Shakespeare's Military World

Shakespeare’s Military World by Paul A. Jorgensen offers a penetrating study of how Shakespeare imagined and dramatized the life of war. Rather than focusing only on battles staged in the theater, Jorgensen explores the full breadth of Shakespeare’s military imagination—from the music of war and the hierarchy of ranks to the plight of common soldiers, the ideals of discipline, and the tensions between war and peace. Drawing deeply on Renaissance military treatises and contemporary debates, the book situates Shakespeare’s depictions of soldiers, armies, and strategy within the Elizabethan understanding of warfare, showing how the playwright reworked classical and contemporary sources alike to shape his characters and themes.

This study illuminates Shakespeare’s world by showing how the realities and metaphors of military life informed his plays across genres. Jorgensen traces how Shakespeare’s conception of war extended beyond literal battles to encompass broader cultural concerns—disorder and order, authority and insubordination, the soldier’s role in society, and the uneasy relation between martial glory and human cost. By treating war as both lived experience and imaginative framework, Shakespeare’s Military World offers scholars and students a compelling lens through which to view the histories, tragedies, and even comedies, grounding Shakespeare’s artistry in the military ideas of his time.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1973.