overcome and that worms will not distinguish between the bodies of honourable or dishonourable men. This is further emphasised by the triangular structure of the tableau on stage, which is completed by Falstaff feigning his death, so that the only one left standing is Hal, as Dessen points out: Hal’s erect posture over such recumbent figures is therefore a visual summary of his total triumph, not only as a warrior who has won honor but more important as a controller rather than one of the controlled, as the young man who has learned to transcend the machinations of others and the deceptive surfaces around him to achieve his own goals.80

However, since Falstaff rises after Hal’s exit and triumphs over the dead honourable knight, his catechism on the uselessness of honour seems to be confirmed as the more reasonable approach: What need I be so forward with him that calls not on me? Well, ’tis no matter; honour pricks me on. Yea, but how if honour prick me off when I come on? How then? Can honour set to a leg? No. Or an arm? No. Or take away the grief of a wound? No. Honour hath no skill in surgery, then? No. What is honour? A word. What is in that word ‘honour’? What is that ‘honour’? Air. A trim reckoning. Who hath it? He that died o’Wednesday. Doth he feel it? No. Doth he hear it? No. ’Tis insensible then? Yea, to the dead. But will it not live with the living? No. Why? Detraction will not suffer it. Therefore I’ll none of it. Honour is a mere scutcheon. And so ends my catechism. (1Henry IV, 5.1.127–140)

Due to this catechism, Falstaff has often been regarded as a parody of Hotspur and the chivalric knight in general and his success in the overall plot of the play seems to support his pragmatic attitude.81 Falstaff survives the Battle of Shrewsbury and though his trickery does not necessarily count as unjust conduct because it has no consequences for other human beings, it is morally condemnable that he selfishly saves himself, although as a captain he has sent many soldiers to their certain deaths.82 Equally condemnable is the fact that he stabs the dead Hot-

80 Dessen, “The Intemperate Knight,” 166/167. Grene points out the function of Hotspur’s character for the ‘more important’ plotline of Hal’s development: “Hotspur’s role in the thematic design of 1Henry IV is clear enough. He is the chivalric hero whose compelling, but ultimately inadequate, understanding of honour […] is intended to contrast with the socially organic valuation of honour that Hal, to whom Hotspur is the foil, must discover.” Grene, Shakespeare’s Serial History Plays, 204. 81 For a full analysis of Falstaff as parody see Roy Battenhouse, “Falstaff as Parodist and Perhaps Holy Fool,” PMLA 90.1 (1975): 32–52; Arthur F. Kinney, “Shakespeare’s Falstaff as Parody,” Connotations 12.2–3 (2002/2003): 105–125; and Steven Doloff, “Falstaff’s ‘Honour’: Homeric Burlesque in 1Henry IV (1597–8),” Notes and Queries 55.253 (2008): 177–181. 82 See chapter 4.2.3.

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spur in the leg, which must count as a disrespectful violation of the dead soldier’s rights as La Branche points out: “The killing of Hotspur is in a certain measure repeated by Falstaff, whose ‘valorous action’ against the resurrected Percy is ignominious and offensive as Hal’s never was. The repetition is brutal and heartless […].”83 Falstaff’s rejection of Hotspur’s chivalric virtues thus leads to his unjust conduct, but through the graphic evidence of a dead chivalrous knight and a living dishonourable knight, it seems as if chivalry had failed. As La Branche claims, the moment Falstaff’s “sword touches Hotspur, the ideal of private honor, of selfnourishing chivalry, has already receded into the past where it is fit company for worms.”84 Thus, Shakespeare’s alleged “disillusionment with chivalry”85 seems plausible, but this does not suggest that it must simultaneously be seen as disillusionment with just conduct, as Tom McAlindon attests: Shakespeare’s delineation in the histories of a near-universal corruption of truth and trust points repeatedly to the decay of chivalry and its conception of nobility. But the chivalric ideal itself is not belittled; on the contrary, honour and nobility are identified with truth, and nobility-as-truth is shown to be essential to effective leadership and social harmony.86

One does not have to conclude, therefore, that Hector’s “fair play” is in actual fact “fool’s play” according to Nicholas Grene: “who is to say that Troilus is here right and Hector wrong?”87 To do so would be to judge actions by their outcome and such a consequentialist view says nothing about the morality of the intentions. Moreover, despite their deaths, Talbot, Hector and Hotspur can be seen as positive examples of just conduct in battle. Their chivalric virtues lend them respect for the human being they face in battle and unnecessary killings or excessive cruelty are prevented. Their deaths do not imply that we are not supposed to consider their conduct just.

83 La Branche, “Private and Public Virtue,” 381. 84 La Branche, “Private and Public Virtue,” 381. 85 See James Shapiro, 1599. A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare (London: Faber and Faber, 2006) and Merriam’s reply: Thomas Merriam, “Shakespeare’s Supposed Disillusionment with Chivalry in 1599,” Notes and Queries 54.252 (2007): 285–287. 86 Tom McAlindon, “Swearing and Forswearing in Shakespeare’s Histories. The Playwright as Contra-Machiavel,” The Review of English Studies 51.202 (2000): 208–229, 216. 87 Grene, Shakespeare’s Tragic Imagination, 77.

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4.2.3 Soldiers’ Consent I cheered them up with justice of our cause, With promise of high pay and great rewards; But all in vain, they had no heart to fight, And we, in them, no hope to win the day […]. (3Henry VI, 2.1.132–135)

In contrast to Talbot, who exclaims: “Hark, countrymen – either renew the fight | Or tear the lions out of England’s coats” (1Henry VI, 1.5.27/28) or Hotspur, who cries: “[d]ie all; die merrily,” (1Henry IV, 4.1.133) Shakespeare’s common soldiers generally seem to have “no heart to fight.” Thus, Talbot’s patriotic determination is met with soldiers, who, according to his description “like to whelps […] crying run away […],” (1Henry VI, 1.5.26) and the soldiers the Archbishop wants to divert from the thought of rebellion act similarly: “Like youthful steers unyok’d they take their courses | East, west, north, south; or, like a school broke up, | Each hurries towards his home and sporting place.” (2Henry IV, 4.2.103–105) Through Hastings’s metaphor, the soldiers are “reduced to schoolboys,”88 who have no inclination to fight and unashamedly run away. Coriolanus also has to chase his fleeing soldiers, cursing their cowardice: “You souls of geese, | That bear the shapes of men, how have you run | From slaves that apes would beat!” (Coriolanus, 1.4.34–36) And in Henry V the patriotism of the noblemen is juxtaposed with the realistic attitude of the common soldiers, who are understandably reluctant to fight: Henry V Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more […] On, on, you noble English, […] Follow your spirit, and upon this charge Cry ‘God for Harry! England and Saint George!’ […] Nym Pray thee, Corporal, stay; the knocks are too hot, and for mine own part I have not a case of lives. The humour of it is too hot, that is the very plain song of it. […] Boy Would I were in an alehouse in London! I would give all my fame for a pot of ale and safety. (Henry V, 3.1.1; 17; 33/34; 3.2.3/4, 12/13)

The “noble English” Henry addresses here would rather go to the pub and the achievement of honour seems to them as superfluous as to Falstaff; they have no heart to fight, but dishonourably prioritise their own safety above heroic deeds in battle.

88 Jeremy Black, “Counterfeits of Soldiership in Henry IV,” Shakespeare Quarterly 24.4 (1973): 372–382, 378.

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However, their situation is quite different to that of the noble knights who fight voluntarily, as the two parts on King Henry IV demonstrate. Here, the most emphatic account of the reality of war for Elizabethan soldiers can be found in the graphic image of contemporary levy practice through Falstaff, who embodies the corrupt methods of Elizabethan captains: If I be not ashamed of my soldiers, I am a soused gurnet. I have misused the King’s press damnably. I have got, in exchange of a hundred and fifty soldiers, three hundred and odd pounds. […] I pressed me none but such toasts-and-butter, with hearts in their bellies no bigger than pins’ heads, and they have bought out their services; and now my whole charge consists of ensigns, corporals, lieutenants, gentlemen of companies – […] and such as indeed as were never soldiers, but discarded unjust servingmen, younger sons to younger brothers, revolted tapsters and ostlers trade-fallen […]. No eye hath seen such scarecrows. […] (1Henry IV, 4.2.11–14; 20–24; 26–29; 37)

In his Arden edition of the play, David Scott Kastan notes that Falstaff’s account of his proceedings is in direct accordance with contemporary Elizabethan proceedings: “The entire speech highlights well-known abuses in the Elizabethan recruiting system. Falstaff selects men who are well off and permits them to buy their way out of service, leaving him with only old and weak men to fight.”89 These old and weak men that are ridiculed are eventually given a voice in the second part of Henry IV, where Falstaff’s levy practices are included in the play. As Patricia Cahill points out, “[i]f Henry IV relegates impressments to the margins – to the shady dealings that happen offstage – 2Henry IV […] attends in detail to Elizabethan practices of merchandizing men and thereby brings together discourses of the economic and the normative.”90 Unsurprisingly, especially considering the circumstances of the levy, the voice that the common soldiers are given almost

89 1Henry IV, 289; n. 12–47. See also Barnett’s comment from the historical perspective: “The Justices of the Peace for example could be bribed to give exemptions; one M.P. wrote that for half a dozen chickens they would break half a dozen statutes. The rich but timid could provide substitutes; yet another form of corruption guaranteeing the Queen useless recruits. Falstaff describes it in a famous passage (though the play is Henry IV, Shakespeare is plainly writing about his own era […]).” Barnett, Britain and Her Army, 42. For two recent analyses of the reflection of contemporary levy practices and problems in Shakespeare’s plays see W. J. Leahy, “‘Thy Hunger-Starved Men’: Shakespeare’s Henry Plays and the Contemporary Lot of the Common Soldier,” Parergon 20.2 (2003): 119–134. Accessible online at http://bura.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/942 [last retrieved March 17, 2011). And Patricia A. Cahill, Unto the Breach. Martial Formations, Historical Trauma, and the Early Modern Stage (Oxford: OUP, 2008): 71–101. For the general Elizabethan military context see especially Breight, Surveillance, Militarism and Drama; and Nina Taunton, 1590s Drama and Militarism. Portrayals of War in Marlowe, Chapman and Shakespeare’s Henry V (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001). 90 Cahill, Unto the Breach, 84.

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unanimously confirms the assumption that they dishonourably try to avoid service. Thus, Mouldy pleads that “there are other men fitter to go out than I” (2Henry IV, 3.2.114/115) and Bullcalf claims “I am a diseased man.” (2Henry IV, 3.2.175) The only one who readily agrees to go into battle is Feeble, but the rationale that leads to his submission is not enthusiastic either: “By my troth I care not, a man can die but once, we owe God a death. [… L]et it go which way it will, he that dies this year is quit for the next.” (2Henry IV, 3.2.299/230; 232/233)91 Feeble’s statement thus captures the problem at the heart of the practice – none of these soldiers actually expect to survive their service in the war and this is why they have so little motivation to go into battle. It is important to note that these soldiers Falstaff levies here are additional inventions, and, as Phyllis Rackin has pointed out, “[t]he recourse to fiction is necessary because common soldiers had no place in the historiographic record.”92 As Rackin further remarks, the incorporation of fictitious soldiers in Shakespeare’s plays then finds its epitome in the night before the Battle of Agincourt depicted in Henry V: In an invented scene on the night before the Battle of Agincourt, both Shakespeare and his protagonist king resort to theatrical fiction, attempting to incorporate the common soldiers in their great historical project. Both end, however, by succumbing to the historical imperatives that erase the names and efface the existence of the common soldiers. To represent the common soldiers in the English army, Shakespeare invents the characters of John Bates, Alexander Court, and Michael Williams, endowing them with names and vivid dramatic voices that complain of the cold and express their fears of the coming battle.93

Thus, the common soldiers are given a voice in these plays without historical or dramatic necessity. Rackin implies that the necessity results from the complex characterisation of the king, but to my mind it is more important that through this

91 It should not be ignored that both Falstaff’s speech quoted above and the levy scene of course maintain a comic function in the plays, but the underlying implication of the unjust treatment of the common soldiers cannot be denied, especially for its historical reference, as W. H. Leahy notes: “[I]t is clear that these scenes have a comic function, and could, no doubt, have caused a good deal of merriment amongst the contemporary audience. However, it is also apparent that these dramatised scenes bear a resemblance to reports concerning the state of the common soldiers coming out of Ireland at the time.” Leahy, “‘Thy Hunger-Starved Men’,” 17/18. Thus, one may assume that an Elizabethan audience would have picked up on the immorality of the practice and a modern audience even more so, as Kastan notes in his edition of the play: “At the end of the eighteenth century, John Henderson’s Falstaff reportedly drew ‘bursts of laugher’ with his account of the unsuitable men he pressed […]; modern audiences are far less likely to ignore or condone Falstaff’s self-serving cynicism.” 1Henry IV, 289; n. 12–47. 92 Rackin, Stages of History, 225. 93 Rackin, Stages of History, 227/228.

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invention, the common soldiers are given the opportunity to take part in an ethical debate that they were excluded from in reality. Like their predecessors of the Henry IV plays, Bates, Court and Williams point out that they have no desire to fight or hopes of survival: Court Bates Williams

Brother John Bates, is not that the morning which breaks yonder? I think it be; but we have no great cause to desire the approach of day. We see yonder the beginning of the day, but I think we shall never see the end of it. (Henry V, 4.1.86–91)

Unlike Shakespeare’s chivalrous knights, these common soldiers make no pretences of bravery or courage, which is why there have been critics, who have come to believe that Shakespeare simply presents these ‘low’ characters in an intentionally unfavourable light.94 But, considering the satire associated with the nobles’ pursuit of honour, it cannot be concluded that cowardice as the opposite is automatically rendered contemptible. Moreover, cowardice is in fact an inappropriate word for the sentiment that is embodied by these soldiers – realism would be a far more appropriate term. Not in the sense of military realism, but in the sense that these soldiers soberly accept that their survival is against the odds. Henry claims that a king does not “purpose” his soldiers’ deaths, when he requires their services, but he is not their immediate superior – those are captains like Falstaff, who believes that his soldiers are “food for powder,” which is “good enough to toss,” painting a particularly gruesome picture of their endings: “They’ll fill a pit as well as better.” (1Henry IV, 4.2.65/66) Thus, while Henry may only allow for his soldiers’ deaths, Falstaff very much sounds like he does purpose their ends and there is no indication that he expects any of them to survive. And indeed, even before the climax of the Battle of Shrewsbury it turns out that almost all of them have died offstage, but he shows no sign of remorse: I have led my ragamuffins where they are peppered; there’s not three of my hundred and fifty left alive, and they are for the town’s end to beg during life. (1Henry IV, 5.3.35–38)

94 See especially Paul Jorgensen’s particularly negative view of Shakespeare’s soldiers, who claims that the playwright seldom shows these characters in any other but a “bad light” and “resists giving sympathy to the commonality.” Jorgensen, Shakespeare’s Military World, 145/147. J. R. Hale also claims that the common soldiers in Shakespeare’s plays are generally treated with contempt, which he explains by the fact that such a representation would “ring true not only to the gentry in Shakespeare’s audiences but to practically everyone who could afford a place in the theater.” Hale, “Shakespeare and Warfare,” 92.

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Arthur Kinney points out that the plot here “reach[es] out to parody Elizabethan practice,”95 but parody does not have to mean that the soldiers’ realistic perspective should be met with contempt. The soldiers’ sentiments and their views on the wars that they have to fight in are too comprehensible and too complex to merely function as a means to dramatise these low characters as despicable cowards. Falstaff’s account of his soldiers’ fates proves that Williams has a point when he believes that he will die. Furthermore, the play emphasises that these common soldiers cannot relate to the cause they are supposed to fight for. In response to Henry’s proclamations of justice Williams honestly replies that this is a superfluous statement from the perspective of the common soldiers: on the one hand, it is impossible for them to investigate the truth of his statement, because as common soldiers they have no insight into his politics of aggression and on the other hand, it is an unnecessary statement, because be this war just or not, they have to fight in any case. This immoral aspect of war is tragically shown in the first tetralogy, where the nameless father and son have killed their immediate relative, because they were levied by different sides of the conflict: From London by the King was I pressed forth. My father, being the Earl of Warwick’s man, Came on the part of York, pressed by his master. (3Henry VI, 2.5.64–66)

I argued earlier that the scene represents the unnatural division of the state that causes such tragic bloodshed, but from the perspective of the common soldiers taken in this chapter, the tragedy results from the fact that they have no choice in the matter. W. H. Leahy claims that “[t]he impressments of these two common men by their respective masters would seem to be the defining element of their personal tragedy, though it is clear that they are meant to symbolise much more than that.”96 They symbolise the particular horrors of civil war, but their personal tragedy is that they were forcefully levied by different captains. The coercion of the state has forced them to kill their own kin. In identifying specifically tragic el-

95 Kinney, “Shakespeare’s Falstaff as Parody,” 112. In his attempt to foreground the parodic element in Falstaff’s conduct, Battenhouse attempts to claim that we do not know whether the recruits have actually died or not: “We lack evidence, actually, that Falstaff’s recruits ever took part in the battle.” (Battenhouse, “Falstaff as Parodist,” 43) He oversees, however, that the recruits are clearly reported to have been “peppered,” when Falstaff describes them “as men who have been ‘sprinkled’ with gunshot as a meal might be seasoned with pepper […].” Cahill, Unto the Breach, 92. 96 Leahy, “‘Thy Hunger-Starved Men’,” 15.

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ements in the scene, Barker points out that “the formulaic imagery of tragic death undermines its potential to smooth over and institutionalise wasteful death,”97 and although the characters remain nameless, the scene is an emphatic and crucial representation of the plight of common soldiers, who are sacrificed for a cause that is not their own.98 As much as this is representative and critical of well-known Elizabethan practices, the moral problem at the heart of the dilemma is a universal one, as Michael Walzer’s analysis of soldiers’ consent makes clear. Crucial to the judgement that we pass on war is the “limit of consent” of those who fight in it and we therefore distinguish between those people who “choose” to fight and those who do not. If soldiers like aristocratic knights fight “by consent,” “[w]e take their choice as a sign that what they are choosing cannot be awful, even if it looks that way to us.”99 These knights choose war for honourable or patriotic motives – they are not forced to fight. Another group of soldiers that Walzer regards are mercenary soldiers, particularly ubiquitous in Renaissance Italy, who have also made a choice: Mercenary soldiers signed up on terms, and if they could not actually choose their campaigns and tactics, they could to some degree fix the cost of their services and so condition the choices of their leaders. Given that freedom, they might have fought very bloody battles and the spectacle would not lead us to say that war was a crime.100

War does become a crime, however, when soldiers are forced to fight, because they have been recruited, and especially when these recruits belong to the class of people, who cannot afford to refuse service, as Walzer further remarks: Our judgements are very different, however, if the mercenary armies are recruited (as they most often are) from among desperately impoverished men, who can find no other way of feeding themselves and their families except by signing up. […] War is hell whenever men are forced to fight, whenever the limit of consent is breached. […] What is important here is the extent to which war (as a profession) or combat (at this or that moment in time) is a personal choice that the soldier makes on his own and for essentially private reasons. That kind of choosing effectively disappears as soon as fighting becomes a legal obligation and a patriotic duty.101

97 Barker, War and Nation, 124. 98 The dilemma the soldiers find themselves in is further emphasised by the parallel structure of the scene, as Pugliatti points out: “[The soldiers] are evoked to represent the costs of civil war on anonymous combatants. The formally balanced construction of the scene heightens its emblematic character, epitomizing the conditions of those who go to war little knowing what cause they are fighting, and dying, for.” Pugliatti, Shakespeare and the Just War Tradition, 178. 99 Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 26. 100 Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 27. 101 Walzer, Just and Unjust War, 27/28.

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As much as this might be a modern perspective, Shakespeare’s common soldiers capture Walzer’s analysis precisely. Their characters point out that the limit of consent is violated, since there is no doubt that they did not consent at all. Talbot, Hector and Hotspur make personal choices – choices for king and country and honour but none of the common soldiers are even given such a choice. Some of them submit themselves to their duty, such as Feeble or Bates who decides “to fight lustily” for the King (Henry V, 4.1.188), but it is clear that they would prefer not to fight. They do not even have a sense of patriotic duty, due to the still rather blurred concept of the nation-state in the Renaissance,102 so that these soldiers fight only because they have been forced to do so and this coercion makes these wars crimes. Thus, the plays represent the discrepancy between the perspectives of the soldiers who go to war expecting to die in it and the perspective of the politicians who go to war expecting to gain from it.

4.2.4 War Crimes The unnecessary and disproportional killing of soldiers in battle makes war a crime. A war crime, on the other hand, is not the crime of war, but a crime in war. Violating the principle of discrimination, for instance, constitutes such a war crime. Young Clifford’s murder of Rutland, the torture and eventual execution of York, the murder of Queen Margaret’s son Edward are all presented as war crimes, because they are intentionally directed at those who should by law be protected from the cruelty of combat. Henry V equally contains crimes committed in war, but the play presents them in a more ambiguous manner. Here, war crimes are either used as threats or carried out with a constant awareness of their criminal nature. The King himself is consistently portrayed as very aware of what and what not to do in war, which creates a gruesome irony at the Battle of Agincourt, where he commits his own war crime. It is Henry himself, who first introduces the notion of illegitimate killings at Harfleur:

102 This seems to be a clear reflection of the concerns of Elizabethan soldiers. See Cruickshank, Elizabeth’s Army, 173: “The idea of the state […] was as yet too abstract for the average soldier to understand it and to fight for it with enthusiasm. The professional soldier might speak bravely enough about the privilege of shedding his blood for his sacred sovereign and dear country (as did Sir Roger Williams), and sometimes even mean it. Not so the ordinary recruit. For him the fireside had more attractions than the firing line. If he went to the wars it was only because he had not enough money to buy his escape from them. The moment he saw a chance of escape he was off like a shot, and no oath dedicating his life to the state would stop him.”

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[I]n a moment look to see The blind and bloody soldier with foul hand Defile the locks of your shrill-shrieking daughters, Your fathers taken by the silver beards, And their most reverend heads dashed to the walls, Your naked infants spitted upon pikes […]. (Henry V, 3.3.33–38)

He suggests the very idea of attacking non-combatants to his soldiers, although it is his duty as military leader to prevent such criminal conduct, as Stephen Greenblatt implies: “Hal repeatedly warns his victims that they are bringing pillage and rape upon themselves, but he speaks as the head of the invading army that is about to pillage and rape them.”103 Similarly, Paola Pugliatti points out that, after all, “it is the commander in chief that speaks; and to practise mercy and to impose merciful conduct on the soldiers is in the power of a commander who is also the king […].”104 John Alvis has claimed that “Harry’s threatening speech to the citizens of Harfleur reminds them that bloody soldiers are conscienceless. Even solid yeomanry can turn to theft, murder, infanticide, and rape when loosed upon a captured town […].”105 However, those soldiers are not characterised in the play as particularly cruel – the only one who seems capable of committing these crimes is the King himself. Faithful to the chronicles, Shakespeare’s Henry orders all his soldiers to kill their prisoners of war in the Battle of Agincourt, but in the play, Henry issues his order twice. The first time, his motive seems to be strategy: the French have re-gathered their troops and a counter-attack seems imminent: But hark, what new alarum is this same? The French have reinforced their scattered men. Then every soldier kill his prisoners! (Henry V, 4.6.35)

The reason for his order seems to be that the French prisoners might join the fight against the English and increase French numbers. The second time he issues the killing of the prisoners, however, it seems to be a reprisal. The French have plundered the English camp and killed all the boys on watch, which provokes the following reaction:

103 Stephen Greenblatt, Shakespearean Negotiations. The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988): 62. 104 Pugliatti, Shakespeare and the Just War Tradition, 220. 105 John E. Alvis, “Spectacle Supplanting Ceremony: Shakespeare’s Henry Monmouth” in Shakespeare as Political Thinker, eds. John E. Alvis and Thomas G. West (Wilmington, Delaware: ISI Books, 2000): 107–141, 121.

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I was not angry since I came to France Until this instant. [… W]e’ll cut the throats of those we have, And not a man of them that we shall take Shall taste our mercy. (Henry V, 4.7. 54/55; 62–64)

Here, the reason would be revenge for the French war crime that was committed first, which would make it a reprisal. Thus, we are presented with two reasons for Henry’s behaviour and the problem of the dramatic structure that juxtaposes these two versions of the order. Furthermore, between the two different versions there is a commentary on the scene through the dialogue between Fluellen and Gower: Fluellen

Gower

Kill the poys and the luggage! ’Tis expressly against the law of arms. ’Tis as arrant a piece of knavery, mark you now, as can be offert, in your conscience now, is it not? ’Tis certain there’s not a boy left alive, and the cowardly rascals that ran from the battle ha’ done this slaughter. Besides, they have burned and carried away all that was in the King’s tent, wherefore the King most worthily hath caused every soldier to cut his prisoner’s throat. O, ’tis a gallant king! (Henry V, 4.7.1–10)

The dialogue seems to favour the reprisal as an explanation, which is also John Mebane’s opinion on the subject: There are several possible explanations for this order. One is Henry’s fear that the French are sending reinforcements, so that leaving the prisoners alive is a clear danger to the outnumbered English. At the moment when the king utters the lines […], however, the order to kill all prisoners is explicitly linked to the king’s anger, perhaps intensified by Exeter’s emotional account of the deaths of York and Suffolk, […] and the emphasis is upon the explanation provided by Gower […] that Henry orders the prisoners killed as an act of vengeance for the French raid on the English camp and the killing of the boys who were left there.106

John Mark Mattox also interprets Henry’s command as a reprisal, which, according to him, is supposed to be understood as justified “with the absolution that comes from divine sanction combined with French injustice”: [S]ince God sanctioned Henry’s war – and has prospered him every step of the way – and the French caused the war through their unjust withholding from Henry of that which was rightfully his, they can only expect that their breaches of the principles of jus in bello will be answered in the sternest possible terms.107

106 Mebane, “Impious War,” 260/261. 107 Mattox, “Shakespeare’s Just Warrior,” 49. Mattox claims that Shakespeare represents the action as reprisal to excuse Henry’s behaviour: “The best case that could be made on moral

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Mattox commits the common mistake of confusing the dichotomy of jus ad bellum and jus in bello, because he claims that Henry justifies killing the prisoners by the fact that his war is just. However, the structure of the scene in fact does not allow this interpretation, as Cedric Watts has pointed out: As Shakespeare portrayed it on stage, however, Henry cannot have known at the point that he ordered the massacre of prisoners that the French cavalry were acting simultaneously in such an unchivalrous fashion some miles to his rear. No messenger has brought him the news – at least that we know of. It was motives of prudence, not condign reprisal, that led him to give the fell command […].108

Watts’s assessment is precise and therefore revenge cannot explain the first version of Henry’s order. Confused about the omission of such an easy motive, Alexander Harrington asks: “Perhaps this is simply an inconsistency that Shakespeare failed to correct. Or is the captain rationalizing Henry’s war crime? Or is Shakespeare deliberately obscuring the issue of right and wrong?”109 The other possibility for Henry’s first order critics usually consider to be strategy, which is consistent with the general account of the incident in Shakespeare sources, as Ros King points out: The contemporary chronicles seem anxious about this unchivalric act, although most seem to concur that the battle was over and troops were beginning to stand down when he learned of a possible counterattack. This makes his behaviour cold-blooded but necessary, and even French chronicles blame the event on various actions by French soldiers.110

grounds on behalf of the King is that he acted in reprisal, and this is the case that Shakespeare makes via Fluellen’s remarks […]. Note that here Shakespeare specifically points to the French breach of the traditional law of land warfare – the sine qua non for any claim that seeks to justify a reprisal.” Mattox, “Shakespeare’s Just Warrior,” 48. 108 Cedric Watts, “Henry V, War Criminal?” in Henry V, War Criminal? and Other Shakespeare Puzzles, eds. John Sutherland and Cedric Watts (Oxford: OUP, 2000): 108–125, 113 [italics in original]. See also Greenblatt’s comment that “Gower claims that the king has ordered the killing of the prisoners in retaliation for the attack on the baggage train, but we have just been shown that the king’s order preceded the attack.” Greenblatt, Shakespearean Negotiations, 62. Pugliatti points out that “not only is Shakespeare’s text weak in defending the first excuse, but it does not allow the possibility of the second at all; and it is surprising that commentators have invariably recalled reprisal as a justification, not considering that the sequencing of the events makes it impossible to consider Henry’s order as a response to the attack on the baggage train and the killing of the attendant boys.” Pugliatti, Shakespeare and the Just War Tradition, 223. 109 Harrington, “War and William Shakespeare,” 105. 110 Ros King, “‘The Disciplines of War’: Elizabethan War Manuals and Shakespeare’s Tragicomic Vision” in Shakespeare and War, eds. Ros King and Paul J. C. M. Franssen (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008): 15–29, 27. See also Geoffrey Bullough’s comment that the incident is

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In the same vein, Judith Mossman claims that “Henry’s order to cut the prisoners’ throats at Agincourt is prompted by expediency, not by rage at the death either of the boys or even of his own brother.”111 She further claims that Shakespeare deliberately blurs Henry’s motivation for his action: [W]hen Henry sees the carnage in the camp, he is angry […] and repeats the order to kill the prisoners, this time speaking out of righteous indignation. This blurred motivation gives Henry the benefit of the doubt; we cannot fairly criticize him for being either too coldblooded or too carried away with vengeful passion.112

Mossman here tries to have her cake and eat it too, for on the one hand, she claims that Henry’s action does not result from anger but cool strategic deliberation and at the same time she claims that he is angry still, thus implying that Shakespeare justifies the killing of the prisoners from every conceivable angle including an alleged Elizabethan insensibility towards the issue: “[I]t is perhaps easy to overestimate the effect of the deaths of some anonymous French prisoners on the sensibility of an Elizabethan audience.”113 Mossman suggests that Shakespeare tried to avoid the image of Henry as a cold-blooded monster, but the text makes clear that his order is legally and morally condemnable. Alexander Harrington considers the incident “a violation of the rules of war in both medieval and Elizabethan times,”114 and Andrew Gurr draws attention to the fact that “Gentili in De Jure Belli laid it down that prisoners of war are not to be killed except in extreme circumstances, for self-preservation.”115 Furthermore, Ronald Knowles has pointed out that Shakespeare here deviates from his sources: Shakespeare gives one reason for the king’s action whereas Hall and Holinshed give two. Or, put another way, Shakespeare withdraws the emotional slaughter of the boys as some kind of justification by lex talionis for Henry’s atrocity. […] Then and now the morality of Henry’s action was questioned, apologised for and defended. Shakespeare’s version deliberately aggravates the issue.116

usually described as “an act of justifiable anger, needing no apology […].” Geoffrey Bullough, Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare, Vol. IV (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962): 367. 111 Judith Mossman, “Henry V and Plutarch’s Alexander,” Shakespeare Quarterly 45.1 (1994): 57–73, 62. 112 Mossman, “Henry V and Plutarch’s Alexander,” 62. 113 Mossman, “Henry V and Plutarch’s Alexander,” 62. 114 Harrington, “War and William Shakespeare,” 105. 115 Gurr, “Bees’ Commonwealth,” 29. 116 Ronald Knowles, Shakespeare’s Arguments with History (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002): 100.

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In Holinshed, however, it is clear that the chronicler tries to excuse Henry’s behaviour, thus clearly showing an awareness of the immorality of the action, as Michael Walzer points out in his reading of the particular passage117: The moral character of the command is suggested by the words “accustomed gentleness” and “incontinently.” It involved a shattering of personal and conventional restraints (the latter well-established by 1415), and Holinshed goes to some lengths to explain and excuse it, stressing the king’s fear that the prisoners held were about to rejoin the fighting.118

Thus, Henry’s conduct is implicitly condemned in Holinshed, as Walzer points out, but excused as strategic necessity. As soon as Henry’s behaviour is interpreted as “a tactical ploy,”119 passion or anger on behalf of the English boys that have been killed is no longer available as an apologetic element in the interpretation. Shakespeare’s manner of dramatisation makes it impossible for any critic to retort to that kind of apology, as Andrew Gurr points out: The anger we hear in Henry over the slaughter of the boys when he returns to the scene is divorced from his order to kill the prisoners. He gives the order neither in revenge nor, since he claims never to have lost his temper in France until the baggage train incident, in anger.120

The puzzle might be solved when three additional elements of the play that are related to the incident are taken into consideration: first Fluellen’s frequent references to the “law of arms,” secondly the allusion to Alexander the Great and thirdly, Henry’s execution of Bardolph. Scene 4.6 of Henry V ends with the King’s command that “every soldier kill his prisoners! | Give the word through. Exeunt.” (Henry V, 4.6.37/38), whereupon Fluellen and Gower enter the stage and Fluellen exclaims “’Tis expressly against

117 This is the passage in Holinshed that is quoted by Walzer: “… certain Frenchmen on horseback … to the number of six hundred horsemen, which were the first that fled, hearing that the English tents and pavilions were a good way distant from the army, without any sufficient guard to defend the same … entered upon the king’s camp and there … robbed the tents, broke up chests, and carried away caskets and slew such servants as they found to make any resistance. … But when the outcry of the lackeys and boys which ran away for fear of the Frenchmen … came to the king’s ears, he doubting lest his enemies should gather together again, and begin a new field; and mistrusting further that the prisoners would be an aid to his enemies … contrary to his accustomed gentleness, commanded by sound of trumpet that every man … should incontinently slay his prisoner.” Qtd. in Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 17. 118 Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 17. 119 David Quint, “‘Alexander the Pig’: Shakespeare on History and Poetry,” Boundary 2: An International Journal of Literature and Culture 10.3 (1982): 49–68, 51. 120 Gurr, “Bees’ Commonwealth,” 68.

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the law of arms.” (Henry V, 4.7.1/2) He refers here to the conduct of the French but the juxtaposition is striking, since his comment follows Henry’s own order immediately and thus ironically reflects that Henry’s conduct is as unjust as that of the French. Out of all of Shakespeare’s plays, Henry V is the one that places the most obvious emphasis on just conduct in war through Fluellen and his constant appeal to the law of arms. As Foakes points out, “Fluellen[’s] […] respect for the ‘law of arms’ establishes an idea of proper military conduct in the play […],”121 but proper military conduct is hardly to be seen, which creates an ironic stream throughout the play. Fluellen’s constant echo only emphasises Henry’s violations of the law, which culminate in the killing of the prisoners of war. The juxtaposition of Fluellen’s wrong assessment of Henry’s justified ‘reaction’ evokes the realisation that this is not a re-action, but an action and secondly draws the attention most precisely to what can be considered just and unjust: Fluellen’s distinction between the evil child-killers and the virtuous prisoner-slayers dissolves for us into a perception of equivalent atrocities which speak for themselves in condemnation even of a ‘just war’, without any guiding commentary within the play.122

Grady confuses the justice of war with justice in war, but his claim that Fluellen’s artificial distinction between the two actions only renders them both war crimes is precise. Fluellen’s almost choric commentary becomes even clearer by the following comparison of Henry and Alexander the Great: If you mark Alexander’s life well, Harry of Monmouth’s life is come after it indifferent well, for there is figures in all things. Alexander, God knows, and you know, in his rages, and his furies, and his wraths, and his cholers, and his moods, and his displeasures, and his indignations, and also being a little intoxicate in his prains, did in his ales and his angers, look you, kill his best friend Clytus. (Henry V, 4.7.31–38)

Since Gower immediately objects that Henry never killed any of his friends, this particular comparison is rendered even more odd. First of all, Fluellen’s reference to Alexander’s rashness and choler creates a stark contrast to the cold-blooded behaviour Henry displayed in the previous scene, in the rejection of Falstaff in the previous play and his execution of his former friend Bardolph, as Stephen Greenblatt points out:

121 Foakes, Shakespeare and Violence, 103. 122 Grady, Shakespeare, Machiavelli and Montaigne, 236/237.

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The moment is potentially devastating. The comparison with drunken Alexander focuses all our perceptions of Hal’s sober cold-bloodedness, from his rejection of Falstaff […] to his responsibility for the execution of his erstwhile boon companion Bardolph.123

Two scholarly analyses of the Alexandrian allusion in the play consider the parallel in reference to Henry’s actions, although with very different results. In the persistent attempt to regard Shakespeare’s representation of Henry as that of a just king, Judith Mossman claims that the analogy the play draws between the king and the conqueror is not intended to present Henry in an unfavourable light: [I]t does not follow that the appropriate response to Henry is therefore condemnation. The Alexander comparison is not straightforward: on the one hand, it might imply that kingship is so harsh that kings cannot retain their morality; on the other, that kingship requires acts that take their toll on the monarch as well as others.124

Mossman’s argument that the parallel is only intended to point out the plight of kingship is self-evident question-begging, for it cannot be construed that the killing of the French prisoners is a regrettable but unavoidable task that a ruler is necessarily confronted with. Instead, as Merrix argues, the parallel is intentionally applied in order to indicate the immorality of Henry’s behaviour: [T]he allusion is a climactic characterizing vehicle which, by virtue of its structural position and symbolic function, exposes one of several flaws in Henry’s character. The allusion comes immediately after Gower’s ironic reference to the “gallant” king who has just ordered his men to cut the French prisoners’ throats, an act that precipitates Henry’s association with the historically rash and bloody Alexander.125

123 Greenblatt, Shakespearean Negotiations, 57. Greenblatt does not mention the killing of the prisoners, although it is just as significant as Bullough points out: “The comparison with Alexander shows that the slaughter of the prisoners made Shakespeare reflect on the nature of the Heroic King.” Bullough, Narrative and Dramatic Sources, 367. 124 Mossman, “Henry V and Plutarch’s Alexander, 72. 125 Robert P. Merrix, “The Alexandrian Allusion in Shakespeare’s Henry V,” English Literary Renaissance 2 (1972): 321–333, 321. See also Mebane’s comment: “The unsettling comparisons between Henry and Alexander, with emphasis placed on the conqueror’s capacity for destructive rage, is sufficient to stimulate questions concerning the entire classical heroic tradition and its glorification of conquest.” Mebane, “Impious War,” 261. Moreover, the association with Alexander is not only morally condemning considering the question of just conduct, but also considering the justice of Henry’s war as such, since Alexander’s wars were specifically regarded as unjust by St. Augustine, as Merrix goes on to say: “One of the most damning indictments of Alexander occurs in Augustine’s venerated City of God, where Augustine relates the story of Alexander and the pirate in his comparisons of unjust conquests as ‘thievish purchases’.” Merrix, “Alexandrian Allusion,” 332. Gurr also draws attention to the fact that “Augustine condemned Alexander as an unjust warrior.” Gurr, “Bees’ Commonwealth,” 69.

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The fact that Fluellen refers to Alexander in comparison to Henry with emphasis on the fact that the conqueror killed his friend in a drunken rage is often considered as an ironic reflection on Henry’s rejection of Falstaff, which eventually killed him due to a broken heart,126 but as Greenblatt’s statement quoted above points out, it also evokes the episode occurring in the play prior to the Battle of Agincourt, where Henry sentences Bardolph to death for stealing a pax: We would have all such offenders so cut off; and we give express charge that in our marches through the country there be nothing compelled from the villages, nothing taken but paid for, none of the French upbraided or abused in disdainful language […]. (Henry V, 3.6.106–110)

Thus, Bardolph is sentenced to death and hung for his ‘war crime,’ because his theft constitutes “an unauthorized act of plunder,” which Mark Mattox sees as Shakespeare’s intention “to present Henry as a man who acts with regard to the demands of jus in bello.”127 Paola Pugliatti shares this opinion: On this point […] Henry is fully justified: the death penalty was indeed traditionally prescribed by war manuals in case of robbery. […] Henry simply reacted in conformity with ‘the discipline of the wars’. He could not have expressed regret at a punishment performed according to the rules.128

It is true that Bardolph’s theft would constitute a ‘war crime’ in Elizabethan times, because the laws of war were intended to limit pillage and plunder in foreign wars, but in the specific context of the play Bardolph’s death gains an almost tragic irony. First of all, as Curtis Breight has observed, Henry’s “explicit proclamation” laying down the rules of proper conduct in this war “occurs only after

126 Though Falstaff never actually appears in the play, he is reported to be dying in act 2, scene 1, because the “King hath run bad humours on the knight […].” (Henry V, 2.1.121) 127 Mattox, “Shakespeare’s Just Warrior,” 47. Mossman also tries to excuse Henry’s conduct once again, but the casuistry of her argument is obvious: “[I]t should be noted that Shakespeare arranges matters so that the king himself does not directly order Bardolph’s hanging but rather approves it when it is almost a fait accompli […]. In other words, it is a rejection and not a judicial killing.” Mossman, “Henry V and Plutarch’s Alexander,” 71. Considering the fact that Bardolph is executed without any sign of remorse by the king, her statement could almost be considered ironic. 128 Pugliatti, Shakespeare and the Just War Tradition, 222/223. The fact that within the drama, Henry could of course express regret or pain about such a reinforcement of the rules hardly needs pointing out. Still, the character is given no soliloquies, no asides, that would show any emotional reaction to the fact that he has just sentenced a friend to death.

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condemnation of Bardolph […].”129 Again, Mossman tries to excuse Henry’s decision to have Bardolph hung by the inevitable disadvantages of royal responsibility: Henry’s approval of the execution is the preface to a kingly and humane (if pragmatically expressed) general order regulating and restraining the conduct of the entire army. The point of this arrangement is to make us feel pity for Bardolph (and Pistol) as well as for Henry, who must be a king rather than a friend.130

She supports this reading by the fact that Henry there and then lays down rules for the just treatment of the French population, which she considers to be an appropriate counterweight to Henry’s killing of his friend, because she claims that his “civilized attitude toward the innocent French does not fit well with a reading that makes him a cold-blooded monster.”131 Her statement that Henry behaves in such civilized manner towards the French immediately evokes not only his threats at Harfleur, specifically directed at the innocent, but clearly also the slaughter of the French prisoners. Alexander Leggatt has a far more appropriate view of the situation, when he claims that “Henry stands for the principle of law, and he adds to it a principle of the conduct of war. But we feel like shouting at him, ‘Dammit, it’s Bardolph!’”132 Like Alexander the Great, Henry kills a friend, which is why, later on, “Fluellen can neither persuade the audience that Henry resembles Alexander in bono nor that Henry does not resemble Alexander in malo […].”133 It is sometimes pointed out that Shakespeare incorporates an intentional parallel between Bardolph and Henry in the play, as Marlo Lewis has argued: Bardolf may be said to be Henry’s comic analogue. At Harfleur he cries “on, on, on, on, to the breach, to the breach”, in imitation of Henry’s command in the preceding scene […]. And later Bardolf steals a worthless artifact from a French church while Henry steals France […].134

129 Breight, Surveillance, Militarism and Drama, 223. Breight further shows that this is a reflection on the practice of Elizabethan captains, who made sure that soldiers were “kept ignorant of martial law and subsequently executed for offenses against that law.” 130 Mossman, “Henry V and Plutarch’s Alexander,” 71. 131 Mossman, “Henry V and Plutarch’s Alexander,” 71. 132 Leggatt, Shakespeare’s Political Drama, 131. 133 Quint, “Alexander the Pig,” 16. 134 Marlo Lewis, “On War and Legitimacy in Shakespeare’s Henry V” in Statesmanship. Essays in Honor of Sir Winston Spencer Churchill, ed. Harry V. Jaffa (Durhamn, North Carolina: Carolina Academic Press, 1981): 41–61, 56.

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This analogy is certainly valid, but the parallel extends even further – as I have argued, the play places an enormous emphasis on possible breaches of the rules of conduct in war and in the two characters of Bardolph and Henry, two of those breaches are contrastingly juxtaposed: while Bardolph’s theft may be a breach of the law of arms that Fluellen refers to, from a moral perspective it is surely not half as devastating as Henry’s very own war crime and the tragic irony is increased since Bardolph is punished, but Henry is not. As Jane Spencer ironically states, “Henry, the ‘mirror of all Christian kings,’ may conquer an entire kingdom, but he will tolerate no petty piracies.”135 Fluellen’s references to the law of arms, the allusion to Alexander and Bardolph’s theft thus constitute the framework within which the killing of the POWs must be evaluated. Moreover, the fact that the play does not avoid characterising Henry as a cold-blooded monster is further underlined by the fact that the incident is included in the play at all. I have argued before that dramatically unnecessary and/or invented scenes provide a forum for the discourse of just war theory in the plays, but in this case it is rather contrarily important that there is no deviation from the source and therefore no omission of the episode, although there is no actual necessity for its inclusion, as Andrew Gurr points out: [H]e could have used several other contemporary versions of the incident, all of which glossed it favourably. There were as many sources open to Shakespeare for this play as he ever had. But he chose for this incident the least favourable version and underlined his choice with the uncomprehending muddle of Gower’s interpretation of it.136

There is no need to include the immorality of the historical Henry’s conduct and yet the whole episode has a very prominent place in the play, which refutes any assumption that it should not be regarded as morally condemnable conduct in war.137 The killing of the prisoners constitutes an aspect of the play that “Shakespeare could easily have omitted if he had wanted our view of the King to be simple,”138 as Leggatt points out. As it is, however, the play makes clear that the King’s order at Agincourt must be seen as a war crime, since killing prisoners of war is cold-blooded indeed.

135 Spencer, “Princes, Pirates and Pigs,” 173. 136 Gurr, “Bees’ Commonwealth,” 69. 137 How easily the episode could have been omitted is graphically emphasised by the fact that both modern film versions chose to do so. See Laurence Olivier’s Henry V (Two Cities Films, 1944) and Kenneth Branagh’s Henry V (BBC, 1989). 138 Leggatt, Shakespeare’s Political Drama, 123.

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4.2.5 Strategy and Morality Those critics that try to explain Henry’s conduct at Agincourt usually refer to strategy as opposed to morality. This is no coincidence, since strategy “is the other language of war,”139 as Michael Walzer puts it and it is equally a “language of justification” – the claim that an action in war is “strategically necessary” is supposed to relieve the agent from the burden of morality. However, when war is seen as a moral sphere, even strategy becomes the subject of ethical discourse. There are moral and immoral cases of subterfuge and this distinction is also made in Shakespeare’s plays,140 as several examples from the text suggest, for instance in 1Henry VI: These are the city gates, the gates of Rouen, Through which our policy must make a breach. Take heed – be wary how you place your words; Talk like the vulgar sort of market men That come to gather money for their corn. If we have entrance, as I hope we shall, And that we find the slothful watch but weak, I’ll by sign give notice to our friends That Charles the Dolphin may encounter them. (1Henry VI, 3.2.1–9)

Joan of Arc and her troops disguised as normal peasants thus enter the town of Rouen, kill the watch and take over the city. Wineke points out that the French in 1Henry VI “fight what moderns would call a guerilla-style war,” using Machiavellian policy rather than open combat.141 This policy is in the play condemned as “treason” and “hellish mischief” (1Henry VI, 3.2.35/38) and Joan becomes a “vile fiend and shameless courtesan.” (1Henry VI, 3.2.45) On the one hand, this scene supports the general antagonisms of the play between the ‘naturally treacherous’ French and the chivalric English, between the cunning witch Joan and the noble knight Talbot. Joan is of course “the antagonist of the old English warrior elite”142

139 Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 13. 140 There are of course many instances of purely strategic considerations in Shakespeare’s plays, such as the following dialogue in 1Henry IV: “We’ll fight with him tonight. – It may not be. – You give him then advantage. – Not a whit. – Why say you so? Looks he not for supply? – So do we. – His is certain; ours is doubtful. – Good cousin, be advised. Stir not tonight.” (1Henry IV, 4.3.1–5) However, such considerations do not offer sufficient grounds to discuss them from an ethical perspective. 141 Wineke, “The Relevance of Machiavelli to Shakespeare,” 31. 142 Klein, “Tales of Iron Wars,” 102.

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and her “near-Machiavellian insight”143 constitutes a stark contrast to Talbot’s old-fashioned chivalric virtues as Nicholas Grene summarises: Pucelle is everything that Talbot is not, French to his English: his massively unambiguous masculinity is met by her dubious gender; his bull-like forward force in war is countered by her shifting stratagems; his unwavering integrity shows up her protean lack of principle.144

This contrast is further strengthened when the French refuse to leave the walls of Rouen to confront the English in open battle: Like peasant footboys do they keep the walls And dare not take up arms like gentlemen. (1Henry VI, 3.2.68/69)

As Wineke points out, the French “have no illusions about their military prowess as compared to that of the English”145 and so deception seems to be the only option available to them, while the English “limit themselves to feats of sheer personal strength.”146 However, the strategy Joan employs to compensate for the French lack of military prowess is immoral: Wineke points out that their war resembles guerilla wars and disguise, ambush and surprise are typical guerilla tactics, but when it comes to the concept of deception, it must be observed that moral disguise, an “ambush prepared behind political or moral rather than natural cover,” as Michael Walzer puts it, is immoral.147 The problem is not that Joan and her soldiers wear peasant clothes – the problem is that they pretend to be noncombatants in order to enter the city and the moment they do so, reveal themselves to be combatants. This is treason, because they violate the principle of discrimination, thereby endangering the civilians and in this case also attacking them, as a soldier points out:

143 Richmond, Shakespeare’s Political Plays, 25. For more focused accounts of the juxtaposition of these two characters see Riggs, Shakespeare’s Heroical Histories; Howard and Rackin, Engendering a Nation; Levine, Women’s Matters; and Dickson, “No Rainbow Without the Sun.” Howard and Rackin, for instance, argue with Riggs that “the gendered opposition between Joan and Talbot defines the meaning of the conflict between France and England. A chivalric hero who fights according to the knightly code, ‘English Talbot’ represents the chivalric ideal that constituted an object of nostalgic longing for Shakespeare’s Elizabethan audience […]. A youthful peasant whose forces resort to craft, subterfuge, and modern weapons, Joan embodies a demonized and feminine modernity threatening to the traditional patriarchal order.” Howard and Rackin, Engendering a Nation, 54. 144 Grene, Shakespeare’s Serial History Plays, 69. 145 Wineke, “The Relevance of Machiavelli to Shakespeare,” 31. 146 Riggs, Shakespeare’s Heroical Histories, 102. 147 Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 176.

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Our sacks shall be a mean to sack the city, And we be lords and ruler over Rouen. (1Henry VI, 3.2.10/11)

The close juxtaposition of the different meanings of the word “sack” represents the dual nature of their strategy: the sacks they carry as peasants, i.e. civilians, enable them to sack the city as soldiers. Thus, although her deceitful strategy is naturally part of French treachery and although the juxtaposition between Joan and Talbot’s chivalry has other functions in the play, her conduct is still objectively unjust. In other words, Joan’s perfidious strategy is condemned although it is expected of her, which is further underlined by the fact that treachery is not reserved for the French. Prince John’s infamous strategy at Gaultree forest falls under the same category. His defeat of the rebels is often described as a breach of faith in truly Machiavellian manner, as, for instance, John Roe describes it: “Prince John does not hesitate to break faith as occasion requires, at the same time representing his motives as being in accord with religious scruple – all textbook Machiavelli.”148 This is why his action is generally condemned as “straightforward deceit,” “pretense of justice,” “priggish treachery,” and “infamous betrayal” are among those names attributed to his behaviour.149 The outrageous nature of his behaviour has to do with the fact that he offers the rebels peace and safety before he executes them. They surrender and discharge their troops, because they believe that they will be pardoned due to Prince John’s “disguise.” This disguise is also a typical example of political or moral ambush, which is unjust, because it undermines the necessary principle of surrender: Surrender is an explicit agreement and exchange: the individual soldier promises to stop fighting in exchange for benevolent quarantine for the duration of the war; a government promises that its citizens will stop fighting in exchange for the restoration of ordinary public life.150

These are the principles of surrender and this is undermined by John’s figurative ambush when he makes his false offer to the rebels: My lord, these griefs shall be with speed redress’d: Upon my soul they shall. If this may please you, Discharge your powers unto their several counties, As we will ours; and here between the armies

148 Roe, Shakespeare and Machiavelli, 90. 149 Gregson, Public and Private Man, 75; Hawkins, “Virtue and Kingship,” 336; Rabkin, Shakespeare and the Problem of Meaning, 40; Evans, “The Breath of Kings,” 11. 150 Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 177.

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Let’s drink together friendly and embrace, That all their eyes may bear those tokens home Of our restored love and amity. (2Henry IV, 4.2.59–65)

The justification he gives is the excuse that he promised to address their grievances, but that they still have to be punished personally (2Henry IV, 4.2.112–123). It is not true, of course, that all he has promised is compensation – what he promises is the “restoration of ordinary public life,” in Walzer’s terms, painting the picture of a peaceful domestic scene and “restored love and amity.” Thus, he promises safety and pardon as if he agreed to a genuine treaty and it is the very fact that he reverses this promise, which causes such an indignant outcry. The promise of peace and safety is morally binding and, as Knowles points out, “[n]o sophistry can get around that.”151 According to the agreement, the rebels must be granted their right of safety and it is immaterial whether their cause is just or not. John’s promise to pardon them thus creates a political ambush; it is war treason of a worse kind than Joan’s, because the bloodshed is greater and the deception more subtle. His disguise reverses all common sentiments of trust and justice and constitutes “a kind of deceit that could hardly be considered honourable in any age or under any circumstances.”152 John, like Joan, is thus seen to be deliberately mixing strategy and morality in order to sacrifice morality for the sake of strategy. His strategy may be successful, but it is nevertheless morally repellent and critics as well as audiences perceive it as such. Strategic deception in the plays is not limited to political ambushes, but extends to straightforward ambushes as in Macduff’s war against Macbeth. On their march towards Dunsinane Castle Malcom gives his soldiers the following order: Let every soldier hew him down a bough, And bear’t before him: thereby shall we shadow The numbers of our host, and make discovery Err in report of us. (Macbeth, 5.4.4–6)

What Malcolm tries to achieve by this physical deception is the element of surprise – through hiding behind boughs, the soldiers’ march towards the castle will be noticed later and secondly, until they reveal themselves, their number will be underestimated, so that they will have an advantage over Macbeth’s troops. Such concealment, like modern camouflage gear worn by soldiers, is a “classic” tactic in conventional war and it has “long been regarded as [a] legitimate form of com-

151 Knowles, Shakespeare’s Arguments with History, 79. 152 Kelly, Divine Providence, 227.

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bat […].”153 This is the case because it is a physical, not a moral disguise and neither the soldiers nor their captain act unjustly here, because no army is morally obligated to clearly lay out their numbers to the enemy. Thus, it seems that there is a distinction between moral and physical ambushes in warfare in the plays, which can be supported by two other instances in Richard III and the first part of King Henry IV. Richmond and Henry IV both enter the battle with several of their knights beside them in royal attire, so as to confuse the enemy. When Douglas in 1Henry IV boasts to have slain the king, Hotspur clarifies the situation: “The King hath many marching in his coats.” (1Henry IV, 5.3.25) In the same manner, Richard III cries out in his final battle: “I think there be six Richmonds in the field; | Five have I slain today instead of him.” (Richard III, 5.4.11/12) This means of disguise is thus different than Malcolm’s, because the soldiers who are disguised as the king pretend to have a different identity and die, because they disguise themselves as the prime target of both Douglas and Richard III. As Douglas points out: Now, by my sword, I will kill all his coats. I’ll murder all his wardrobe, piece by piece, Until I meet the King. (1Henry IV, 5.3.26–28).

I have pointed out before that this portrays a specifically unjust indifference to soldiers’s lives on Douglas’s part, but from the opposite perspective one might also argue that this disguise is unjust behaviour on Henry’s part. Again, the passage is mostly discussed for its significance to the problem of kingship, which dominates the play and thus, the disguise here has a more crucial meaning, as David Scott Kastan points out: [O]n the battlefield at Shrewsbury the King cannot be distinguished from his representations. Henry’s majesty can be effectively mimed. […] But the implications of the episode are not merely that Henry unheroically, if prudently, adopts a strategy in the interests of his own safety, that appearances are manipulated to disguise the King. They are far more disturbing: that kingship itself is a disguise, a role, an action that a man might play.154

However, even Kastan claims Henry’s behaviour to be prudent, if unheroic, but apparently not immoral. Unheroic is also the term that is implied by both Anthony Hammond and Simon Barker:

153 Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 176. 154 Kastan, Shakespeare After Theory, 42.

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This surprising information is Shakespeare’s invention. In Hall Richard actively seeks single combat with Richmond who is nothing loth to encounter him […]. The idea of a king’s thus protecting himself was not uncommon […]. But the stratagem, while suitable enough for the sly Henry IV, hardly seems appropriate in the heroic Richmond.155

Quoting the same comment by Hammond, Barker also notes that Shakespeare hints that “Richmond has somehow broken the codes of chivalry by concealing his identity […].”156 All of these comments, however, focus on the fact that Henry’s and Richmond’s behaviour is somehow dishonourable, but that does not necessarily imply that it is immoral at the same time – they break the code of chivalry and while we have seen that chivalry may serve as a code of just conduct in warfare, it does not follow necessarily that to break the general code of honour leads to unjust conduct. The disguise employed as a strategic means in warfare in both cases seems to imply cowardly and dishonourable behaviour, but there is no indication in the text that this is unjust conduct. When Douglas and Blount, disguised as the king, meet in battle, Blount proudly challenges Douglas and although he is slain in the ensuing fight, there is no implication of injustice. Blount dies as a chivalric knight, “a gallant knight,” as Hotspur puts it (1Henry IV, 5.3.19), who respects the fact the Blount has sacrificed his life for his king. In Richard III, as Barker assumes, the sympathy of the audience might actually be raised for Richard in his desperate fight and his words “A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse!” (Richard III, 5.4.13) have gone down in history as one of the most often quoted Shakespearean phrases.157 However, this growing sympathy for the “bloody tyrant” arises from the complex dramatisation of the character, not because there is an indication that Richmond’s conduct is unjust.158

155 William Shakespeare, Richard III, ed. Anthony Hammond. The Arden Shakespeare Second Series (London: Methuen & Co. Ltd, 1981): 328; n. 11–12. 156 Barker, War and Nation, 128. 157 For a discussion of the origins of the phrase see Paolo Cherchi, “‘My Kingdom For a Horse’,” Notes and Queries 46.244.2 (1999): 106–107. 158 McNeir has a slightly more cynical view of Richard’s last moments in the play: “Histrionic to the end, however, Richard pulls himself together for a final appearance, or farewell performance. His death is as theatrical as if he and not Shakespeare had staged it. Nothing could be more hyperbolical or melodramatic than the wretch’s despairing cry, ‘A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!’ […] No horse is available, or even one of his victims to carry him piggyback; so he has to limp off to hell, where if he can recover himself sufficiently he will be more than a match for Satan, a rank amateur.” Waldo F. McNeir, “The Masks of Richard the Third,” Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900 11.2 (1971): 167–186, 185/186. Moulton, on the other hand, even considers Richard’s death tragic, especially due to Richmond’s flatness: “If early modern English drama from Tamburlaine to Hamlet to Coriolanus constructs the narrative of independent masculine aggression as a tragedy, in which an unruly, singular, yet compelling protagonist is inevitably de-

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Hammond cannot come to terms with the fact that Richmond would employ such a strategy considering that he will heroically end the decades of civil war, but it is consistent with the general portrayal of the character. I have argued before that he is little more than a deus ex machina and an extraordinarily flat character due to his dramatic function. Thus, whether or not Richmond as a man is actually heroic is never indicated, because the character is utilised for its overall function. Thus, the means of deception cannot seem out of character, simply because the character is not round enough to display true incoherencies. Moreover, as Charles Edelman has shown, the practice of disguising the king must be considered as one of “the genuine practices of warfare in the late medieval period”: There was no question of the use of doubles being a cowardly act, because for all intents and purposes a king was usually in little danger of being killed in a battle; he would draw an enormous ransom if captured. Hall and Holinshed record Henry IV’s use of doubles at Shrewsbury, which is shown in 1Henry IV, and King John of France had nineteen doubles at Poitiers. […] Even if there is some inconsistency, however, in Richmond’s using doubles, who are indeed killed, it might be seen as allowable in that Shakespeare’s main intent is to amplify our impression of Richard’s virtually maniacal courage on the battlefield […].159

It might be argued that the fact that the means of disguise was a “common practice” in the Middle Ages does not automatically render it morally justifiable, but there is no indication in the text that Richmond breaks the rules of just conduct in war. Richard’s prowess and courage are emphasised, but his character is the very embodiment of war itself and that he thus dies in battle, “enacting more wonders than a man” does not render Richmond’s conduct unjust. It can be argued, therefore, that as closely intertwined as strategy and morality are in warfare, the plays nevertheless make a fine distinction between the two. The breaches of just conduct in war as committed by Joan and John are motivated by strategy, but the moral judgement passed on them is unmistakable, whereas those strategic means that count as morally justifiable are similarly represented as such. The tension of the dualism of strategy and morality arises of course from the principle of necessity: extreme strategic measures are most often justified by the claim that they were ‘necessary’ for the overall success of the battle or the

stroyed by larger social forces, the flatness and unbelievability of Richmond suggest that on a larger cultural level the problems of unruly masculinity did not admit of easy resolution. The gap between courtly and warrior ideals resisted any simple gesture toward closure. Monstrous Richard can – indeed must – be killed, but his death is figured as a tragic loss, and no convincing successor can be imagined.” Moulton, “A Monster Great Deformed,” 268. 159 Charles Edelman, Brawl Ridiculous: Swordfighting in Shakespeare’s Plays (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1992): 81.

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war and this necessity is supposed to excuse overriding the rules of morality. The underlying rationale of the principle implies that it is excusable to do “not only whatever is necessary to win the war, but also whatever is necessary to reduce the risks of losing, or simply to reduce the losses in the course of war.”160 From this point of view, John’s behaviour at Gaultree could be excused, because the costs of war are reduced, which is in general a point in Henry IV’s favour. However, after the rebels have surrendered, there is no need to execute them, as the various responses towards the scene confirm and it is this practice that makes the moral ambush so despicable in contrast to other strategic means of deception.

160 Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 144.

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5 Conclusion In an interview with the Observer in 2008, the Scottish dramatist Gregory Burke described his initial motivation to write his play Black Watch of 2006 on the deployment of the Scottish soldier division in the 2003 Iraq war as follows: Why, I wondered, were so many people who were opposed to the Iraq war, for any number of fine principles, also apparently opposed to (or indifferent to) the soldiers, unable to differentiate between the amateurs doing the planning and the professionals doing the dying?1

Burke’s concern directly refers to a common inadequacy in public opinion: the differentiation between those who wage wars and those who fight in them. This is due to the duality of jus ad bellum and jus in bello and the general tendency not to distinguish between the different responsibilities. The focus of the play lies on the perspective of the common soldiers, who are obligated to fight in a war for a cause they do not necessarily support or understand. They are nevertheless morally condemned for their actions by the public, who fail to distinguish between the justice of war and the justice in war, between the aggressor and the soldiers. In this verbatim play that is based on interviews that Burke conducted with Iraq War veterans, it becomes clear that the perspective of the common soldier on the cause of war is very different from the one held by the politicians and the public. Thus, the play offers those soldiers the opportunity to express their own views. The character Cammy opens the play by immediately indicating that he feels a need to morally justify himself for what he does, despite the fact that as a soldier he is professionally obligated to do it: At first, I didnay want tay day this. I didnay want tay have tay explain myself tay people ay. See, I think people’s minds are usually made up about you if you were in the army. […] And people’s minds are made up about the war that’s on the way now ay? They are. It’s no right. It’s illegal. We’re just big bullies.2

Cammy refers to the lack of distinction between the justice of the war and the soldiers’ involvement in it, which is shown to be dominating public opinion. The soldiers are not responsible for the act of aggression against Iraq, but they carry it out, which is condemned by the public and so the soldiers feel forced to defend

1 Euan Ferguson in interview with Gregory Burke, “The Thing About Fife is it’s Tribal … There’s a Fierce Loyalty,” The Observer, April 13, 2008. 2 All quotations from Black Watch are from the following edition and will be given parenthetically: Gregory Burke, The National Theatre of Scotland’s Black Watch (London: Faber and Faber, 2007): 3/4.

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the cause of war as such. However, the characters are presented as becoming increasingly uneasy about their role in this war and through the juxtaposition of their experience of the reality of war with frequent references to the politics that are behind it, it is gradually revealed that they are merely collateral damage in an unjust war. From the beginning of the play the point is made that the soldiers are put into unnecessary danger due to political strategy with a total disregard of their lives: through the verbatim inclusion of a debate between Geoffrey Hoon and Alex Salmond, the play draws attention to the manipulation of the soldiers, who fall victim to a political stratagem: The Black Watch have been sent in to do an impossible job – eight hundred soldiers are replacing four thousand American marines and we’re actually expected to believe that one hundred and thirty thousand American soldiers in Iraq couldn’t do that job. (Black Watch, 9)

The emphasis is therefore placed on the vast discrepancy between those who make the decisions and those who have to carry them out. The two scales are presented in the play as almost entirely separate from one another, so that it becomes clear that the soldiers who risk their lives in this war are never entirely sure that this sacrifice is worth it. At the same time, they suffer from the general unpopularity of the war, which is pointed out by a remark of one of the officers: “Glory […] is something that my boys are very unlikely to emerge with. The controversy around this war means there’ll be no victory parade for us.” (Black Watch, 58) And another character in the play puts it even more bluntly: “It takes three hundred years to build an army that’s respected and admired around the world. But it only takes three years pissing about in the desert in the biggest western foreign policy disaster ever to fuck it up completely.” (Black Watch, 71) Due to the fact that people tend to confuse the distinction between jus ad bellum and jus in bello, the soldiers are held responsible for the war and yet they have no right to be involved in the politics of it. The reputation of this traditional soldier division is severely damaged through their involvement in the war and yet they are requested to be willing to die for this cause. This is presumably why Burke felt the need to dramatise their situation in and after the Iraq War in the attempt to give those soldiers an opportunity to voice their own perspective and to justify their actions that should be regarded as entirely separate from the question of the justice of aggression. The fact that this particular discourse has found a way into contemporary theatre and the raving reviews the play earned after each performance all over the world seem to suggest that there exists a strong desire to draw attention to the perspective of the people who are directly involved and to decrease the passivity they are forced to maintain. Burke thus includes the sub-altern voice of the margina-

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lised soldiers, since it is those soldiers who suffer from the hardships of war the most, while the politicians make decisions without feeling the consequences. Through the shift of the focus to the soldiers, Burke avoids the political agenda of presenting the Iraq War as unjust and finds a way around the discussion of American politics that has become a commonplace in the media. As Euan Ferguson put it in his review of the play, it is not “an anti-Iraq war play,” it is “pro-soldier.”3 And at the same time as John Heilpern reviewed the play, it is “the first theater piece about the Iraq War to tell the story from the point of view of the soldiers.”4 In contemporary British theatre the politics of the Iraq War has been covered several times, such as in David Hare’s Stuff Happens of 2004, Alistair Beaton’s Follow My Leader of the same year and Mark Ravenhill’s Shoot/Get Treasure/Repeat of 2008. The general focus of these plays lies on the American politics of aggression against Iraq and Britain’s involvement in the war, frequently satirising the relationship between Bush and Blair. Burke, on the other hand, has turned away from these matters as far as possible, writing a play about those people whose fates seem to be considered subordinate to politics. Although it might be surprising that Gregory Burke is the first in a line of British playwrights to turn his audience’s attention to the soldiers, who have to fight in war and thus criticise the great divide between politicians and combatants, it is even more surprising that the same moral issues were raised in Shakespeare’s plays about 400 years earlier. The intention to shield soldiers from criticism and contempt they do not deserve, because the act of aggression is not their responsibility, is quite plausible in an age like the twenty-first century, in which the injustice of a certain war dominates the public’s attention. But the fact that this same intention seems to have occurred in the Elizabethan Age that provided no opportunity for subordinates to criticise their superiors is striking indeed. And yet, the sub-altern voice of the common soldiers who experience pain and suffering due to decisions that have been made by those far above them is prominent in many of the plays. As early as the second part of Henry VI, the tableau of two fathers and two sons, who have killed their kin unawares draws attention to their dependency and subordination to political dynamics that do not account for their situations. In both parts of Henry IV, the emphasis lies on the unjust and reckless treatment of common soldiers by Falstaff, but it is only in the second part that they are given a voice to comment on their situation themselves. While the first part draws atten-

3 Euan Ferguson, “The Real Tartan Army,” The Observer, April 13, 2008. 4 John Heilpern, “Gregory Burke’s Black Watch Brings Iraq War to Shattering Life,” The New York Observer, October 23, 2007.

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tion to their silence, the second part allows them to express their fear of death. Furthermore, this particular discourse finds its epitome in Henry V. Here, common soldiers are given an opportunity to critically challenge and question the King’s war, which presents not only an obvious invention and deviation from Shakespeare’s sources, but moreover an unhistorical situation, since no Elizabethan soldier would have been able to express such criticism. Thus, it seems as if the same concern that led Burke to his dramatisation of the Iraq War was already present in Shakespearean drama. Giving a voice to the sub-altern, drawing the attention to gross injustices and maltreatment of subordinates in times of war constitutes an important theme in Shakespeare’s plays and this seems to have been motivated by their role on the margins of society. Their marginalisation did not make them less human or less prone to pain and the plays emphasise this. The fact that this emphasis finds its way into the drama in only invented and digressive scenes, however, is not surprising, since there would have been no historical evidence for any such encounters. At the same time, the present analysis has shown that the deviation from sources and invention of dramatically unnecessary scenes occurs with high frequency when it comes to arguments of just war theory in the plays. The questions of the justice or injustice of a particular war are more often than not discussed in scenes that seem exempt from the plot as, for instance, in Macbeth or Troilus and Cressida and this ‘impractical’ inclusion equally suggests a strong significance of the topic as such. As the previous analysis of the selected Shakespeare plays shows, the discourse of just war theory maintains a prominent place within the drama. As much as there are also pacifist and realist voices as represented by Henry VI and Richard III, through the analysis of the plays in chronological order it has become evident that these two approaches towards war gradually decrease in prominence and are substituted by arguments for and against the justice of war. Characters in the plays bring forth arguments with increasing complexity throughout the canon, so that by the end of Richard III the three Aquinian principles are duly established. Richmond’s speeches pre- and post-bellum display the full just war-argumentation according to Aquinas and are subjected to close scrutiny in the following plays. Having established that auctoritas principis, iusta causa and intentio recta are indispensable prerequisites for a just war, the nature of these very principles is thoroughly investigated in King John, Richard II, the two parts on Henry IV and Julius Caesar. The juxtaposition of Richard and Bolingbroke emphatically demonstrates what a required legitimate authority entails, while the opposition between the rebel cause and Henry IV indicates which elements may count as a just cause for war. The graphic dramatisation of Brutus’s character, on the other hand, reveals the true motivation of a right intention that is dedicated to achieving the common good.

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However, the plays do not only include Aquinian principles of just war theory, but the catalogue is moreover extended to the principles of responsibility and proportionality. In Henry V, Hamlet and Troilus and Cressida the responsibilities of both superiors and subordinates are established as well as the right balance between cause and cost of wars. Realist and pacifist arguments have entirely disappeared into the background and just war theory is discussed at length. Thus, the moral evaluation of war that takes place in Shakespeare’s plays is unmistakable and it does not stop short with jus ad bellum arguments, but also focuses on the just and unjust conduct of soldiers. And along the lines of these discussions the distinction between jus ad bellum and jus in bello is strongly evoked in favour of the interests of soldiers, rather than kings and politicians. Thus, not only is the discourse this prominently featured within the drama, but it is also entirely suitable to provide a new interpretation of the plays. This account of war in the plays has been often misunderstood by Shakespeare scholars as the famous ambidextrousness of the playwright, but in actual fact it turns out to be the discourse of just war theory that is the dominant approach to this discussion. In Shakespeare’s plays war is dramatised as a condition within the human sphere of morality and those people acting in war in the broadest sense are therefore liable to moral judgement. This assumption offers many new ways of interpretation, since it dispenses with the impression of chaos the first tetralogy so often evokes and it solves questions posed to “problem plays” such as Henry V. Thus, just war theory indeed holds a very prominent place within the drama, but this shall not serve to make any claims about William Shakespeare’s personal opinion about war; the theoretical development that leads to the dominance of just war theory in the plays is not seen as a conclusion the playwright came to and believed in. The fact that there is such a development throughout the plays is irrefutable, however, and it grows successively from play to play. Thus, just war theory not only maintains much more prominence throughout the canon than has hitherto been thought, but it also opens a mode of interpretation that brings generally overlooked aspects to the fore. Even those plays and themes that have caused controversial and digressive criticism over the past years appear in a different light when they are analysed by means of applying just war principles. It turns out, therefore, that the plays are not dominated by either realism or pacifism. The most dominant approach to war that Shakespeare’s plays present is just war theory.

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7 Index Aquinas, Thomas 10, 16–18, 28, 90–91, 94, 97, 99, 102, 125, 132, 133, 138, 146, 148, 152, 243, 244 Aristotle 13–14, 15, 30, 182, 183 Augustine 15–17, 18, 129, 148, 228 Bacon, Francis 19, 22–23 Burke, Gregory 240–243 Cicero 4, 14–15, 17, 22, 39 Clausewitz, Carl von 4, 52, 115 Erasmus 19–20 Hobbes, Thomas 30, 36 Machiavelli, Niccolo 1, 4, 19, 47, 48, 52, 53, 54, 72–77, 101, 107, 119, 139, 144, 147, 154, 155, 167, 168, 194, 232, 233, 234 More, Thomas 19–22, 157 Plato 12–13, 15, 19 Shakespeare plays 1Henry IV 116–126, 138, 157, 211–214, 215–216, 218–219, 232, 236–239 2Henry IV 89, 116, 126–137, 154, 170, 215–217, 234–235, 238, 239 1Henry VI 7, 39–41, 44–45, 49–52, 79, 90, 208–211, 215, 232–234 2Henry VI 40, 42–43, 52–60, 66, 171 3Henry VI 41, 46–48, 59–72, 72–75, 78, 86, 110, 127, 181, 215, 219–221

All’s Well That Ends Well 188–190, 195 Coriolanus 38, 195, 196–201, 202, 206, 210, 215, 237 Hamlet 138, 171–175, 181, 186, 244 Henry V 3, 5, 6, 37, 38, 72, 152–171, 177, 196, 215–219, 221–231, 243, 244 Julius Caesar 138–152, 243 King John 38, 106–116, 203, 243 Macbeth 82, 94–99, 138, 150, 195, 196–197, 202, 210, 235–236, 243 Measure for Measure 191, 193–195 Merchant of Venice 191 Much Ado About Nothing 188, 190, 195 Othello 138 Richard III 5, 8, 11, 54, 75–93, 94, 95, 98, 105, 138, 163, 236–237, 243 Romeo and Juliet 191–193, 195 Troilus and Cressida 37, 38, 171, 175–188, 190–191, 202–208, 243, 244 Tillyard, E.M.W. 8, 9, 69, 211 Walzer, Michael 4, 10, 11, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 70, 71, 85, 93, 145, 149, 156, 162, 166, 180, 191, 220, 221, 226, 232, 233, 234, 235, 236, 239