© 2000 by Oxford University Press
Swearing and forswearing in Shakespeare's histories: the playwright as contra-Machiavel
University of Hull, UK
Shakespeare's obsession with swearing and forswearing is most conspicuous in his English histories. It was prompted by his chronicle sources, where an epidemic of Yorkist-Lancastrian perjury reflects a disintegrating social order. But Shakespeare greatly emphasized this aspect of his sources, partly because it crystallized much of the malaise and anguish of his own century; and partly too because it focused attention on Machiavelli's notorious defence of expedient perfidy. The Succession and Supremacy oaths, and the inquisitional ex officio oath, width their ruthless penalties for non-compliance, sought to impose unity on a divided nation, but had the effects of debasing the oath, generating cynicism about all claims to truth, faith, and honour, and producing what one Elizabethan called 'a Machiavellian State and Governance'. These effects are dramatized with growing sophistication from Henry VI through to Richard II and Henry IV, their connection with the religio-political history of Tudor England being foregrounded in King John. Shakespeare shows that expedient treachery never works to the benefit of prince or commonwealth, but only makes a bad situation worse, producing bitterness, instability, and violence. And in is contrasting delineation of Henry IV, who 'broke oath on oath', and of Hal, the 'Prince...who never promithes but he means to pay', he endorses the humanists' conception of truth as the basis of justice and social order and a prerequisite for effective leadership.