SOURCE: Meron, Theodor. “War and Peace.” In Bloody Constraint: War and Chivalry in Shakespeare, pp. 16-46. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

[In the following essay, Meron compares Shakespeare's treatment of war to medieval and Renaissance legal, religious, and chivalric doctrines of “just war.” Focusing on the English histories and Troilus and Cressida, the critic contends that characters in these plays articulate a message that is essentially pacifist.]

In this chapter, I will examine attitudes towards war and demonstrate the anti-war bent of many of Shakespeare's characters. War was a major theme, perhaps the most important theme, in Shakespeare's plays, especially the Histories but also his classical and mythological plays. War provided Shakespeare with a dramatic vehicle through which his characters could highlight and praise such concepts as honour, courage and patriotism. In addition, it was the ideal setting for an articulation of ethical and humanitarian attitudes towards war. Shakespeare's treatment of war cannot be understood without taking into account both the perspective on war provided by the literature of chivalry and the immediate historical context of the period when he was writing, some two centuries after Agincourt.

As Maurice Keen has demonstrated, there was a strong pacifist tradition in the early Christian church. However, the Christian doctrine of just war, espoused as early as the fourth century by Saint Augustine (354-430), eroded this anti-war bent by emphasizing the corrective virtues of just war, punishment of sin and restoration of justice and peace.¹ Thus, balanced against the pacifist tradition were a restrictive interpretation of pacifist verses in the New Testament and the Old Testament's image of a God of hosts, ordering war against the enemies of his people.² The need to resist pagan enemies in northern and eastern Europe, as well as Muslims in southern Italy and Spain and elsewhere along the Mediterranean, supported the Church's militancy, along with, eventually, the desire to mobilize Christian warriors for crusades to liberate the holy places in Palestine.

Just war as a fight for justice and the re-establishment of peace and serenity (tranquillitas ordinis), as a campaign to avenge wrongs and to recover goods wrongly captured, and as a struggle for the defence of country and religion gained the Church's support.³ As a result, from its early condemnation of killing in war, the Church moved to promise remission of penance to Christian crusaders. Secular knighthood thus became a Christian vocation.⁴ Shakespeare's Henry IV articulates this image of the knight as a soldier of Christ:

KING Henry:
As far as to the sepulchre of Christ—
Whose soldier now, under whose blessèd cross
We are impressèd and engaged to fight—

.....

To chase these pagans in those holy fields
Over whose acres walked those blessèd feet
Which fourteen hundred years ago were nailed,
For our advantage, on the bitter cross.

(1 Henry IV, I.i.21, 24-27)

By discouraging wars between Christians, albeit meekly, the Church and chivalry promoted the ideal of a united Christendom fighting non-Christians. Thus, Shakespeare's Salisbury, lamenting the belligerency between England and France, wishes the war would be carried

                              unto a pagan shore,
Where these two Christian armies might combine
The blood of malice in a vein of league,
And not to spend it so unneighbourly.

(King John, V.ii.36-39)

The Church then introduced the regulation of war through measures such as the Peace and Truce of God, which listed the categories of persons protected from acts of war. Independently from the Church, secular chivalry also developed rules for regulating the practice of war and establishing parameters for permissible acts.⁵ In this way, the secular code of chivalry thus supplemented canonistic doctine by providing for the protection of broader categories of persons and the granting of mercy and quarter to the vanquished on the battlefield. These developments qualified the Church's toleration of war by introducing the notion that the justness of a war depended not only on the existence of a just cause, but also on the conduct of the war as evidence of conscience and motivation. Thus, carnage, pillage, excessive cruelty and rape would disprove a party's claims of just war; practices including mercy, quarter and pious conduct towards the dead and wounded would strengthen such claims.⁶

War was an endemic condition in the Middle Ages, wreaking havoc on the common people, particularly the peasants, who were the victims of ravaging mercenaries, free companies, robbers and even some knights for whom, notwithstanding the rules of chivalry, plunder of the countryside was a way of life. In an era of great economic poverty and hardship, participation in war offered serious material incentives. Adventurers and mercenaries fought for profit from pillage and ransom.

For the warring class, the knights, war was both noble and ennobling, despite its hardships and horrors. The support of the Church, the promise of salvation for knightly deeds in defence of the Church, the soothing doctrine of chivalry with its emphasis on the idea of service to the community and the duty to defend the weak and to right any wrongs combined with the quest for recognition, fame and honour to produce a society that both promoted war and depended on its continuation for its economic well-being and social status. Maurice Keen speaks of the social mystique attaching to arms, the ceremonial knightings before battles, the ennoblement of common men who demonstrated particular courage, and the attraction of “the tinsel glint of chivalry.”⁷ For those who aspired to enhance their social status through elevation to knighthood, fighting wars provided the primary vehicle for the achievement of their goal.

Profit was also a motive for knights and nobility to go to war. Princes had the additional lure of the prospects of recovering lost territories, acquiring additional ones, satisfying just claims and gaining glory. No less, resort to foreign wars frequently served to divert attention from internal troubles.

This glamorization of war, this glorification of knightly virtue, impressive feats of arms and honour found ample expression in poetry and literature. Jean de Bueil's biographical novel, Le Jouvencel (ca. 1465), rhapsodizes the comradeship, courage and honour of war:

It is a joyous thing, is war. … You love your comrade so in war. When you see that your quarrel is just and your blood is fighting well, tears come to your eyes. A great sweet feeling of loyalty and of pity fills your heart on seeing your friend so valiantly exposing his body to execute and accomplish the command of our creator. And then you prepare to go and die or live with him, and for love not to abandon him. And out of that, there arises such a delectation, that he who has not tasted it is not fit to say what a delight it is.⁸

In these circumstances, it is not surprising that medieval authors of manuals of chivalry, and such chroniclers of chivalry as the French Jean Froissart, writing for the chivalric class, articulated and rationalized a rather permissive doctrine regulating recourse to war. In many respects, they were apologists for war, masking or minimizing war's horrors, brutality, bloodiness, greed and economic motivations, the quest for lands and titles, and the hypocrisy behind the perceived glamour of chivalric sword. Justifying war served the interests of the knightly class and the nobility for whom war was both a way of life and the raison d'être, an opportunity to gain glory on the battlefield and to acquire wealth through pillage and ransom.

A primary example of this approach to war is Giovanni da Legnano's famous treatise written in the second part of the fourteenth century, Tractatus de bello, de represaliis et de duello.⁹ Relying heavily on the Old Testament and Saint Augustine, Giovanni da Legnano argued that wars came from divine law, with “positive allowance” from God.¹⁰ According to Giovanni, since the “end of war … is the peace and tranquillity of the world [, war] proceeded originally and positively from God.”¹¹ This reasoning therefore justified both a declaration of lawful war and the war itself because they would lead to such peace and tranquillity. In addition, the authority to punish evil persons stemmed from God, and lawful war sought to punish evil and rebellious persons and to bring the vanquished to piety and justice. In this way, God not only permitted, but actually ordered Joshua to fight his enemies. Implicit in this premise is that the sinners, whom the war is designed to punish, will be vanquished. For Giovanni, these norms justifying and allowing war belonged not only to divine law, but also to natural law, civil law and canon law. Finally, the regulatory power of the law of nations also provided a source for such principles.¹² The just war doctrine allowed the extension of the knight's sword-arm of justice to relationship between peoples.¹³

In his authoritative treatise The Tree of Battles (ca. 1387), Honoré Bouvet wrote that a prince not only had a right to resort to war to defend subjects from pillage and murder, but a duty as well.¹⁴ He regarded war as “not an evil thing, but [as] good and virtuous,” because it sought to “set wrong right.”¹⁵ The aim of war was thus to “to wrest peace, tranquility and reasonableness, from him who refuses to acknowledge his wrongdoing.”¹⁶ Like Giovanni, Bouvet argued that war derived from divine law and from God because, as in the case of the biblical Joshua, God not only permitted war, but “ordained it.”¹⁷ It was also authorized by the law of nations, including canon law and civil law. Shakespeare's King John thus claims to be “God's wrathful agent” (King John, II. i. 87) in his war with France.

However, Bouvet could not remain entirely oblivious to concerns about the innocent victims of war. He maintained, nevertheless, that the evil things that happen in war are caused not by war, but by abuse, as in the case of a soldier raping a woman or setting fire to a church: “if in war many evil things are done, they never come from the nature of war, but from false usage.”¹⁸ The unstated premise was thus that such abuses were, in principle, avoidable.

Admitting that the innocent suffer with the guilty, Honoré Bouvet claimed that war should therefore be compared to a medicine that, while curing the disease, has some adverse effects as well. A gardener who pulls weeds inevitably plucks some good plants as well; for the fault of one man, many can be destroyed in war.

In her treatise The Book of Fayttes of Armes and of Chyvalrye (ca. 1408-09), Christine de Pisan followed suit: “As touchyng the harmes & euyllis that ben doon aboue the right & droyt of warre … that cometh nothyng of the right of warre but by euylnes of the peple …”¹⁹ Thus, as Maurice Keen suggests, any “incidental … miscarriages of justice could be written off against the ultimate achievement of the divine purpose”²⁰ of war.

These chivalric authors resonate with Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225-74), who, citing Saint Augustine, regards just war as a means of meting out deserved punishment, making amends, restoring what has been seized unjustly, and achieving peace. Admitting that those who resort to arms sinfully are not necessarily defeated, Aquinas falls back on the promise of damnation: “[T]hey will always ‘die by the sword’ since they will be punished eternally for their sinful use of it.”²¹

The Archbishop of York, a leader of the rebellion in 2 Henry IV, voices the chivalric theme that war serves as a medicine or blood-letting, a corrective designed to cure a disease, that is, to establish a true peace:

                                        [W]e are all diseased,
And with our surfeiting and wanton hours
Have brought ourselves into a burning fever,
And we must bleed for it.
.....I take not on me here as a physician,
Nor do I as an enemy to peace
Troop in the throngs of military men;
But rather show a while like fearful war
To diet rank minds, sick of happiness,
And purge th' obstructions which begin to stop
Our very veins of life.

(2 Henry IV, IV.i.54-66)

The Archbishop's aim is

Not to break peace, or any branch of it,
But to establish here a peace indeed,
Concurring both in name and quality.

(2 Henry IV, IV.i.85-87)

The passage shows Shakespeare's familiarity with concepts of chivalry, even though York is using one of them to justify an act of rebellion, which in itself runs against chivalry.

But although Shakespeare's York (2 Henry VI) articulates the war-as-medicine idea, a few years later, in Henry V, Shakespeare parts company from the chivalric writers, and aligns himself with the pacifist scepticism about war and its motivations articulated by the humanistic tradition of Desiderius Erasmus (ca. 1466-1536) and Thomas More (1477-1535). Erasmus argued that leaders should consider the costs of a war in advance. Full accounting would show that everyone suffers ruin, physical wretchedness and abuse, the choice between cruel slaughter and being slaughtered, and that war consists of manslaughter and robbery. Humanist social criticism emphasized that offensive war was almost always unjust and that war between Christians was inherently unjust. It urged resort to alternatives to war, including exhaustion of other means and arbitration.²²

In Henry V, the loss of innocent lives in war is not incidental; rather, it is inherent in the nature of war that it is bloody and evil. Moreover, this inevitability of the shedding of innocent blood is unrelated to the justness of war, but follows from the reality of war, whether it is just or unjust. Henry V's admonition to Canterbury to give him fair and objective advice regarding the justness of his war against France and, especially, whether the Salic law disqualifying women and the female line from succession to the Crown of France bars his claim, is a useful example:

For God doth know how many now in health
Shall drop their blood in approbation
.....For never two such kingdoms did contend
Without much fall of blood, whose guiltless drops
Are every one a woe, a sore complaint
'Gainst him whose wrongs gives edge unto the swords
That makes such waste in brief mortality.

(Henry V, I.ii.18-28) (emphasis added)

Viewed from another perspective, Henry is using the Archbishop to absolve himself from the bloodshed he knows will occur in the war he fully intends to wage, while the Archbishop is using Henry to forestall measures against the church. Motivations for and justifications of war are made even more suspect in Troilus and Cressida, where war is not a corrective to the ills of peace, but is simply a disease, an instrument of senseless, purposeless butchery, and where the justness of the war is directly challenged.

Henry VI, understood that even in a rebellion, when the king's cause is presumptively just, war must result in casualties and cause the innocent to suffer. Consequently, to avoid the loss of innocent lives, he opts for negotiations with the rebel Jack Cade:

I'll send some holy bishop to entreat,
For God forbid so many simple souls
Should perish by the sword. And I myself,
Rather than bloody war shall cut them short,
Will parley with Jack Cade their general.

(2 Henry VI, IV.iv.8-12)

If Shakespeare's characters articulate a message which is essentially anti-war, this can best be understood in the context of the post-chivalric Elizabethan era. Shakespeare was fully aware of the decline of chivalry in his lifetime. If references to war in the canon as an institution are frequently negative, if allusions to the normative and positive values of chivalry, such as the duty to give quarter, mercy, honour and humane treatment of prisoners and women, are so idealized, perhaps Shakespeare wanted to discourage war that, without the veneer of chivalric rules, appeared to be entirely barbaric. I shall return to Shakespeare's pacifism in the conclusions of this chapter.

Even with such rules, however, loss of life and tremendous suffering are inherent in war. Shakespeare's characters challenge war through a combination of legal and literary means. His protagonists insist on the exhaustion of diplomatic and peaceful remedies. In emphasizing this requirement, Shakespeare's Henry V follows the chroniclers and thus reflects an actual medieval practice. Shakespeare's characters articulate the requirement of a just cause for war and show the self-serving, hypocritical and opportunistic arguments that often drive “just war” justifications. They deride the claim that war is necessary for the sake of honour or to save face. They bring into relief the unmitigated horrors of war. Finally, they demonstrate the inescapable futility of war.

ADVISING THE PRINCE ON THE JUSTNESS OF THE WAR

The just cause requirement first obligated a prince to ascertain honestly whether his cause was just. The absence of a just cause should ab initio end any thoughts of recourse to war. However, the determination whether a cause was just or not was complex, so that a prince would have great difficulty assessing the legal aspects of, for example, a complicated dynastic dispute. Obviously, princes were not thoroughly schooled in the law of nations and needed expert advice. Franciscus de Vitoria wrote that since “a king is not by himself capable of examining … the causes of a war,” he might make a mistake that would bring “ruin to multitudes.”²³ The prince therefore had a duty to consult “the good and wise and those who speak with freedom and without anger or bitterness or greed” about the justice and causes of the war.²⁴

Shakespeare's Henry V pays due heed to this principle, deferring to the moral, religious and even legal and historical authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the senior English ecclesiastic, for assurance that the English cause is just. At the same time, Shakespeare—following Holinshed—actually presents the Archbishop's arguments as self-serving, cynical and opportunistic.

When in 1369 Charles V of France reopened hostilities against Edward III of England, he did so only after consultations with French and foreign experts on canon and civil laws confirmed the justness of his cause.²⁵ Furthermore, medieval princes understood the importance of convincing public opinion of the legitimacy of their wars. “[C]onstant attention was paid, if not to the ideology, then at least to the phraseology of justum bellum.”²⁶ Therefore, Henry V not only consulted legal and spiritual advisors, but devoted considerable attention to preparing and disseminating legal briefs for his war against Charles VI.²⁷

Medieval and Renaissance writers on chivalry and the law of nations emphasized the importance of obtaining independent and objective advice on the justness of war. Christine de Pisan urged that such advisers should be unbiased and impartial²⁸ and Vitoria stressed the advisers' duty to tell the prince honestly whether his cause was just.²⁹ However, whether it was realistic to expect counselors to give the all-powerful leader advice that would displease him was another question entirely. In his Utopia, More discussed the dilemma of the humanist who is solicited by his prince to become a court adviser. He is tempted to enter the prince's service, explaining his action by a higher duty to the common cause. But More's imaginary Raphael Hythlodaeus voices utter pessimism concerning the prospect that a court expert will be able to maintain his independence. Interested in status and promotion, an adviser is bound to tell the ruler what he wants to hear. Tampering with the truth is the reality of service to the prince.³⁰

Shakespeare addresses this issue primarily in the context of the role and the responsibility of courtiers, offering little to reassure his audience.³¹ Most medieval courtiers were wary of offending or embarrassing the king, who, anointed by God, must not be contradicted or challenged. However, Shakespeare's York pleads with Richard II not to confiscate Hereford's rights, which would not only violate the law on which the legitimacy of Richard's title depends, but would also bring untold dangers to Richard:

Take Hereford's rights away, and take from Time
His charters and his customary rights:
Let not tomorrow then ensue today;
Be not thyself, for how art thou a king
But by fair sequence and succession?
Now afore God—God forbid I say true!—
If you do wrongfully seize Hereford's rights,
Call in the letters patents that he hath
By his attorneys general to sue
His livery, and deny his offered homage,
You pluck a thousand dangers on your head. …

(Richard II, II.i.196-206)

This unsolicited advice proves useless as Richard brazenly states his disregard:

Think what you will, we seize into our hands
His plate, his goods, his money, and his lands.

(Richard II, II.i.210-11)

Similarly, when the Bishop of Carlisle warns the future Henry IV against usurpation, predicting that tumultous wars will result from the terrible wrong, indeed treason, of subjects judging King Richard II, especially in absentia (Richard II, IV.i.105-40), he is arrested for his efforts on charges of capital treason (Richard II, IV.i.141-42). In another example, Buckingham's vaccilation about assisting Richard III in the murder of the two princes, the sons of Edward IV, causes Richard III to lose confidence in him and threaten his life (Richard III, IV.ii). Still another king, Henry VIII, rebukes his council for taking an independent position against Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury (Henry VIII, V.ii). Finally, in King John, Hubert does not even try to dissuade King John from his criminal designs against Arthur. John later blames Hubert, hypocritically, for neglecting the courtier's duty to give honest advice and being guided solely by his desire to please his king (King John, IV.ii.204-70).

The message that emerges from each of these episodes is one that certainly would not encourage a royal adviser to counsel his prince against starting a war he is already inclined to fight. Nonetheless, the medieval system of government recognized the need for both internal and external procedures before the leader could resort to war. Christine de Pisan wrote that a prince could only take up arms if he had consulted with “Parliament,” as anglicized in William Caxton's translation, and obtained its consent.³² As early as the fourteenth century, the principle of prior consultation with the lords and the commons about a war was recognized in England and steadily expanded thereafter.³³

Two episodes in Shakespeare directly address this issue of internal consultations about the justification for recourse to or continuation of war. The first episode, the exchange between Henry V and the Archbishop of Canterbury, focuses on ensuring recourse to a just war. Aware of the inevitable loss of blood in a major war, Henry demands an honest opinion from his adviser (Henry V, I.ii.9-20). Canterbury's response is categorical, stating that Henry's cause is unquestionably just (Henry V, I.ii.33-95). Not satisifed, Henry insists, asking, “May I with right and conscience make this claim?” and Canterbury gives the most solemn guarantee an ecclesiastic can give, invoking “the sin upon my head” (Henry V, I.ii.96-97). Canterbury concludes by alluding to the symbols of war, “blood and sword and fire” (Henry V, I.ii.131), that will serve to win Henry's right. Henry also consults with and receives enthusiastic support for the war from secular lords, such as Exeter and Westmorland, the latter referring also to the element of power—“[Y]our grace has cause; and means and might”(Henry V, I.ii.125). Compare York's arguments in 2 Henry IV, I.iii.1.

The debate is over, the procedures have been scrupulously followed with perfect results, and Henry V is satisfied. But does Shakespeare satisfy his audience fully? We already know that Henry IV's lesson to his son was “to busy giddy minds / With foreign quarrels, that action hence borne out / May waste the memory of the former days,” (2 Henry IV, IV.iii.342-44), that is, so that the father's usurpation of Richard II's Crown would be forgotten. In contrast to Paul Jorgensen, I believe that this statement was intended to stigmatize the king's motivation.³⁴ Furthermore, if this invocation of realpolitik were not enough to cast doubt on the proceedings, Shakespeare clearly taints Canterbury's advice with an allusion to his ulterior motives, which he cynically reveals to the Bishop of Ely. The Archbishop recognizes that the Church's financial support for the war, combined with the persuasive articulation of a just cause for the war, could save the Church from being deprived of a substantial part of its possessions (Henry V, I. i. 70-73, 76-90).

In a way, both Canterbury and Henry use each other. Canterbury offers financial incentives and somewhat strained legal interpretations for a war Henry actually seeks—in order to fight a bill that would strip the church from a considerable portion of its temporal possessions. Henry uses the Archbishop to absolve himself of responsibility for the bloodshed he knows will occur. The fact that both Canterbury and Henry have their own agendas introduces a certain doubt in the procedures designed to validate recourse to war. Perhaps these texts indicate that legal authority for recourse to war was politically necessary, though ethically it was less important in the politics of war.

The second episode, from Troilus and Cressida, concerns discussions in the Trojan council after the Achaian peace proposal premised on the return of Helen and waiver of war reparations. Hector supports the proposal and takes an anti-war stand, perhaps encouraged by King Priam's apparent hesitations. Shakespeare here offers a remarkable discussion of the requirement that the war have a just cause. Hector, a Trojan, asserts that the Trojans are fighting an unjust war, insisting that Helen “is not worth what she doth cost the holding” (Troilus and Cressida, II.ii.50-51) and that she does not belong to the Trojans (Troilus and Cressida, II.ii.21). Therefore, the moral laws of nature and of nations require that Helen be returned (Troilus and Cressida, II.ii.172-87). No one challenges Hector's view that the war is not just. Nonetheless, other considerations trump, and despite strong reservations, Hector responds to his comrades' appeals to honour and solidarity and joins the advocates of war.

In each of these two episodes, Shakespeare demonstrates the vulnerability of the normative principle of just war. He first sets out the principle, even offering justifications for adherence to the rule. However, he then describes the subordination of the norm to more practical, but less moral, concerns, ultimately producing recourse to war without a clearly and honestly articulated just cause.

EXHAUSTING PEACEFUL REMEDIES

In Shakespeare, as in the legal doctrine of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, even the existence of a just cause would not warrant recourse to war unless peaceful remedies were exhausted through negotiations, defiances and ultimatums. In the Middle Ages, the requirement that a war be publicly declared was commonly met by issuing letters of defiance, which served much the same function as declarations of war, although different in form.³⁵ Pisan warned against resort to war before a prince had offered his adversary a chance to remedy the wrongs which he allegedly committed.³⁶ Francisco Suárez argued that in order to wage a legitimate war, one had to be incapable of remedying the wrong suffered in any other way; since killing was morally wrong, the king must truly have no choice.³⁷ It is thus essential not only that the cause be just and sufficient, but that the grave injustice could not be otherwise resolved.³⁸ Exhaustion of peaceful remedies was therefore both a moral-religious imperative and a legal requirement. In addition, it served important public relations and propaganda considerations.

In the Renaissance period, the law of nations required that an ultimatum be issued and war declared. Ideally, the claim should be stated, its basis in the law of nations or the law of nature invoked, and the consequences of non-compliance—recourse to war—articulated. When Shakespeare's King John rejects King Philip's claims on behalf of Arthur, the French Ambassador Châtillon warns that this refusal will trigger a “fierce and bloody war, / To enforce these rights so forcibly withheld” (King John, I.i.17-18). Upon John's acceptance of the French challenge, “[H]ere have we war for war, and blood for blood, / Controlment for controlment: so answer France,” the Ambassador issues a formal defiance (a declaration of war with its statement of claim and ultimatum): “Then take my king's defiance from my mouth” (King John, I.i.19-21).³⁹

Although King Philip and his ally, the Duke of Austria, are anxious to start hostilities to enforce Arthur's rights over Angers, failure to await Châtillon's return would violate the principle of exhaustion of peaceful remedies and incur heavy spiritual responsibility. Despite her role as the driving force for war, Arthur's mother, Constance, therefore insists on the cardinal importance of exhaustion of remedies:

Stay for an answer to your embassy,
Lest unadvised you stain your swords with blood.
My lord Châtillon may from England bring
That right in peace which here we urge in war,
And then we shall repent each drop of blood
That hot rash haste so indirectly shed.

(King John, II.i.44-49)

The historical Henry V claimed to hold France in full sovereignty through inheritance. He engaged in long and substantive negotiations with France to this end, but it is difficult to believe that he did so in good faith. These negotiations were both preceded and accompanied by legal propaganda, designed to demonstrate both the French wrongs and Henry's reasons for raising his standards. In Shakespeare, Henry V's declaration of war, delivered at the court of Charles VI through Exeter's embassy, follows both Hall's chronicle⁴⁰ and the classical requirements of the law of nations. It also includes an ultimatum, threat of “Bloody Constraint” (Henry V, II.iv.97) and a catalogue of some of the horrors of war the French will encounter if they resist (Henry V, II.iv.76-110).

Going beyond the legal doctrine of his time, Shakespeare suggests that resort to a peaceful settlement of disputes is appropriate even in civil wars. Bolingbroke (through Northumberland) thus offers Richard II an honourable peaceful resolution:

Upon his knees doth kiss King Richard's hand,
And sends allegiance and true faith of heart
To his most royal person, hither come
Even at his feet to lay my arms and power,
Provided that my banishment repealed
And lands restored again be freely granted.
If not, I'll use the advantage of my power,
And lay the summer's dust with showers of blood
Rained from the wounds of slaughtered Englishmen[.]

(Richard II, III.iii.34-43)

JUST WAR/UNJUST WAR

The theme of just war dominates the literature of chivalry and the law of nations of both the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. This literature identifies causes justifying resort to war, such as remedying a grave offence or recapturing lands wrongfully deprived. A just cause for resorting to war was essential for both secular-legal and spiritual-moral reasons. Secular considerations included the validity of the title that a prince and his troops would acquire over the spoils of war, their enjoyment of combatant privileges, their protection by the laws of war and their entitlement to war reparations. In a just war, the unjust belligerent had the duty “not only to make restitution [of whatever it seized], but also to make good the expenses of the war to the other side, and also all damages.”⁴¹ In Chapter 4, I will discuss Shakespeare's references to war damages.

Establishing the validity of his claim was therefore vital to a prince's ability to raise troops and sustain their morale. Vitoria wrote that “[i]f a subject is convinced of the injustice of a war, he ought not to serve in it, even on the command of his prince.”⁴² Although a victorious prince faced few difficulties in maintaining that his war was just as a matter of realpolitik, this requirement could have presented a real difficulty for a knight whose right to ransom or to the spoils of war was contested before a court of chivalry, which would apply the international jus armorum. In the case of an unjust war, the other side could demand reparations. It was therefore important to have not only a just cause, but one that was seen to be just, and one that the knights needed to fight the war would accept as just. Following the appropriate protocol for trying to avoid war was also vital to the claim of a just war. Thus, although Exeter's embassy to Charles VI (Henry V, II.iv) and Châtillon's embassy to King John (King John, I.i) proved useless, the requirement of the exhaustion of local remedies was part of the just war doctrine and could, where successful, have some war-reducing effects. If in fact recruiting for an unjust war was more difficult, the perception that a cause was unjust might have had a deterrent effect on the prospective aggressor.

In Henry V, Shakespeare's most patriotic and nationalistic play, the justness of the English cause is presented as accepted wisdom, a seemingly simplistic, almost unquestioning orthodoxy. Katharine Eisaman Maus emphasized that Shakespeare's patriotic play served the cause of Essex's mobilization for the campaign against Ireland. But even in this play, the war excitement is balanced by the Chorus's allusion to the loss of France during the infancy of Henry VI, and thus to the ultimate futility of this bloody war (Henry V, Epilogue 10),⁴³ and by the opportunistic character of the Archbishop's advice. In other plays, and even in Henry V, Shakespeare points to a number of difficulties and doubts, ultimately leaving the reader unlikely to accept war as a desirable or even acceptable solution. With the exception of the right to war reparations, where he overlaps legal commentators, Shakespeare often emphasizes spiritual accountability rather than secular considerations.

Two plays in particular, Henry V and Troilus and Cressida, bring the right to reparations into relief. With considerable sophistication, despite its patriotic one-sidedness, Henry V depicts a demand for war reparations by the party that is not supposed to have a just cause but expects to win nonetheless.

MONTJOY
Bid him therefore consider of his ransom, which must proportion the losses we have borne, the subjects we have lost, the disgrace we have digested—which in weight to re-answer, his pettiness would bow under. For our losses, his exchequer is too poor; for th' effusion of our blood, the muster of his kingdom too faint a number; and for our disgrace, his own person kneeling at our feet but a weak and worthless satisfaction.

(Henry V, III.vi.124-32)

Shakespeare seems to suggest, at the very least, that France may also have had a just cause. However, he shows that the party that appears to be stronger will thus present more far-reaching claims. In Troilus and Cressida, the Greeks, as the aggrieved party, would be willing to waive their legitimate right to war reparations if the Trojans would return Helen (Troilus and Cressida, II.ii.1-7).

Shakespeare's work suggests that compliance with the just war requirement involves important incentives. On the religious and spiritual plane, it protects the king from sin and damnation for recourse to an unjust war that causes the loss of innocent lives (Henry V, IV.iii). Shakespeare's plays contain many references to this essentially religious concept. Moreover, there are positive incentives, such as enhancing the prospect of victory in war, that supplement the promised immunity from eternal damnation. Shakespeare's heroes invoke this concept because they believe in the justness of their cause, and it soon becomes every leader's self-serving, pro se argument.

Shakespeare's Henry IV proclaims, in dispatching his officers to take command of the troops, “God befriend us as our cause is just” (1 Henry IV, V.i.120). After eliminating the Southampton conspiracy, Henry V encourages his lords:

“Now lords for France, the enterprise whereof
Shall be to you, as us, like glorious.
We doubt not of a fair and lucky war.”

(Henry V, II.ii.179-81)

Being just (“fair”), Henry's war must necessarily be victorious (“lucky”). In a similar vein, the Duke of Austria expresses confidence in the outcome of the war in King John: “The peace of heaven is theirs that lift their swords / In such a just and charitable war” (King John, II.i.35-36). Invoking the divine support for his cause, Richard II assumes that heaven supports the lawful king:

“God for his Richard hath in heavenly pay
A glorious angel. Then if angels fight,
Weak men must fall; for heaven still guards the right.”

(Richard II, III.ii.56-58)

Finally, Henry of Richmond's oration to his troops before the decisive battle against Richard III is explicit about the link between a just cause and support from God:

                                        Yet remember this:
God and our good cause fight upon our side.
The prayers of holy saints and wrongèd souls,
Like high-reared bulwarks, stand before our forces.
Richard except, those whom we fight against
Had rather have us win than him they follow.
For what is he they follow? Truly, friends,
A bloody tyrant and a homicide;
.....One that hath ever been God's enemy.
Then if you fight against God's enemy,
God will, in justice, ward you as his soldiers.

(Richard III, V.v.193-200, 206-08)⁴⁴

Richard III's “might is right” oration to his troops before the same battle provides an interesting contrast.

Go, gentlemen, each man unto his charge.
Let not our babbling dreams affright our souls.
Conscience is but a word that cowards use,
Devised at first to keep the strong in awe.
Our strong arms be our conscience; swords, our law.
March on, join bravely! Let us to 't, pell mell—
If not to heaven, then hand in hand to hell.

(Richard III, V.vi.37-43)

Whether Shakespeare actually believed that fighting a just war increased the probability of victory is unclear. He did know that each party would claim to have God and justice on its side and that some of those who invoke God and justice would lose, like Richard II.

This idea “that justice was infallibly on the side of the victor,”⁴⁵ that the just will triumph, was part of the myth of chivalry on which Shakespeare probably drew. Bouvet, for example, wrote that because just war was designed to purge the earth from sin and sinners, those who die fighting in such a war “will be saved in Paradise.”⁴⁶ Notwithstanding this myth, invoking the increased prospect of victory for the just also served the moral purpose of discouraging unjust or aggressive wars.

However, although just war doctrine had an important proscriptive function, so that a war could not, or at least should not, have been resorted to without at least a colourable claim of justness, it proved largely useless as an effective vehicle for the discouragement of wars. A victorious prince faced few difficulties in maintaining that his cause was just, regardless of how hypocritical and self-serving the claim. In the absence of any system of independent arbitration or fact-finding, and because many causes justified resort to war in medieval and Renaissance legal doctrines with no clearly established hierarchy among them, the requirement of a just cause did not constitute a significant restraint on waging war. As a result, the distinction between just and unjust wars was often merely sophistry.

Under medieval legal theory, which was fairly uniform until the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, only one party could have a just cause, as Balthazar Ayala, a contemporary of Shakespeare, maintained. Since the Romans would never begin a war except with just cause, he argued, their enemies could not have a just cause, because “the same cause of war cannot be just both for this side and that.”⁴⁷ Although in theory, the justness of war depended on both a just cause and a declaration of war by a sovereign authority, in practice just war and public war—one declared by the sovereign authority—began to mean the same thing.⁴⁸ Since both belligerents could claim, as they usually did, that their war was just, bellum nostrum justum, the whole moral foundation of the just war doctrine lost its credibility, as reflected in Abraham Lincoln's statement: “[I]n great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be wrong.”⁴⁹ Lincoln, however, does not quite capture the Renaissance legal perception that in practice a war could be just for both sides.

Unlike Lincoln, Alberico Gentili, a contemporary of Shakespeare, could conceive of just cause on both sides. He starts from Saint Augustine's proposition that an adversary's injustice makes a war just, and, therefore, the injustice of one party furnishes the other party with a just cause, according to which it could wage just wars.⁵⁰ However, he promptly dissents, stating, “[B]ut if it is doubtful on which side justice is, and if each side aims at justice, neither can be called unjust.”⁵¹ Gentili demonstrated the complexity of just war claims, which, in practice, were not reducible to the assertion that one side must be in the wrong. He envisaged situations in which both sides might properly resort to war, and the war might, in effect, be treated as just on both sides. Since the whole structure of the medieval doctrine allowing war rested on the artificial claim that only one party could be just, questioning that premise by suggesting that the other party could also be just, could, but probably did not, serve to discourage war. Gentili notes that those who have a better cause are, in fact, frequently defeated.⁵²

Shakespeare was probably not aware of these legal niceties, since there is no evidence that he knew the works of various contemporary writers on the law of nations. He was quite familiar, nonetheless, with Hall and Holinshed, whose chronicles often reflected legal discussion and analysis. As a result, he well understood the cynical and self-serving invocation of the just war excuse for the recourse to war. Implying that he doubted the value and vitality of just war doctrine, his plays reveal the emptiness of these invocations, point to the possibility that both parties may have “just war” pretensions, and suggest that wars were launched for less than acceptable reasons. By emphasizing these self-serving invocations of just cause and suggesting that both parties could be just or both unjust, Shakespeare's plays discredit the theories justifying recourse to war.

Troilus frames the issue perfectly, albeit in a different context: “O virtuous fight, / When right with right wars who shall be most right” (Troilus and Cressida, III.ii. 167-68). As another example of conflicting claims of just cause in a civil war, Warwick's exchange with Prince Edward is notable. The former, a supporter of York, claims that “York in justice puts his armour on,” causing the latter, the future King Edward, to retort, sarcastically, “If that be right which Warwick says is right, / There is no wrong, but everything is right” (3 Henry VI, II.ii.130-32).

Shakespeare is also aware of the distinction between international and national wars, exemplified when Richard III says, “March on, march on, since we are up in arms, / If not to fight with foreign enemies, / Yet to beat down these rebels here at home.” (Richard III, IV.iv.459-61).⁵³ He usually confines the term “enemy” to external enemies, and the term “rebels” or “traitors” to English subjects. Since treason could only be committed by a person owing allegiance to the sovereign, traitors were thus persons who breached their oath. Shakespeare's Lady Macduff defines a traitor with admirable succinctness as “one that swears and lies” and who, therefore, “must be hanged” (Macbeth, IV.ii.48-51). Knowingly or not, Shakespeare's distinction between foreign enemies and domestic rebels or traitors corresponded to that already made in the common law. He thus moved towards modern humanitarian law, with its distinction between international and internal wars and requirements of more humane treatment for those involved in the former.

Shakespeare knows that rebels are treated as traitors and therefore do not benefit from the protection of chivalric principles. Nevertheless, he introduces at least some elements of the just war doctrine into civil wars and shows that in such wars, as in international wars, the two parties may have competing claims of justice. For example, in offering terms to the rebel party on behalf of Henry IV, Westmoreland apparently finds it useful to invoke the just cause of the royal party, emphasizing the nobility's support of that cause:

Our battle is more full of names than yours,
Our men more perfect in the use of arms,
Our armour all as strong, our cause the best.

(2 Henry IV, IV.i.152-54)

The Archbishop of York, representing the rebel party, also claims to fight in support of a just cause:

Then take, my lord of Westmoreland, this schedule
For this contains our general grievances.
Each several article herein redressed,
All members of our cause, both here and hence,
That are ensinewed to this action
Acquitted by a true substantial form. …

(2 Henry IV, IV.i.166-71)

In response, Prince John promises to redress the rebels' grievances and so requests that they discharge their armies. Once the rebel army disperses, its leaders are arrested for treason, perhaps reflecting the fact that promises made to rebels do not equal those made to enemies in international wars, and that the discussion of just cause in internal wars is only a matter of form. York's protestation that the arrests were in breach of good faith meets with the legalistic but not unreasonable response that the rebels also acted illegally.

When King John rejects Philip of France's ultimatum to cede his possessions and titles to Arthur, the son of Geoffrey, who, as the older brother of John, had what appeared to be a better title to succeed their brother, Richard the Lion-Hearted, he unhesitatingly invokes his “strong possession and … right for us” (King John, I.i.39). However, his own mother, Queen Eleanor, sarcastically voices her doubts about John's entitlement, even though she is a militant supporter of his war:

Your strong possession much more than your right,
Or else it must go wrong with you and me:
So much my conscience whispers in your ear,
Which none but heaven and you and I shall hear.

(King John, I.i.40-43)

The anti-war message, emphasized in sarcasm and ridicule against both parties to the conflict, is at its strongest at the walls of Angers, a city owing and recognizing allegiance to the King of England. John and Philip and their troops confront each other at Angers. The ritual of claims alleging the justness of the war is followed, with both parties even using some of the same language.

KING John:
Peace be to France, if France in peace permit
Our just and lineal entrance to our own.
If not, bleed France, and peace ascend to heaven,
Whiles we, God's wrathful agent, do correct
Their proud contempt that beats his peace to heaven.
KING Philip:
Peace be to England, if that war return
From France to England, there to live in peace.
England we love, and for that England's sake
With burden of our armour here we sweat.
This toil of ours should be a work of thine;
But thou from loving England art so far
That thou hast underwrought his lawful king,
Cut off the sequence of posterity,
Outfacèd infant state, and done a rape
Upon the maiden virtue of the crown.

(King John, II.i.84-98)

John then contests Philip's standing to challenge his rights:

KING John:
From whom hast thou this great commission, France,
To draw my answer from thy articles?
KING Philip:
From that supernal judge that stirs good thoughts
In any breast of strong authority
To look into the blots and stains of right.
That judge hath made me guardian to this boy,
Under whose warrant I impeach thy wrong,
And by whose help I mean to chastise it.
KING John:
Alack, thou dost usurp authority.

(King John, II.i.110-18)

The Anglo-French negotiations having thus reached a deadlock, John and Philip, and then their heralds, try to persuade Angers to surrender, each party threatening destruction if the city refuses.

(Trumpet sounds. Enter a Citizen upon the walls)
CITIZEN:
Who is it that hath warned us to the walls?
KING Philip:
'Tis France for England.
KING John:
England for itself.
          You men of Angers and my loving subjects—
KING Philip:
You loving men of Angers, Arthur's subjects,
          Our trumpet called you to this gentle parle—
KING John:
For our advantage; therefore hear us first.

(King John, II.i.201-06)

Angers only wants to be left in peace; it admits its allegiance to the King of England and is quite willing to open the city's gates to him. First, however, it seeks assurance regarding who has the right to be considered the King of England.

CITIZEN:
In brief, we are the King of England's subjects.
For him and in his right we hold this town.
KING John:
Acknowledge then the King, and let me in.
CITIZEN:
That can we not; but he that proves the king,
To him will we prove loyal; till that time
Have we rammed up our gates against the world.
KING John:
Doth not the crown of England prove the king?
And if not that, I bring you witnesses:
Twice fifteen thousand hearts of England's breed—

.....

To verify our title with their lives.

(King John, II.i.267-77)

John's cynical acknowledgement that his title will be proved through physical force belies his prior arguments about just cause. On the other hand, the fact that thirty thousand soldiers loyal to England take part in John's campaign may serve as an argument for some populist legitimacy.

After the heralds present the ultimatums, Angers proposes that the besiegers first fight it out with each other, and then it will cede to the stronger. Until then, the city leaders simply explain that they will accept “the King of England, when we know the King” (King John, II.i.363). The sarcastic Philip the Bastard, Lady Falconbridge's illegitimate son by King Richard I, who is subsequently knighted as Sir Richard Plantagenet, proposes that France and England first join forces to destroy the impudent Angers, and then, after its destruction, defy each other and determine through war who shall be the king of Angers.

Both Kings accept this farcical proposal, and they arrange that John's artillery will attack from the west, the Duke of Austria's from the north, and Philip's from the south. Only the Bastard realizes that “From north to south / Austria and France [will] shoot in each other's mouth” (King John, II.i.414-15). At the last moment, the leaders of Angers cleverly propose that John's niece, Blanche, marry the Dauphin. France and England will be in peace and Angers will open its gates to England. Eleanor elucidates the advantages of this union to her son King John:

“For, by this knot, thou shalt so surely tie
Thy now unsured assurance to the crown
That yon green boy shall have no sun to ripe
The bloom that promiseth a mighty fruit.”

(King John, II.i.471-74)

Blanche meekly complies. This pact thus means the abandonment of Arthur, for whose sake the war started in the first place. Only Constance, Arthur's mother, laments the new pact and complains of Philip's breach of oath to support Arthur's claim. The Bastard then makes his famous soliloquy on the opportunism (“commodity”) that rules the world:

Mad world, mad kings, mad composition!
John, to stop Arthur's title in the whole,
Hath willingly departed with a part;
And France, whose armour conscience buckled on,
Whom zeal and charity brought to the field
As God's own soldier, rounded in the ear
With that same purpose-changer, that sly devil,
That broker that still breaks the pate of faith,
That daily break-vow, he that wins of all,
Of kings, of beggars, old men, young men, maids,—
.....Commodity, the bias of the world,
The world who of itself is peisèd well,
Made to run even upon even ground,
Till this advantage, this vile-drawing bias,
This sway of motion, this commodity,
Makes it take head from all indifferency,
From all direction, purpose, course, intent;
And this same bias, this commodity,
This bawd, this broker, this all-changing word,
Clapped on the outward eye of fickle France,
Hath drawn him from his own determined aid,
From a resolved and honourable war,
To a most base and vile-concluded peace.
And why rail I on this commodity?
But for because he hath not wooed me yet—
Not that I have the power to clutch my hand
When his fair angels would salute my palm,
.....Since kings break faith upon commodity,
Gain, be my lord, for I will worship thee.

(King John, II.i.562-71, 580-91, 598-99)

However, the criticism of war does not end here. Because of the Church's dispute with John, Pandolph, the Pope's envoy, threatens King Philip with excommunication unless he agrees to break the solemn pact he just concluded. After some hesitation, Philip yields and the war with England resumes. The result is that poor Blanche is now married to the enemy of her people, Arthur is captured by England and will soon die, and John is finally reconciled with Rome. Pandolph then persuades the Dauphin to end the war between the two now obedient subjects of Rome, and John dies, poisoned by a monk.

Having started with grandiose claims of dynasty and just cause, the reader is left with only the stupidity and the futility of war, along with an awareness of the hypocrisy and meaninglessness of claims of just war. The play's sarcastic anti-war statement could not have been more effective.

FIGHTING WARS FOR VAIN HONOUR AND THE FUTILITY OF WAR

Renaissance literature on the law of nations taught that war may not be resorted to for a just but minor cause. Alberico Gentili wrote that a just cause should never be “trivial,” except that in a war of defence “the distinctions of doubtful, trivial, and obsolete”⁵⁴ do not apply. Hugo Grotius similarly insisted on a “most weighty cause”⁵⁵ and Suárez and Vitoria agreed. Suárez argued that “it would be contrary to reason to inflict very grave harm because of a slight injustice.”⁵⁶ Vitoria reached the same conclusion that not every wrong justifies recourse to war; since “the degree of the punishment ought to correspond to the measure of the offence,” slight wrongs cannot constitute just causes of war.⁵⁷ These writers focused, however, on the causes of war, and did not anticipate the principle of modern international law requiring that a response, especially an armed response to a wrong, must not go beyond a certain reasonable proportionality.⁵⁸

Shakespeare demonstrates that in fact wars are often fought for trivial reasons, for exaggerated notions of honour or to save face. As Charles Wood wrote, honour was all, and even petty or imagined slights led to endless private wars in which the real losers were the peasants, abused by warriors whose code of honour was devoid of concern for the less fortunate.⁵⁹ Pursuit of honour was central to the theory and practice of chivalry, and Shakespeare himself is supportive of honour, even when it involves the need to die for a worthy cause. Nonetheless, he is equally aware of the pernicious potential of exaggerated or vain honour, even outside the framework of war, for example, in challenges to a single combat for entirely trivial insults. When Vernon and Basset ask Henry VI to “grant [them] combat” to resolve a completely insignificant quarrel, Shakespeare's King angrily responds:

Good Lord, what madness rules in brainsick men
When for so slight and frivolous a cause
Such factious emulations shall arise?
.....And you, my lords, remember where we are—
In France, amongst a fickle wavering nation.
If they perceive dissension in our looks,
And that within ourselves we disagree,
How will their grudging stomachs be provoked
To wilful disobedience, and rebel!
Beside, what infamy will there arise
When foreign princes shall be certified
That for a toy, a thing of no regard,
King Henry's peers and chief nobility
Destroyed themselves and lost the realm of France!

(1 Henry VI, IV.i.111-13, 137-47)

Even more than the trivial, the canon censures the invocation of face saving and excessive honour as a justification for war or combat. In Troilus and Cressida, for example, Troilus, who later joins the war party, admits to Pandarus that Helen is not worth fighting for, declaring that her beauty is “is too starved a subject for my sword” (Troilus and Cressida, I.i.93). In the Trojan council, Hector similarly and persuasively argues not only that fighting for Helen does not constitute a just cause of war, but also that she is not worth so many Trojan lives: “If we have lost so many tenths of ours / To guard a thing not ours—nor worth to us” (Troilus and Cressida, II.ii.50-51, 20-21). However, the view that the enemy is dangerous, that being amenable to settlement may send a message of weakness that the enemy will exploit, that Trojan honour is engaged in holding Helen, and that letting her go because of “base compulsion” (Troilus and Cressida, II.ii.152) would disgrace Troy ultimately prevails. In this way, face saving leads to the destruction of Troy. But face saving is not the only consideration. Rather, a realist argument powerfully buttresses the face-saving argument, positing that showing weakness and endeavouring to appease the other belligerent may also lead to disaster (Troilus and Cressida, II.ii.38-40).

Shakespeare's protagonists attack the futility of war elsewhere in the canon as well. Although the conclusion of the Treaty of Troyes appears to hold the promise of lasting peace and fraternal union between England and France, Shakespeare hastens to disillusion us. Henry V ends with the Chorus's admission that the war—even this heroic, patriotic and just war that Shakespeare supported—will prove both bloody and useless because the protector of the infant Henry VI “lost France and made his England bleed” (Henry V, Epilogue 12). The ensuing marriage arranged for Henry's son, Henry VI, “as the only means / To stop effusion of our Christian blood,” and to stop “immanity and bloody strife / … among professors of one faith” (1 Henry VI, V.i.8-14), appears as nothing more than a ratification of the loss of France. Shakespeare's Richard Duke of York thus complains of the proposed treaty between Charles VII and Henry VI which would establish against England's interests an “effeminate peace”:

Is all our travail turned to this effect?
After the slaughter of so many peers,
So many captains, gentlemen, and soldiers
That in this quarrel have been overthrown
And sold their bodies for their country's benefit,
Shall we at last conclude effeminate peace?
Have we not lost most part of all the towns
By treason, falsehood, and by treachery,
Our great progenitors had conquerèd?
O Warwick, Warwick, I foresee with grief
The utter loss of all the realm of France!

(1 Henry VI, V.vi.102-12)

But of all the plays, Hamlet unquestionably offers the most powerful statement of the futility of war, against sacrificing thousands of lives for trivial causes, for “a fantasy and trick of fame” (Hamlet, Add. Pass. J.52) and for honour. A captain explains to Hamlet the purpose of Fortinbras' military expedition against Poland in this way:

Truly to speak, and with no addition,
We go to gain a little patch of ground
That hath in it no profit but the name.
To pay five ducats, five, I would not farm it,
Nor will it yield to Norway or the Pole
A ranker rate, should it be sold in fee.

(Hamlet, Add. Pass. J.8-13)

Hamlet captures the futility of this war in a few words, realizing that thousands of men will lose their lives for no purpose at all:

HAMLET:
Two thousand souls and twenty thousand ducats
Will now debate the question of this straw.
This is th' imposthume of much wealth and peace,
That inward breaks and shows no cause without
Why the man dies.

(Hamlet, Add. Pass. J.16-20)

Hamlet is then left alone to his moving soliloquy on war:

Witness this army of such mass and charge,
Led by a delicate and tender prince,
Whose spirit with divine ambition puffed
Makes mouths at the invisible event,
Exposing what is mortal and unsure
To all that fortune, death, and danger dare,
Even for an eggshell. Rightly to be great
Is not to stir without great argument,
But greatly to find quarrel in a straw
When honour's at the stake. How stand I, then,
That have a father killed, a mother stained,
Excitements of my reason and my blood,
And let all sleep while, to my shame, I see
The imminent death of twenty thousand men
That, for a fantasy and trick of fame,
Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot
Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,
Which is not tomb enough and continent
To hide the slain.

(Hamlet, Add. Pass. J.38-56)

Of course, Hamlet here expresses his recognition of the unfavourable reflection of the soldiers' bravery on his own hesitation to avenge his father's murder. He agonizes over his failure to vindicate honour by killing Claudius. Although this, and not the futility of war, is Hamlet's particular concern, he nonetheless fully recognizes the absurdity of the death of twenty thousand men to gain a little patch of land, and therefore simply for honour's sake.

Hamlet's soliloquy can be read on two levels. The first is the recognition of the futility of war driven by honour and fought for a useless piece of land. The second and more equivocal level—which concerns Hamlet's personal dilemma—is about killing for honour's sake. While Hamlet certainly reflects on the absurdity of the death of “twenty thousand men” for nothing more than “to gain a little patch of ground,” he remains conscious of how their decisiveness and bravery in such a minor cause reflects poorly on his own hesitation to avenge his father's murder. Hamlet's shame lies in failing to kill Claudius for honour's sake, not in being a part of a world that kills for honour alone. For Shakespeare, it is not clear that Hamlet is wrong about his duty.

Shakespeare does not offer much comfort here. His message is not that peace treaties concluding wars will bring about a lasting serenity, but rather that fighting wars simply in the hope that they will make the world, and us, better off is a worthless pursuit.

THE SCOURGE OF WAR

In advocating the speedy conclusion of the peace negotiations between Henry V and Charles VI, the Duke of Burgundy chillingly demonstrates the devastating effect the war has had on art, agriculture and the education of children, who grow to be savages in wartime:

What rub or what impediment there is
Why that the naked, poor, and mangled peace,
Dear nurse of arts, plenties, and joyful births,
Should not in this best garden of the world,
Our fertile France, put up her lovely visage?
Alas, she hath from France too long been chased,
And all her husbandry doth lie on heaps,
Corrupting in it own fertility.
Her vine, the merry cheerer of the heart,
Unprunèd dies; her hedges even-plashed
Like prisoners wildly overgrown with hair
Put forth disordered twigs;
.....An all our vineyards, fallows, meads, and hedges,
Defective in their natures, grow to wildness,
Even so our houses and ourselves and children
Have lost, or do not learn for want of time,
The sciences that should become our country,
But grow like savages—as soldiers will
That nothing do but meditate on blood—
To swearing and stern looks, diffused attire,
And everything that seems unnatural.
Which to reduce into our former favour
You are assembled, and my speech entreats
That I may know the let why gentle peace
Should not expel these inconveniences
And bless us with her former qualities.

(Henry V, V.ii.33-44, 54-67)

Shakespeare's plays are replete with references to war, mostly allusions to the negative aspects of war. Thus, the symbols of war for Shakespeare are “famine, sword, and fire” (Henry V, Prologue 7), or “blood and sword and fire” (Henry V, I.ii.131). War is the “son of hell” (2 Henry VI, V.iii.33); it is “fierce and bloody” (King John, I.i.17) and “cruel” (Timon of Athens, IV.iii.60).

If speaking of the horrors of war discourages war, then Shakespeare does so most effectively, filling his text with moving references to the brutality and bloodiness of war. This remains true even in a just and patriotic war, like that of Henry V against Charles VI, as shown in the ultimatum Exeter delivers to the French King's court:

Deliver up the crown, and to take mercy
On the poor souls for whom this hungry war
Opens his vasty jaws; and on your head
Turns he the widows' tears, the orphans' cries,
The dead men's blood, the pining maidens' groans,
For husbands, fathers, and betrothèd lovers
That shall be swallowed in this controversy.

(Henry V, II. iv. 103-109)

Still worse, Henry V offers a disturbing catalogue of horrors in his speech before the walls of Harfleur, threatening retribution if Harfleur refuses to surrender, by denying quarter, resorting to mass slaughter of both civilians and combatants, including women, infants and the aged, and engaging in pillage and rape (Henry V, III.iii.84-126). In this episode, Shakespeare's Henry shows little hesitation to shed blood, which appeared to worry him greatly in his legal discussion with the Archbishop. But by now, not only has he obtained the Archbishop's imprimatur; he could also argue that an acceptance of his ultimatum would in fact save lives.

The argument against war is even more effective when it turns from general scenes describing the multitude of victims to individuals and their own special tragedies of war, such as Cassandra prophesying Hector's death:

CASSANDRA:
                                                                      O farewell, dear Hector.
Look how thou diest; look how thy eye turns pale;
Look how thy wounds do bleed at many vents.
Hark how Troy roars, how Hecuba cries out,
How poor Andromache shrills her dolours forth.
Behold: distraction, frenzy, and amazement
Like witless antics one another meet,
And all cry “Hector, Hector's dead, O Hector!”

(Troilus and Cressida, V.iii.83-90)

Perhaps the most moving passages are those describing a civil, fratricidal war in which members of the same family fight on different sides of the conflict. Shakespeare tells of a soldier who, while searching a corpse for gold coins discovers that he has unknowingly killed his father, and of a father who finds that he has unwittingly killed his only son:

(He removes the dead man's helmet)
Who's this? O God! It is my father's face
Whom in this conflict I, unwares, have killed.
O, heavy times, begetting such events!
From London by the King was I pressed forth;
My father, being the Earl of Warwick's man,
Came on the part of York, pressed by his master;
And I, who at his hands received my life,
Have by my hands of life bereavèd him.
Pardon me, God, I knew not what I did;
And pardon, father, for I knew not thee.
My tears shall wipe away these bloody marks,
And no more words till they have flowed their fill.
(He weeps)

.....

(Enter at another door another Soldier with a dead man in his arms
SECOND Soldier
(He removes the dead man's helmet)
          But let me see: is this our foeman's face?
          Ah, no, no, no—it is mine only son!
          Ah, boy, if any life be left in thee,
          Throw up thine eye!
          (Weeping)                                        See, see, what showers arise,
          Blown with the windy tempest of my heart,
          Upon thy wounds, that kills mine eye and heart!
          O, pity, God, this miserable age!
          What stratagems, how fell, how butcherly,
          Erroneous, mutinous, and unnatural,
          This deadly quarrel daily doth beget!
          O boy, thy father gave thee life too soon,
          And hath bereft thee of thy life too late!

.....

FIRST Soldier:
How will my mother for a father's death
          Take on with me, and ne'er be satisfied!
SECOND Soldier:
How will my wife for slaughter of my son
          Shed seas of tears, and ne'er be satisfied!

.....

FIRST Soldier:
Was ever son so rued a father's death?
SECOND Soldier:
Was ever father so bemoaned his son?
FIRST Soldier:
(to his father's body)
          I'll bear thee hence where I may weep my fill.
          (Exit at one door with the body of his father)
SECOND Soldier:
(to his son's body)
          These arms of mine shall be thy winding sheet;
          My heart, sweet boy, shall be thy sepulchre,
          For from my heart thine image ne'er shall go.
          My sighing breast shall be thy funeral bell,
          And so obsequious will thy father be,
          E'en for the loss of thee, having no more,
          As Priam was for all his valiant sons.
          I'll bear thee hence, and let them fight that will—
          For I have murdered where I should not kill.
          (Exit at another door with the body of his son)

(3 Henry VI, II.v.61-72, 82-93, 103-06, 109-22)

MAKING AN HONOURABLE PEACE

Medieval and Renaissance writers on the law of nations recognized the validity of treaties of peace imposed by the victor on the loser.⁶⁰ Indeed, such treaties were binding in international law until the twentieth century, when, under the aegis of the League of Nations and the United Nations, international law established important qualifications to the previously almost unlimited power of victors. Shakespeare's plays reflect such authority to dictate the terms. Alberico Gentili points out that, in reality, the victor decides which cause is just, that is, that his cause is just,⁶¹ in order to impose war expenses on the loser.⁶² Indeed, “it is the will of the victor which settles everything … [and] it is the part of him who grants peace, not of him who sues for it, to lay down the conditions.”⁶³

Shakespeare recognizes that when it comes to peace making, might is right. When the French implore the English for a general peace in 1 Henry VI, Richard of York warns that after all the losses England has suffered, peace may lead to the loss of France (1 Henry VI, V. vi. 94-112). Warwick assures Richard that

                                        [i]f we conclude a peace
It shall be with such strict and severe covenants
As little shall the Frenchmen gain thereby.

(1 Henry VI, V.vi.114-15)

Charles, the Dauphin, hardly claims to be negotiating as an equal. He comes “to be informèd by yourselves / What the conditions of that league must be” (1 Henry VI, V.vi.118-19).

Winchester lays down harsh conditions that are not regarded as negotiable, clearly voicing the threat, “[o]r we will plague thee with incessant wars” (1 Henry VI, V.vi.154). René and Alençon urge Charles to accept so as to save his subjects from a massacre. But the very harshness of the conditions imposed contains the seeds of the agreement's collapse. Shakespeare's Alençon does not leave much to the imagination:

And therefore take this compact of a truce,
Although you break it when your pleasure serves.

(1 Henry VI, V.vi.163-64)

This passage reflects, as Paul Jorgensen observed, a distinctly pessimistic picture of truces. For his dramatic purposes, Shakespeare assumes the superior situation of the English and their power to impose non-negotiable conditions; he thus departs from Holinshed, his source, who reports that the French, apparently not accepting that their condition was so inferior, did present counter-proposals.⁶⁴

In King John, the Bastard urges France and England to continue fighting until the outcome “confirm[s] the other's peace” and the possession of Angers.

Cry havoc, Kings! Back to the stainèd field,
You equal potents, fiery-kindled spirits!
Then let confusion of one part confirm
The other's peace; till then, blows, blood, and death!

(King John, II.i.357-60)

Peace negotiations are particularly detailed in Henry V. Responding to Burgundy's description of the war's ravages, Henry's courteous language does not mitigate the nature of his conditions as a brutal ultimatum:

          If, Duke of Burgundy, you would the peace
Whose want gives growth to th' imperfections
Which you have cited, you must buy that peace
With full accord to all our just demands. …

(Henry V, V.ii.68-71)

Despite the self-serving description in Shakespeare as “just,” Henry's demands went quite far. His source, Holinshed, is even more explicit, citing Henry V telling Burgundy, during the negotiations at Meulan, that “we will have your kings daughter, and all things that we demand with hir, or will drive your king and you out of his realme.”⁶⁵ The Treaty of Troyes (1420) would describe Henry as Charles's son and the heir of France, thus changing the order of succession; he would marry Catherine, the Valois princess, and secure the inheritance to a Plantagenet-Valois line. The treaty would designate Henry as the regent of France, so as to govern France as of the date of the treaty, but he would refrain from using the title of the King of France until Charles's death.⁶⁶ To deter violations, the French lords, communities and subjects were to take an oath to observe the treaty and its provisions for the governance of France. Breaches would be regarded as the supreme crime of lèse-majesté. The play describes the situation faithfully:

KING Harry:
Prepare we for our marriage. On which day,
My lord of Burgundy, we'll take your oath,
And all the peers', for surety of our leagues.
Then shall I swear to Kate, and you to me,
And may our oaths well kept and prosp'rous be.

(Henry V, V.ii.365-69)

Of course, the fragility of such oaths is obvious. An excessive and harsh treaty could not survive the pressures of French nationalist sentiments, the rise of Charles VII and Joan of Arc's rallying of the French in 1429.

Gentili wisely alludes to the limitations of oaths and agreements, anticipating the fate of, for example, the Treaty of Versailles:

The worst of all sureties is an oath. Hence it is that Augustus says: ‘Things which are done spontaneously are observed without the obligation of an oath; but those which are done unwillingly are not observed though pledged by a thousand oaths.’⁶⁷

A peace treaty that treats both parties honourably has the best prospects of survival. The ill-fated Archbishop of York eloquently states:

A peace is of the nature of a conquest,
For then both parties nobly are subdued,
And neither party loser.

(2 Henry IV, IV.i.315-17)

CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS

The view that Shakespeare was, or became a pacifist, is contested by some critics, Paul Jorgensen, for example.⁶⁸ Although Shakespeare's characters express a wide range of views, in my opinion, the evidence largely supports a pacifist preference. I find persuasive Steven Marx's argument showing an important evolution in Shakespeare's attitude to war and peace from, essentially, the first tetralogy where the heroic depiction of war in the Henry VI plays (consider the Talbots, for example) combined with Francophobia to serve the patriotic cause of Tudor (Elizabeth's) wars, to pacifist scepticism of the second tetralogy.⁶⁹ Of course, even in the first tetralogy, critical treatments of war can be found. In the second tetralogy, however, they are far more prominent. The Henry IV plays (1598-1600), focused on internal wars, present Falstaff's mockery of martial honour, Hotspur's exaggerated sense of it,⁷⁰ and highlight the horrors of a fratricidal war which appeared already in Henry VI plays (1592-95). Consider also the debunking of the war's justification in Henry V (1599), that play's demonstration of the war's cruelty and bloodshed, the sarcastic greed-based description of the quarter for ransom transaction (Pistol), and the showing of the war's eventual futility. Troilus and Cressida (1602-1603), a decidedly anti-war play, coincided with the accession to the throne of the pacifist James Stuart.⁷¹ Undoubtedly, the humanist pacifism of Erasmus and More must also have played a role.⁷² In Troilus, war was reduced from the epic to the satiric, and from chivalric to the simply bloody and chaotic.⁷³ In Troilus, war was no longer a corrective for an imperfect peace. It was a senseless slaughter destined for an annihilation of Troy.

Notes

1. Saint Augustine, City of God XXXX(7), XIX(12) (first published 1467, Henry Bettenson trans., 1972).

2. Philippe Contamine, War in the Midde Ages 263 (1984).

3. Id. at 264-65.

4. Maurice Keen, Chivalry 44-50 (1984).

5. Malcolm Vale, War and Chivalry 8-9 (1981), citing Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens.

6. Contamine, supra note 2, at 265-66.

7. M. H. Keen, “Chivalry, Nobility and the Man-at-Arms,” in War, Literature and Politics in the Late Middle Ages 40-44 (C. T. Allmand ed., 1976).

8. Johan Huizinga, The Autumn of the Middle Ages 81 (Rodney J. Payton & Ulrich Mammitzsch trans., 1996) (emphasis added).

9. Giovanni da Legnano, Tractatus de bello, de represaliis et de duello (James Brierly trans., Thomas Erskine Holland ed., 1917). Giovanni da Legnano completed his work in 1360, but it was published in 1477 and in the better-known editions of 1487 and 1584.

10. Id. at 224.

11. Id.

12. Id. at 224-31.

13. Arthur B. Ferguson, The Indian Summer of English Chivalry 175 (1960).

14. Honoré Bouvet (Bonet), The Tree of Battles 192 (G. W. Coopland ed., 1949). This is a translation of the Ernest Nys edition of 1883.

15. Id. at 125.

16. Id.

17. Id.

18. Id.

19. Christine de Pisan, The Book of Fayttes of Armes and of Chyvalrye 10 (William Caxton trans., 1489, A. T. P. Byles ed., 1932).

20. Maurice H. Keen, The Laws of War in the Late Middle Ages 9 (1965).

21. Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Question 40 on War 83 (Blackfriars ed. 1972).

22. Robert P. Adams, The Better Part of Valor: More, Erasmus, Colet, and Vives, on Humanism, War, and Peace 1496-1535, at 100-17 (1962).

23. Franciscus de Vitoria, De Indis et de iure belli relectiones 174 (John Pawley Bate trans., Ernest Nys ed., 1917). These lectures were first published posthumously in 1557.

24. Id. at 173.

25. Contamine, supra note 2, at 285. Regarding Charles V's consultations with the estates and jurists to ensure that he had just cause to resume the war, see Christine de Pisan, supra note 19, at 17.

26. Contamine, supra note 2, at 284.

27. Theodor Meron, Henry's Wars and Shakespeare's Laws 21 (1993).

28. Christine de Pisan, supra note 19, at 13.

29. Vitoria, supra note 23, at 173-74.

30. J. H. Hexter, The Vision of Politics on the Eve of the Reformation 82-93 (1973)

31. For a further discussion of the role of courtiers in Shakespeare, see Chapter 9.

32. Christine de Pisan, supra note 19, at 13.

33. Michael Powicke, Military Obligation in Medieval England 232, 242-43, 250 (1962).

34. Paul C. Jorgensen, Shakespeare's Military World 180 (1956).

35. On the medieval requirement of declaring war, see Keen, supra note 20, at 70, 72; Bouvet, supra note 14, at 128-29; Christine de Pisan, supra note 19, at 13, Giovanni da Legnano, supra note 9, at 232-34, chs. 13-16. See also George Keeton, Shakespeare's Legal and Political Background 89 (1967); George Keeton, Shakespeare and His Legal Problems 72-73 (1930).

36. Christine de Pisan, supra note 19, at 13.

37. Francisco Suárez, Selections from Three Works 816 (Gwladys L. Williams, Ammi Brown & John Waldron eds. & trans., Carnegie ed. 1944). De legibus, ac deo legislatore, a treatise on Law and God the Legislator, was published in 1612; Defensio Fidei Catholicae ed Apostolicae Adversus Anglicanai Sectae Errores was published in 1613; and De Triplici virtute theologica, fide, spe, et charitate, The Three Theological Virtues, Faith, Hope, and Charity, which focused on the law of war, was published posthumously in 1621.

38. Id.

39. In Henry V, the French herald Montjoy defies Henry on behalf of Charles VI: “To this add defiance, and tell him for conclusion he hath betrayed his followers, whose condemnation is pronounced” (Henry V, III.vi.132-35).

40. Edward Hall, Hall's Chronicle: Containing the History of England, during the Reign of Henry the Fourth, and the Succeeding Monarchs, to the End of the Reign of Henry the Eighth 57 (1809, repr. 1965.) This edition collates the editions of 1548 and 1550. Original title: The Union of Two Noble and Illustre Famelies of Lancastre and Yorke (1548).

41. Vitoria, supra note 23, at 171.

42. Id. at 173.

43. Katharine Eisaman Maus, Henry V, in the Norton Shakespeare 1445 (Stephen Greenblatt gen. ed., Walter Cohen, Jean E. Howard & Katharine Eisaman Maus eds., 1997).

44. Other examples include the following: in 1 Henry IV, Hotspur both assures his followers and reassures himself, saying, “Now for our consciences: the arms are fair / when the intent of bearing them is just” (1 Henry IV, V.ii.87-88). Henry VI declares:

    What stronger breastplate than a heart untainted?
    Thrice is he armed that hath his quarrel just;
    And he but naked, though locked up in steel,
    Whose conscience with injustice is corrupted.

    (2 Henry VI, III.ii.232-35).

    Similarly, Queen Margaret urges her troops on against Edward's army, saying, “you fight in justice; then in God's name, lords, be valiant, and give signal to the fight” (3 Henry VI, V.iv.81-82). Pompey also relies on divine assistance, remarking that “if the great gods be just, they shall assist the deeds of justest men” (Antony and Cleopatra, II.i.1-2).

45. Contamine, supra note 2, at 266.

46. Bouvet, supra note 14, at 156-57. See also Saint Augustine, supra note 1, at V(21)-(22).

47. Balthazar Ayala, De jure et officiis bellicis et disciplina militari libri III 23 (John Pawley Bate trans., John Westlake ed., 1912).

48. Keen, supra note 20, at 71.

49. Meron, supra note 27, at 39, n.88, citing William Safire, Freedom 787 (1987) (emphasis in the original).

50. Alberico Gentili, De iure belli libri tres 32 (John C. Rolfe ed. and trans., 1933).

51. Id.

52. Id., at 485. These developments, while tending towards a broader legalization of the recourse to war, jus ad bellum, also had the positive effect of enlarging the list of those entitled to combatants' privileges under the law of nations, thus paving the way for modern humanitarian law's important principle of extending its protective umbrella to all those involved in war, jus in bello, regardless of its justness. See also Meron, supra note 27, at 10.

53. Id. at 192-93.

54. Gentili, supra note 50. Note, however, that Alberico Gentili advocates a broader concept of self-defence, not limited by necessity or proportionality. Id. at 58-59.

55. Hugo Grotius, De jure belli ac pacis libri tres 575-76 (Francis Kelsey trans., Carnegie ed. 1925). This edition is a translation of the 1646 edition rather than the first edition of 1625.

56. Suárez, supra note 37, at 816.

57. Vitoria, supra note 23, at 171.

58. Oscar Schachter, United Nations Law in the Gulf Conflict, 85 Am. J. Int'l L. 452, 460 (1991).

59. Charles T. Wood, The Age of Chivalry 55 (1970).

60. Theodor Meron, The Authority to Make Treaties in the Late Middle Ages, 89 Am. J. Int'l L. 1, 17 (1995).

61. Gentili, supra note 50, at 299.

62. Id. at 298-302.

63. Id. at 353.

64. W.G. Boswell-Stone, Shakespeare's Holinshed: The Chronicle and the Plays Compared 240 (1968).

65. Id. at 200-201.

66. Meron, supra note 27, at 182-84.

67. Gentili, supra note 50, at 356.

68. Supra note 34 at 197.

69. Steven Marx, Shakespeare's Pacifism, 65 Renaissance Quarterly 49 (No. 1, Spring 1992).

70. Id. at 65.

71. Id. at 59, 61

72. See generally, Dominic Baker-Smith, Moore's Utopia 59, 106 (1991).

73. Marx, supra note 69, at 70-71.