Mendacity and Kingship in Shakespeare’sHenry VandRichard III

Abstract

Shakespeare’s Henry V and Richard III both practise mendacity, but while Henry V celebrates Henry’s capacity for deceit, the king’s lies are condemned in Richard III. The plays show how similar patterns of behaviour in early modern England could be represented as either virtuous or evil by means of rhetoric, while the similar behaviour of the two kings suggests a broad awareness of the necessity of deceit as a political skill. These two plays also draw attention to their own rhetorical distortions in ways which have appeared troubling to many modern critics, but which exemplify humanist ideas about education through rhetorical ‘lies’.

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