About the lecture

In this module, we think about the political landscape of Shakespeare’s day, focusing on: (i) the differences between Elizabethan England and the English bureaucratic state today, (ii) arguments over a monarch’s right to rule, (iii) dispelling the popular myth that the ‘divine right of kings’ was a medieval belief, (iv) Shakespeare and his contemporaries’ concern with deposing monarchs, for example in the tract Vindiciae Contra Tyrranos (1597) and (v) the question of whether tyranny or civil war was worse.

About the lecturer

Professor Andrew Hadfield is Professor of English at the University of Sussex. His research and teaching focuses on Early Modern Literature. His publications include Lying in early modern English culture: From the oath of supremacy to the oath of allegiance (2017) and Shakespeare and Republicanism (2005).