On The Thought Of Shakespeare's Kingship

William Shakespeare(1564—1616),who was a poet,playwright,actor and the center of Western classics.At the same time,he is also one of the greatest political philosophers in the grand tradition of Western political thought.Shakespeare often shows his identity as a writer.His works are considered to be “worldly Bibles”.The public were always astonished by his superb writing skills,while the rich political and legal ideas in his work are often underestimated or even ignored.The discussion about where king's power comes from and how it should be used is the core of the British political and legal thought history.Shakespeare's history play is based on true events which are about the change of the royal family in ancient England and the dynasty war.These plays are about the kingship.Those kings and queens weren't just ruling England.They were creating it.Standing on the intersection of medieval and modern time,two types of Kings were in the eyes of Shakespeare.In the Principe,Machiavelli created a monarch who was completely ignorant of morality,while in The Education of a Christian Prince,Erasmus created a perfect Christian monarch.The former emphasizes the monarch's morality in public however the latter emphasizes the king's morality in private.Different from the above,the king who produced by Shakespeare seems to stand opposite the perfect Christian king,meanwhile they can't be a Machiavellianism cause they are both tired of their destiny.In his historical drama,the pictures we can get are chaotic and disorderly.The biggest themes are unsuccessful foreign wars and fears of domestic civil war.As a unique historical phenomenon in British history and an integral part of the British polity,kingship in Shakespeare's play is always surrounded by conspiracy,assassination,usurpation of violent and mysterious atmosphere,competing with multiple forces,and surging up and down with violence and machine movements..Shakespeare's plays spanned the Elizabeth Dynasty and the Stuart Dynasty.In earlier period,he described the king of England's history,and later he borrowed the image of a foreign monarch.These monarchs conclude the tyrant and the wise.Henry IV was an important king in the history of England.He used the power of Parliament to compel Richard II to abdicate and thus created the House of Lancaster.However,in the text of Henry IV,the king is no longer the leading actor,as a representative of the British public,Falstaff went tothe center of the stage.In this play,it hides the common law and parliamentary traditions that Western scholars are proud of and pay more attention to the order and the civil war.It talked about usurper king and rebellious aristocrat,the lost chivalry and the surging public opinion.This essay intends to interpret Shakespeare as a serious political thinker by interpreting the writing background and textual content of Henry IV,to explore his true views on kingship and the image of the ideal king from those traditions that have been overlooked by him.This paper is divided into three parts:The first part is about Shakespeare and his times.This part briefly outlines the life of Shakespeare,the background of the birth of Shakespeare's work is mainly introduced.On the intersection of Medieval and modern times,Shakespeare is facing the feudalism recession of the knight system collapse.The rise of the Renaissance movement that led to the departure of religion from public life;the King became the symbol of the country,the shape of an absolutist county has already.All of these have formed the external background of Shakespeare's plays.The second part is about Henry IV as a historical play.The focus of this part is to introduce the materials that Shakespeare learned and absorbed in the process of the creation of his play.A material that contains literary,dramatic,and ideological.On the other hand,the image of Shakespeare's kingship is also described.Shakespeare's historical play was deeply influenced by the morality play.At the same time,in addition to Machiavelli and Erasmus,Shakespeare created another type of a king from historical drama to tragedy,from Henry IV to King Lear.The third part is about the conception of Shakespeare's kingship.It's the focus of this prose,combined with the text of Henry IV,mainly from the three aspects of Shakespeare's concept of kingship.The first part is about the king's two bodies.Shakespeare depicts “a personality,two bodies” image of medieval king in his work which has a profound political background.In section second,the common law is ignored.The reason why the kingship is not restricted by common law.In section third,the writer talks about the real limit of the kingship The power of the church,the citizens are not enough to limit the formation of force on the throne,in the works of Shakespeare,the mercenary magnates formed a true weight restrictions on kingship.