This chapter focuses on just war theory as an approach to Shakespeare and war. It gives an overview of different theories of war and illustrates their significance in the Elizabethan historical context. This includes a discussion of the most important readings of Shakespeare as a realist or a pacifist and a subsequent analysis of Shakespeare’s use of just war theory. Drawing on a variety of examples, this chapter exemplifies what is considered a just cause, a right intention, or a legitimate authority in Shakespeare’s plays; the analysis shows who is presented as culpable or responsible and under which circumstances the relation between the cause and cost of a war must be considered out of balance. The author traces this line of argument along illustrative readings of 3 Henry VI, 2 Henry IV, Henry V, and Troilus and Cressida and suggests that just war theory may offer another perspective on Shakespeare and war.

Randall Martin and others have argued that Shakespeare revised 3 Henry VI after his composition of Richard III to consolidate the early history plays as a sequence. Meanwhile, recent attribution studies argue that Shakespeare originally wrote 3 Henry VI in collaboration with one or more other dramatists, making little or no contribution to Acts 1 and 4. If these arguments are correct, the older hypothesis that the first edition issued in 1595 as The True Tragedy of Richard Duke of York is a memorial reconstruction begins to look vulnerable. If it is shorter and less Shakespearean, some possible reasons for these characteristics other than derivative reconstruction are now evident. This chapter will agree with the arguments for collaboration in both versions, and for revision in one. But it will reassert the necessity of regarding Richard Duke of York as a derivative text with a tenuous line of transmission from an authorial script.