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Sport, War, and Contest in Shakespeare's Henry VI*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Gregory M. Colón Semenza
Gregory M. Colón Semenza*
Affiliation:
The University of Connecticut
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Abstract

Whereas sport had been justified since antiquity for providing soldiers with the physical training they would require in battle, its utilitarian function waned with the English military's gradual adaptation of firearms during the Renaissance. As a result, sports were increasingly condemned as idle and superfluous phenomena — nothing more than futile competitions between men. In Shakespeare's Henry VI, sport figures as a metaphor for war itself, also condemnable as a result of the historical shift from the politics of chivalric idealism to the “politics of reality.” Throughout the trilogy, Shakespeare indicts modern warfare as mere sport for ambitious and corrupt nobles.

Type
Studies
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 54 , Issue 4-Part1 , Winter 2001 , pp. 1251 - 1272
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 2001

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