"This Blessed Plot": An Ecocritical Approach to Shakespeare's Second Tetralogy

This research project aims at bringing to light the non-human dimension in Shakespeare’s second tetralogy, i.e., Richard II, 1 Henry IV, 2 Henry IV and Henry V. In the context of the military confrontations that preceded the Wars of the Roses, the disruption of human relationships bears an impact on the land and the non-human cosmos in general. Through his literary craft and thorough understanding of human and non-human nature, Shakespeare reveals an intricate network of relationships, which, even when broken, can be mended. My project is guided by a presentist understanding of literature. Studying the relationship between the human and the non-human in Shakespeare’s histories can also inform our own relationship with the land we inhabit and our mutual interdependence. Matter and spirit are integrated in this analysis and inspiration is drawn from Pope Francis’ so-called green encyclical <em>Laudato Si,</em> which invites us to see the earth as our common home and, consequently, exhorts us to be responsible and caring.

‘How can you say to me I am a King?’: New Historicism and its (Re)interpretations of the Design of Kingly Figures in Shakespeare’s History Plays

The 1980’s saw the emergence of New Historicist criticism, particularly through Stephen Greenblatt’s work. Its legacy remains influential, particularly on Shakespearean Studies. I wish to outline New Historicist methodological insights, comment on some of its criticisms and provide analytical comments on the changing approach to historical plays, asking “What has New Historicism brought into our understanding of historical plays and the way(s) of designing kingly power?” Examining Shakespeare’s second tetralogy, I will review Greenblatt’s contention that these plays largely focus on kingly power and its relationship to “subversion” and “containment”. I intend to focus on aspects of the plays that I believe have not received enough attention through New Historicism; particularly the design of the kingly figures.

Beyond the Epic. Richard II and the Nature of the Tragic in Shakespeare

The major disagreement on the nature of the epic is rooted in the opposition of two concepts — either the epic draws on the myth, or its optics is regulated by history. In Leonid Pinsky’s opinion the way leading from the epic past towards the individual and inward self was the way of Shakespeare’s heroes both in his tragedies and history plays. Richard II (1595, opening the second tetralogy) follows one of the two archetypes suggested by Hugh Grady in his article “Shakespeare's links to Machiavelli and Montaigne.” Richard is not essentially a machiavellian type, though occasionally called a weak, “deficient” tyrant by critics and a “landlord” (not a king) by John Gaunt in the play. Creating this character Shakespeare makes the first step towards Hamlet. The climax is reached in the scene of his dethronement, much more known for its political topicality than being scrutinized for the discovery a dethroned king is to make. Who is he now? A nonentity, or a new being? The mirror he asks to bring lies, he thinks, when he recognizes his own unchanged face in it. Several scenes in the play (the Queen and Bushy, Richard and his jailor) demonstrate how the lyrical experience, Shakespeare must have acquired in the two plague years (1592–1594), had changed his dramatic technique. In Richard II he gave a start to a new metaphysical tradition.

Il Teeteto e il suo rapporto con il Cratilo

With the use of a particular metaphor, which appears at the end of the Cratylus and is taken up with perfect symmetry at the beginning of the Theaetetus, Plato certainly wanted to indicate the succession of Cratylus–Theaetetus as an order for reading the two dialogues, which Trasillus faithfully reproduced in structuring the second tetralogy of Platonic dialogues. The claim of the theory of ideas, with which the Cratylus ends, must therefore be considered the background in which to place not only the analysis of the name carried out in the Cratylus, but also the discussion and criticism of the epistemological theories examined and refuted in the Theaetetus. The transition from the discussion of the name to that of the logos is another important theoretical element that connects the two dialogues. Another one is the theory of knowledge, already precisely elaborated in the Cratylus, and taken up and deepened in the Theaetetus. Finally, the theme of false and error is a third theoretical element common to the two dialogues, which, starting from Euthydemus, finds its solution in the Sophist.

Sovereign Outlaws: Shakespeare’s Second Tetralogy

This chapter asks whether the sovereign can (and perhaps must) act outside the law in a reading of the second tetralogy of Shakespeare’s history plays. The discussion opens with an examination of the notion of sovereign immunity, contrasted with a competing line of discourse against tyranny. It then argues that questions around the king’s status relative to the law constitute an important set of issues within Shakespeare’s Richard II,where both individuals (Richard and Bolingbroke) and events (Richard’s deposition) may be read as existing outside of the law in various senses. The chapter proceeds to consider the remaining plays in the tetralogy, arguing that Henry V, a sort of quasi-outlaw before gaining the throne, finds as king that he must act outside the law to defend the interests of his state. The discussion surveys a range of legal questions in Henry V, from his claim to the throne of France to his threats before Harfleur and his killing of prisoners at Agincourt. The chapter concludes with a brief glance at espionage in Elizabethan England, and the Elizabethan state’s recourse to methods of invisible power.

Epilogue

The book concludes with a brief discussion of Shakespeare’s second historical tetralogy: the one short-lived moment on the English stage which fully realizes the potential of the idea of a man-made etiology of politics through the figure of the ‘new prince’ who successfully establishes a new political order and a new dynasty. With particular focus on Richard II, I argue that even though Shakespeare, in the figure of Henry Bolingbroke, holds up for scrutiny what appears to be an exception to the usurper-tyrant overlap, by extending the central thesis of this book to this group of texts it can be shown that far from being an anomaly, in fact the operation of poiesis in political life is permitted legitimate theatrical expression in Shakespeare’s second tetralogy. A fuller analysis of this moment could be a potential subject for further research along the line of enquiry opened up in this book.

Bonfire of the Vanities

Chapter Two extends the work of the previous chapter by offering a more focused critique of the rhetorical and ideological strategies by which aesthetic pleasure has been devalued in both Renaissance and contemporary humanism. The chapter engages in an intensive analysis of Shakespeare’s Richard II in order to reveal how the forceful abjection of vain pleasures, as personified in King Richard and his sodomitical counselors, animates the play’s ideological machinery. It demonstrates further that, as a play, Richard II is itself a manifestation of the forms of futile pleasure that the dramatic world within the play aims to scapegoat. It ends by turning to the remainder of the second tetralogy to trace the plays’ reconstitution of pleasure’s vanity in the form of Prince Hal so that it can be reformed as useful once the prince is redeemed and assumes the throne as Henry V. This reading of Shakespeare’s texts is framed by an argument against commonplace narratives about the legacy of deconstructive theory. Just as Shakespeare’s second tetralogy stages and reinforces the submission of pleasure to use and vanity to virtue, so have critics tended to redeem the forms of queer pleasure for which deconstruction has been routinely vilified.