‘The Disciplines of War’: Elizabethan War Manuals and Shakespeare’s Tragicomic Vision

Abstract

A Welshman and an Irishman violently disagree about the strategic objectives of an English army as it lays siege to Harfleur in support of the English king’s claim to the throne of France. These convoluted international circumstances still retain their explosive resonance. Setting out the ‘disciplines of war’ as expressed in the deluge of war manuals that poured off the presses in London at the end of the sixteenth century is therefore evidently not the end, although it is a start. Those books included editions and translations of classical literature and war manuals, treatises on fortification and weapons handling, as well as accounts of the causes and progress of contemporary conflicts. All have a political agenda, preparing the English, both practically and emotionally, for war, whether in defence of their country’s boundaries or as support for the Protestant cause abroad. 2 These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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