With so many high-toned writers these days recommending a return to the warlike "wisdom" of classical thinkers and their Renaissance interpreters, it is worth our while to look at other points of view. In an interesting essay entitled "Shakespeare's Pacifism," Professor Steven Marx writes that Renaissance Humanist writers were keenly interested in issues of war and peace. Sustained debate arose between "martial vs. irenic — that is militarist vs. pacifist" values.1 On the one side were Caxton, Guiccardini, and Machiavelli; on the other, Sir Thomas More, Juan Vives, and Desiderius Erasmus. In Marx's view, the differences between Shakespeare's Henry V … Continue reading Shakespeare, War, and Peace