Shakespeare and Renaissance Politics

This significant study examines Shakespeare's drama and poetry as political events and interventions, and explores the literature of the Renaissance and its relation to fundamental political issues.

 

Andrew Hadfield argues that Shakespeare, like many of his contemporaries, was concerned with the question of succession and legitimacy of the monarch in the 1590s and early 1600s when Elizabeth was an aged and ailing queen, the manifestation of a dying dynasty that left England with an uncertain future. From his early works, through the histories to Hamlet, Shakespeare's writing is haunted by the problem of political legitimacy. Although clearly worried by the impending accession of James VI, Shakespeare's plays written after 1603 suggest that he was relieved by the stability that the Scottish king brought to his English kingdom. In his later plays, Shakespeare turned his skeptical attention to the political institutions that govern the nation: the judiciary, the exchequer, the process of electing political officers, and the establishment of colonies overseas, examining how the country was governed and by whom.

Table of Contents
Preface
List of Abbreviations
List of Illustrations
Introduction: Shakespeare and the Varieties of Early Modern Political Culture
Chapter One: True and False Sovereigns in the English History Plays
Chapter Two: The Power and Rights of the Crown
Chapter Three: Republicanism and Constitutionalism
Chapter Four: Alternative Forms of Government
Chapter Five: The Reality of Jacobean Politics
Afterword
Appendix 1: The Plantagnet Dynasty
Appendix 2: The Tudor Dynasty
Notes
Bibliography
Index

About the Author(s)

Andrew Hadfield

Andrew Hadfield is Professor of English at the University of Sussex. His books include Literature, Travel, and Colonialism in the English Renaissance 1540-1625; Amazons, Savages, and Machiavels: An Anthology of Travel and Colonial Writing 1550-1650; Shakespeare, Spenser, and the Matter of Britain; and Shakespeare and Renaissance Europe (with Paul Hammond) in the present series.