Document Type

Article

Publication Title

Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities

Abstract

To speak of justice in Shakespeare's plays without speaking of the sovereign may seem like playing Hamlet without the Prince. In Shakespeare's time, the sovereign was the ultimate symbolic source of justice, as seen in the iconographic conflation of Queen Elizabeth I with Astraea, the goddess of Justice.(FN1) Perhaps Shakespeare's deepest meditation on what makes a just ruler lies in the four plays scholars have dubbed the Henriad (Richard II;(FN2) Henry IV, Part I;(FN3) Henry IV, Part 2;(FN4) and Henry V(FN5)). In these plays, we follow the development of the dissolute youth Prince Hal as he matures into the paradigmatic good ruler, Henry V.

First Page

417

Volume

22

Publication Date

2010

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