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Sine Dolore: Relative Painlessness in Shakespeare’s Laughter at War

Derrin, Daniel

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Abstract

How do we understand Shakespeare’s invitation to laugh in the context of war? Previous critical accounts have offered too simple a view: that laughter undercuts military ideals. Instead, this essay draws on the Aristotelian description of the laughable ‘deformity’ and Plato’s description of laughable ignorance in order to characterize Shakespeare’s laughter in the context of war more carefully as an expression of ‘relative painlessness’. It discusses how the fraught amusement of Coriolanus (Coriolanus), the reciprocality of Falstaff and Hotspur as laughable military failures (1 Henry IV), and the laughter of Bertram at Paroles (All’s Well that Ends Well) each engage with an ancient philosophical conundrum articulated poignantly by St Augustine: the requirement that a Christian civilization engage in war to defend itself against honour-obsessed aggressors without turning into a like aggressor itself. Shakespeare’s laughter at war enacts the desire for that balance.

Citation

Derrin, D. (2018). Sine Dolore: Relative Painlessness in Shakespeare’s Laughter at War. Critical Survey, 30(1), 81-97. https://doi.org/10.3167/cs.2018.300106

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Jan 5, 2017
Online Publication Date Mar 1, 2018
Publication Date Mar 1, 2018
Deposit Date Jan 26, 2017
Publicly Available Date Mar 1, 2020
Journal Critical Survey: Reading in Early Modern England
Print ISSN 0011-1570
Electronic ISSN 1752-2293
Publisher Berghahn Journals
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 30
Issue 1
Pages 81-97
DOI https://doi.org/10.3167/cs.2018.300106

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Copyright Statement
This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedited version of an article published in Critical survey. The definitive publisher-authenticated version Derrin, Daniel (2018). Sine Dolore: Relative Painlessness in Shakespeare’s Laughter at War. Critical Survey will be available online at: https://doi.org/10.3167/cs.2018.300106




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