| William Shakespeare’s plays and poems tell a particular story about politics and political philosophy: the rise of modern secular nationalism.It covers many different social and political phenomena,in a nutshell: the epochal reassessment of traditional values,including the decline in the political legitimacy of the warrior,the breakdown of strict hierarchies,and the rise of the state as a specialized domain for utilitarian and secular purposes.In his work,Shakespeare shows that apolitical or supra-political ethics failed in the war against the city-state,empire,republic and state.Shakespeare’s description of ancient Greek and Roman politics,to a certain extent,participated in the beginning of modernity.This paper includes introduction,text and conclusion.The text is divided into three chapters:The first chapter mainly introduces the epochal reassessment of ancient traditional values in Shakespeare’s Roman plays.Shakespeare’s pagan world declined in a way because its supposed values could not withstand the scrutiny of the critical rationalism preached by philosophical spokesmen.Ulysses’ rationalistic assessment of traditional Homeric values,though intended to serve hierarchical and collectivist goals,has led to its own negation.From Greece to Rome,new values emerged: civic virtue,the will of the masses.This was manifested in the early days of the Roman republic as a decline in the political legitimacy of the soldiers;In the late period of the republic,there was a historic transition from public to individual,from reason to love.The second chapter mainly introduces the collision between different political systems presented in Shakespeare’s Roman plays.From the early days of the Roman republic,to the dissolution of the republic and the birth of the empire,in the whole process,there have many problems,such as the establishment of the tribune,the imperfect of the democracy and the corruption of the republic.By revealing the intricate relationship between democracy and tyranny,autocracy and the rule of law,Shakespeare’s Roman drama guides us to think about such issues as freedom,equality,power and justice.The third chapter mainly introduces the dialogue between Shakespeare’s description of ancient politics in Roman plays and modern political theories.Shakespeare introduced the tension of ancient politics by using the allegory of an organic analogy between the body and the polity,foreshadowing the critical skill of modern political theorists in making analogies between the polity and the(patriarchy)family.The family analogy seems designed to legitimize hierarchy,but because of the non-static nature of family relationships,it can also disrupt the hierarchy.In addition,the characters and their thoughts in the Roman plays also foreshadowed the situation in which modern rationalism and equalitarianism broke the hierarchical order. |
