This chapter introduces the most significant aspects of Thucydidean interpretation in the Renaissance and Reformation. It outlines key developments in the accessibility of the text (through knowledge of Greek and through translation into Latin and other European languages). It also analyses a number of key responses to the work. These include the group centred around Philipp Melanchthon, who saw Thucydides as a source of both rhetorical and moral lessons; Calvinist readings, which enlisted Thucydides to rebut Machiavelli’s views on statecraft; Grotius, who appealed to Thucydides in formulating his theory of Just War; and Thomas Hobbes’ influential translation of the text.

Chapter 13 assesses the changes in understanding of justification within Lutheranism between 1516 to 1580, noting in particular the growing influence of Melanchthon’s forensic understanding of justification on the shaping of the Wittenberg movement’s approach to ʻjustification by faith alone’. The chapter highlights some divergences in early Lutheranism, and tracks the growing convergence within the movement around a forensic doctrine of justification through an imputed righteousness, reflecting the increasing theological authority of Melanchthon during this period. Justification was now identified as the divine act of acceptance of an individual as righteous, followed by the process of sanctification, through which that individual became righteous. After considering the theology of justification set out in the Augsburg Confession and its apology, the chapter concludes by focussing on the consolidation of a distinctively Lutheran approach in the Formula of Concord, noting how this aimed to resolve some significant debates within Lutheranism around this time.

The tradition that Hamlet is Shakespeare’s mouthpiece: almost universally accepted for reasons of tradition and prejudice towards the class and education of the princely speaker. The Player’s speech: a successful exercise in using Virgil to express emotion, as recommended by Quintilian. Hamlet’s advice: drawing essentially from Quintilian. The play-within-a-play: risibly poor dramaturgy, a display of dialectic rather than rhetoric, well suited to ensuring that Claudius is moved by the facts rather than by the fiction of the play. The pay-off: Hamlet as clown. In this chapter, I map a tension between two ideals of performance: moving the emotions of an audience versus an accurate mimesis of reality.