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Shakespeare's Dionysian Prince: Drama, Politics, and the "Athenian" History Play

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Grace Tiffany
Grace Tiffany*
Affiliation:
Western Michigan University
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Abstract

This essay argues that Shakespeare drew on Plutarch's and Plato's representations of the Greek general Alcibiades in his representation of Prince Hal/King Henry V, and on classical and Renaissance representations of Socrates for his representation of Prince Hal's "tutor," Falstaff. Crucial to Shakespeare's adaption of these classical "characters" were the writings of Erasmus and Rabelais, which represented Socrates as both sophist and jovial Silenus. Shakespeare was also influenced by the association Symposium makes between Alcibiades and Dionysus, god of wine and of the theater. Consequently Hal/Henry emerges as a Dionysian Alcibiades, trained in sophistry by his Silenic Socrates, Falstaff, and able to dazzle his subjects with mystical rhetoric and to convert war to Dionysian play.

Type
Studies
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 52 , Issue 2 , Summer 1999 , pp. 366 - 383
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1999

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