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A Formative Shakespearean Legacy: Elizabethan Views of God, Fortune, and War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2020

Paul A. Jorgensen
Paul A. Jorgensen*
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles
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Abstract

One of Shakespeare's first and most formative intellectual legacies, with major influence on his shaping of sources in the historical tetralogies, was Elizabethan thought on the relationship of God, Fortune, and war. For the Henry vi plays, the legacy offered a thematically appropriate concept of Fortune, with humanly meaningless skirmishes and futile stratagems, pointing nevertheless toward the ultimate control of God over Fortune. For Richard iii Shakespeare chose a divinely governed war, with Richmond as a passive instrument having little character. The second tetralogy employs the most dramatically advantageous stage of the legacy: a transitional, confused period when necessity for human responsibility in war becomes first, and somewhat ambiguously, recognized (Richard iii) and then disturbingly, though covertly, prominent and Machiavellian (Henry iv and Henry v). The experience in these formative plays of trying to resolve the conflicting demands of supernatural control and human resourcefulness helped prepare Shakespeare for tragic resolutions deeper than those of military victory or defeat.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 90 , Issue 2 , March 1975 , pp. 222 - 233
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1975

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References

1 Divine Providence in the England of Shakespeare's Histories (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1970).

2 Tudor Drama and Politics: A Critical Approach to Topical Meaning (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1968), pp. 3–5.

3 In Early English Classical Tragedies, ed. John W. Cunliffe (Oxford: Clarendon, 1912), ii.iii.87 92.

4 Malone Society Reprint (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1910), 11. 376–77.

5 The Works of Thomas Kyd, ed. Frederick S. Boas (Oxford: Clarendon, 1901), i.ii.138–40.

6 Ed. Lily B. Campbell (Cambridge, Eng. : Cambridge Univ. Press, 1938), p. 190.

7 The Theorike and Practike of Modern Warres (London : R. Field f. W. Ponsonby, 1598), p. 179.

8 i.ii.1–4. All Shakespeare references are to The Complete Plays and Poems of William Shakespeare, ed. William Allan Neilson and Charles Jarvis Hill (Cambridge, Mass.: Houghton, 1942).

9 See Cairncross' new Arden ed. of / Henry vi (London: Methuen, 1962), p. 68.

10 The History of the World (1614), in The Works of Sir Walter Ralegh, ed. William Oldys and Thomas Birch (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1829), iv, 613. For a discussion of this view in Ralegh's philosophy, see Ernest Strathman, Sir Walter Ralegh: A Study in Elizabethan Skepticism (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1951), pp. Ill, 245.

11 For a typical statement of the orthodox policy concerning sin and virtue in war, see James Pilkington, “The Vision of Abdy,” in Aggeus and Abdias Prophetes (1562), ed. James Scholefield (Cambridge, Eng. : Cambridge Univ. Press, 1842), particularly p. 220; and Thomas Becon, The Polecy of Warre (1542), in The Early Works of Thomas Becon, ed. John Ayre (Cambridge, Eng. : Cambridge Univ. Press, 1843), p. 240.

12 Lodowick Lloyd, The Stratagèmes of Jerusalem (London: T. Creede, 1602), p. 19.

13 Ludwig Lavater, Of Ghostes and Spirites Walking by Nyght, trans. Robert Harrison (1572), ed. John Dover Wilson and May Yardley (printed for the Shakespeare Association at Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1929), p. 162.

14 Time Complaining (London: T. Orwin, 1588), sigs. A5V, B3V . A similar assurance for this urgent occasion is Edmond Harris' A Sermon Preached at Brocket Hall. . . for the Trayning of Souldiers (London: T. Orwin f. J. Daldern and W. Haw, 1588), sig. C4r and v

16 The True Remédie against Famine and Warres (London : R. Waldegrave f. T. Man a. T. Gubbins, 1588), fol. 2r .

16 In Liturgies and Occasional Forms of Prayer Set Forth in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, ed. William Keatinge Clay (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1847), p. 622.

17 For the political justification of the overthrow and the important recognition that Richard is the fated scourge of God, see Bevington, pp. 242–43.

18 For an admirable account of this relationship see Paul H. Kocher, Science and Religion in Elizabethan England (San Marino: The Huntington Library, 1953). Kocher finds (p. 37) a greater harmony in the coexistence of science and religion, through a kind of separation, than was possible between war and religion, wherein experience coerced some kind of decisive preference. There was, however, a close parallelism in the problem of miracles (pp. 114–15).

19 A Watch-Worde for Warre (Cambridge: J. Legat, 1596), sig. D3r . See also John Norden, A Christian Familiar Comfort and Incouragement (London: T. Scarlet a. J. Orwin f. J. Brome, 1596), sig. D2V, who deplores those who say “wee have no leisure to looke into our thoughts, and actions for sinne, or to measure our lives by religion, having matters of warre in hand. We must have more care of Captaines then desire of Preachers; we must stand to the sword more then to the word.”

20 See Sir John Neale, “Elizabeth and the Netherlands, 1586–7,” in Essays in Elizabethan History (New York: St. Martin's, 1958), pp. 170–201; R. B. Wernham, “Elizabethan War Aims and Strategy,” in Elizabethan Government and Society: Essays Presented to Sir John Neale, ed. S. T. Bindoff, Joel Hurstfield, and C. H. Williams (London: Athlone, 1961), pp. 340–60.

21 Calendar of State Papers (Domestic), 9 Aug. 1595 (iv, 89).

22 Calendar of State Papers (Domestic), 7 Sept. 1595 (iv, 99).

23 The Diall of Princes (London: J. Waylande, 1582), fol. 50r .

24 A Sermon of Tentation, in Special and Chosen Sermons, trans. William Gace (London: T. Vautroullier, 1578), p. 343.

25 The Spoyle of Antwerpe. Faithfully Reported by a True Englishman, Who Was Present at the Same (1576), in The Complete Works of George Gascoigne, ed. John W. Cunliffe (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1907), ii, 595–99.

28 A similar kind of pious piracy is expressed by one of Drake's seamen in Robert Leng, The True Discripcion of the Last Voiage of That Worthy Captayne, Sir Frauncis Drake (1587), ed. Clarence Hopper, The Camden Miscellany, v (Westminster: printed for the Camden Society, 1863), 15.

27 The Practice, Proceedings, and Lawes of Armes (London: Deputies of C. Barker, 1593), p. 37.

28 In Raimond de Fourquevaux, Instructions for the Warres, trans. Paul Ive (London: T. Orwin f. T. Man a. T. Cooke, 1585), sig. A3r . For the definitive study of the military literature that materially altered the English attitude toward the art of war, see Henry J. Webb, Elizabethan Military Science: The Books and the Practice (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1965).

29 Instructions, Observations, and Orders Mylitarie (London: R. Johnes, 1595), The Epistle Dedicatorie.

30 A Christian Familiar Comfort, sig. Glr and v . See also the practical view taken by the military chaplain Simon Harward in The Solace for the Souldier and the Saylour (London: T. Orwin f. T. Wight, 1592), sig. E2r and v .

31 “Bolingbroke, a True Machiavellian,” Modern Language Quarterly, 9 (1948), 177–84.

32 See, e.g., Travis Bogard, “Shakespeare's Second Richard,” PMLA, 70 (1955), 192–209, and Peter G. Phialas, “Richard II and Shakespeare's Tragic Mode,” Texas Studies in Literature and Language, 5 (1963), 344–55.

33 See my Shakespeare's Military World (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1956), p. 130.

34 See “The ‘Dastardly Treachery’ of Prince John of Lancaster,” PMLA, 76 (1961), 488–92.

35 The Trumpet of Warre (London : V. Simmes f. J. Oxenbridge, 1598), sig. C5r .

36 The Arte of Warre, trans. Peter Whitehorne (1560), in The Tudor Translations, xxxix (London: David Nutt, 1905). All citations are to this edition.