A Formative Shakespearean Legacy: Elizabethan Views of God, Fortune, and War
1975; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 90; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/461606
ISSN1938-1530
Autores Tópico(s)Literature: history, themes, analysis
ResumoAbstract 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.
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