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Shakespeare: A Dove, a Hawk, or Simply a Humanist?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2018

Theodor Meron
Theodor Meron*
Affiliation:
Judge and President of the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals; past Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Journal; and past Honorary President of the American Society of International Law.
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Extract

For readers whose first introduction to Shakespeare was through the widely seen film Henry V by Laurence Olivier, it is not surprising that Shakespeare was regarded as a patriotic, nationalistic and militaristic, rather pro-war playwright. Olivier's Henry V, as Ton Hoenselaars points out in his “Out-Ranting the Enemy Leader”: Henry V and/as World War II Propaganda, was entrenched in the British propaganda effort even before the thought of the film version of the war epic had occurred. Indeed, the film resulted from an invitation to produce it for the Churchill government. According to William Shaw, Olivier's film produced uplifting, patriotic propaganda for a war-weary England. It was the first Shakespeare play produced in Technicolor.

Type
Notes and Comments
Information
American Journal of International Law , Volume 111 , Issue 4 , October 2017 , pp. 936 - 956
Copyright
Copyright © 2018 by The American Society of International Law 

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References

1 The Chronicle History of King Henry the Fifth with His Battell Fought at Agincourt in France (Two Cities Films 1944, directed by Laurence Olivier).

2 Hoenselaars, Ton, Out-Ranting the Enemy Leader: Henry V and/as World War II Propaganda, in Configuring Romanticism: Essays Offered to C.C. Barfoot 215, 218 (D'Haen, Theo, Liebregts, Peter, Tigges, Wim & Ewen, Colin eds., 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Id. at 219.

4 Shaw, William P., Textual Ambiguities and Cinematic Certainties in Henry V, 22 Literature Film Q. 117, 121 (1994)Google Scholar.

5 Schmitt, Howard, “Jumping O'er Times”: Diachronic Design in Olivier's Henry V, 9 J. Wooden O Symp. 81, 88 (2009)Google Scholar.

6 Bruce Eder, Henry V, Criterion Collection (June 21, 1999), at https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/49-henry-v.

7 Deats, Sara Munson, Rabbits and Ducks: Olivier, Branagh and Henry V, 20 Literature Film Q. 284, 285 (1992)Google Scholar.

8 See generally Shaw, supra note 4.

9 Munson Deats, supra note 7, at 288.

10 Henry V (Renaissance Films in association with the BBC and Curzon Film 1989, directed by Kenneth Branagh).

11 Shaw, supra note 4, at 121.

12 Munson Deats, supra note 7, at 290.

13 Id.

14 All citations of the canon are to William Shakespeare, The Complete Works (Stanley Wells & Gary Taylor eds., 1998). References are to act, scene, and line.

15 Pacifism is a term that may be used to refer to a range of attitudes in relation to the rejection of war and warfare. For some, pacifism refers to a rejection of war and participation therein on the grounds that it is a moral wrong. For others, it may be used to evince a rejection of intentional killing altogether or simply an embrace of non-violence and related advocacy. Notably, while pacifism and just war theory may both find their roots in moral philosophy, unlike pacifism, just war theory may determine not only certain wars to be morally justified but participation therein to be a moral requirement. See Hawk, William J., Pacifism , in The International Encyclopedia of Ethics 3771–82 (LaFollette, Hugh ed., 2013)Google Scholar.

16 Paul A. Jorgensen, Shakespeare's Military World 197 (1956).

17 Marx, Steven, Shakespeare's Pacifism , 45 Renaissance Q. 49, 50 (1992)Google Scholar.

18 Id. at 59, 64, 89.

19 Robert S. White, Pacifism and English Literature: Minstrels of Peace 135 (2008).

20 Id.

21 Id. at 143.

22 Id. at 145.

23 Id. at 143.

24 Shakespeare, The Complete Works, supra note 14. The dates of plays refer to the believed first performance of the enumerated plays. As there are often no records of the first performance and many plays were only published years after the believed first performance, many of those dates are estimates, see, e.g., id. at 183, concerning Richard III.

25 Theodor Meron, Bloody Constraint 18 (1998).

26 Id.

27 See generally Theodor Meron, Henry's Wars and Shakespeare's Laws 2–4 (1993), and authorities cited therein.

28 Meron, Bloody Constraint, supra note 25, at 27, 28. Some four hundred years after Shakespeare's Histories, questions about the justification for and conduct of war continue to be discussed and debated. For a discussion of modern jus ad bellum, see generally Olivier Corten, The Law Against War (2010); Christine Gray, International Law and the Use of Force (2008). For a discussion of the jus in bello, see generally Yoram Dinstein, The Conduct of Hostilities Under The Law of International Armed Conflict (2016). These are not merely philosophical debates, as the recent tensions between North Korea and the U.S. government and the coverage thereof suggests. See, e.g., Rick Gladstone, If U.S. Attacks North Korea First, Is That Self-Defence?, N.Y. Times (Aug. 10, 2017) at https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/10/world/asia/us-north-korea-preemptive-attack-questions-answers.html.

29 Compare, e.g., King Harry's speech in Henry V, stating that “there be nothing compelled from the villages, nothing taken but paid for” (III.vi.110–11) with Hague Convention (IV) Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land and Its Annex: Regulations Concerning the Laws and Customs of War on Land, Arts. 47, 52, Oct. 18, 1907, 36 Stat. 2277, 1 Bevans 631, prohibiting pillage and requiring that contributions by inhabitants of occupied territories to the occupying army be compensated. Compare also Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War (Geneva Convention III), Art. 12, Aug. 12, 1949, 6 UST 3316, TIAS No. 3364, 75 UNTS 135, with the debate between Henry IV and Hotspur over prisoners of war (1 Henry IV, I.i and I.iii). See generally Meron, Henry's Wars and Shakespeare's Laws, supra note 27, at 66.

30 Meron, Bloody Constraint, supra note 25, at 5.

31 Id. The requirement of giving quarter is still as pertinent today as it was in Shakespeare's time, and its violation may be found listed as a war crime in Article 8 of the Rome Statute for armed conflicts of both an international and a non-international character. See Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, Arts. 8(2)(b)(vi), 8(2)(b)(xii), 8(2)(e)(x), July 17, 1998, 2187 UNTS 90.

32 Meron, Bloody Constraint, supra note 25, at 5.

33 Meron, Henry's Wars and Shakespeare's Laws, supra note 27, at 8.

34 Meron, Bloody Constraint, supra note 25, at 7.

35 See Meron, Henry's Wars and Shakespeare's Laws, supra note 27, at 8–13, and authorities cited therein.

36 Id. at 9.

37 Id.

38 See Meron, Henry's Wars and Shakespeare's Laws, supra note 27, at 9, 19–40, and authorities cited therein.

39 Id. at 34–40.

40 See generally Meron, Bloody Constraint, supra note 25, at 17–20, and authorities cited therein.

41 Id. at 37, and authorities cited therein.

42 See generally Meron, Henry's Wars and Shakespeare's Laws, supra note 27, at 47–52, and authorities cited therein.

43 Id. at 48.

44 Id.

45 See Meron, Bloody Constraint, supra note 25, at 16–17, and authorities cited therein.

46 Id. at 16, and authorities cited therein.

47 Id. at 17.

48 Id., and authorities cited therein.

49 Meron, Henry's Wars and Shakespeare's Laws, supra note 27, at 47–49.

50 Id. at 75–77.

51 Id. at 154–71.

52 Id. at 50.

53 Id. at 38–41.

54 As one leading treatise from the sixteenth century noted, as “a king is not by himself capable of examining … the causes of a war” he might make a mistake that could cause “ruin to multitudes” and legal advisors had therefore a duty to consult “the good and wise and those who speak with freedom and without anger or bitterness.” See Meron, Bloody Constraint, supra note 25, at 22–25, quoting Franciscus De Vitoria, De Indis et De Iure Belli Relectiones 174 (Ernest Nys ed., 1917).

55 See generally Meron, Bloody Constraint, supra note 25, at 24.

56 Munson Deats, supra note 7, at 286.

57 Shaw, supra note 4, at 120.

58 Id. at 122.

59 James I, The Workes of the Most High and Mightie Prince, Iames, by the Grace of God, King of Great Britaine, France and Ireland, Defender of the Faith 486–87 (1616), available at https://archive.org/details/workesofmosthigh00jame, cited in Marx, supra note 17, at 58.

60 Marx, supra note 17, at 70–71.

61 I acknowledge that the term “hurt” is ambiguous here: While some argue that the term relates to the relationship between lovers only, it is also accepted that the term may refer to physical violence in general, an interpretation that permits a reading in the context of war-like violence. This reading is supported by the fact that analogies have been drawn between amorous pain and battlefield pain for such a long time that it has evolved into a so-called dead metaphor.

62 Shakespeare's emphasis on mercy reflects his deep-rooted humanism, presaging by several centuries the focus of today's law of armed conflict on humanitarian aims. For a general discussion of the evolution of the humanitarian pillar of international humanitarian law, see Alexander, Amanda, A Short History of International Humanitarian Law , 26 Eur. J. Int'l L. 109, 117–26 (2015)Google Scholar; Droege, Cordula, Elective Affinities? Human Rights and Humanitarian Law , 90 Int'l Rev. Red Cross , 501, 503–07 (2008)Google Scholar; Meron, Theodor, Humanization of Humanitarian Law , 94 AJIL 239–78 (2000)Google Scholar.

63 Meron, Henry's Wars and Shakespeare's Laws, supra note 27, at 79.