Thumos And Politics In Shakespeare’s Henry Ⅳ

William Shakespeare(1564-1616)’s Henry Ⅳ has been recognized as the pinnacle of his histories.Generally speaking,studies on this play mainly focus on the character image of Falstaff,Prince Hal’s personality and growth,the representation and subversion of history,and so on.Few scholars have discussed the play from the perspective of Plato’s political philosophy.This thesis believes that the relationship between thumos and politics is a crucial theme of the play in which Shakespeare makes an in-depth investigation of the moral ambiguity of thumos in the political world by exploring the necessity of thumos for the maintenance of the political community,its potential threat to the political community,and the vital significance of the domestication of thumos through balanced thumotic education.The introduction part of this thesis first briefly introduces the basic information of Henry Ⅳ,and then reviews the main research themes of the play at home and abroad.In addition,Plato’s possible influence on Shakespeare’s playwriting and Plato’s idea of thumos are sorted out.The first chapter analyzes the display of thumos as a necessity for the maintenance of the political community in the play.The guardians headed by Prince Hal are willing to sacrifice themselves in order to defend the common good of the political community under the mobilization of thumos,whereas in terms of politicians represented by the weak King Henry,the thumotic part of their souls is suppressed by the dominant desiring part and thus causes the sickness of the unrighteous kingdom.Both the guarding class and the ruling class must possess abundant thumos in order to maintain the stability of the political community.The second chapter analyzes the potential threat of thumos to the political community that is demonstrated in the play.In the two parts of Henry Ⅳ,the rebels are controlled by their desire for recognition which is the prominent activity of thumos,destroying the political order of the state that they are supposed to safeguard.In the meanwhile,the domination of thumos in the soul of the political men will make the political regime of their state slide towards the degraded Timocracy embodied by the timocratic man Hotspur,and this is the first step towards the deterioration of the political regime of a nation.The third chapter analyzes the important role of thumotic education on the taming of the thumotic part of the soul of the guardians and the guardian-rulers as is demonstrated in the play.Unbalanced thumotic education leads to thumos’ suppression of rationality in Hotspur’s disharmonious soul,making him an unqualified guardian who ultimately undermines the justice of the state.On the contrary,the balanced thumotic education of Prince Hal makes the reasoning part of his soul work as the commander-in-chief,guiding the thumotic part and the desiring part,and thus makes him grow into a qualified guardian-ruler.In summary,Shakespeare in the two parts of Henry Ⅳ dialectically explores the consolidation and destruction of the political community by the naturally ambiguous thumos,and on how to tame thumos in order to reject its dark side and make it most beneficial,he proposes the vital thumotic education following Plato.Thumos has always been the core theme of Western political philosophy,and Shakespeare also joined the discussion of this important issue under the influence of Platonic political idealism,conceiving the good and evil that thumos would do to politics in the universe of his remarkable histories.