A Critical Insight into Shakespeare’s Political Plays

Abstract

There are many ways to approach Shakespeare’s plays. One can study his genius as a poet, one can analyse his skills as a dramatist and one can explore the many insights into the nature of the human condition that Shakespeare’s plays embody, his reflections on such universal human concerns as love, marriage, friendship, the family, ageing and death. This paper concentrates on the subject of Shakespeare and politics. His thinking about political subjects affects his understanding of all aspects of human life. His ten history plays concentrate on political matters dealing as they do with the variety of English kings they raise a whole series of political issues. Shakespeare is concerned only with the issues that preoccupied his contemporaries. He was forced to operate within political categories that he observed from his immediate intellectual environment.