AL Rowse counted some 25 references to the Cain and Abel story in Shakespeare’s plays. As You Like It has two – Duke Senior and Frederick, Oliver and Orlando. And there’s Hamlet Sr and Claudius, Edgar and Edmund, Prospero and his usurping brother. Not to mention all the brother-like rivalries that dot the plays – Laertes and Hamlet, Hotspur and Hal, Demetrius and Lysander, Valentine and Proteus.
Girard may be right: Shakespeare was an Elizabethan Girardian.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
Moral Certitude and the Iran War
The current military engagement with Iran calls renewed attention to just war theory in the Catholic tradition.…
The Slow Death of England: New and Notable Books
The fate of England is much in the news as popular resistance to mass immigration grows, limits…
Ethics of Rhetoric in Times of War
What we say matters. And the way we say it matters. This is especially true in times…
