![]() War requires mobilization of troops and use of arms and ammunition to destroy enemy targets. ![]() Focusing on Macbeth, Coriolanus, and Othello, this chapter argues that Shakespeare’s version of war as strife not only subverts claims of human exceptionalism, singularity, and superiority, it also forces humans to confront their ontological connection to nonhuman animals moreover, the ecology of war leaves them unable to see themselves as autonomous, rational agents removed from the rest of nature. War is intentional, disclosed, wide spread and long duration armed conflict between countries. Shakespeare presents us with a hylozoic, vibrant world in which human and non-human animals, vegetables, and minerals are entangled in what pre-Socratic writers such as Heraclitus, Empedocles, and Homer called “strife.” Organized, military violence in Shakespeare’s plays, in particular his tragedies, is a manifestation of strife on a much grander scale that encompasses all of nature. Some civil wars are categorized as revolutions when major societal restructuring is a possible outcome of the conflict. While it often makes sense to define war as “hostile contention by means of armed forces,” organized military violence “between nations, states, and rules”, in reading Shakespeare’s plays we must also consider an alternative definition: war as “active hostility or contention between living beings.” These two definitions are not mutually exclusive indeed, the consideration of the latter radically alters our understanding of the former. A civil war is a war in which parties within the same culture, society, or nationality fight against each other for the control of political power. Under their harsh rule, they have cracked down on women’s rights. noun A state of active opposition, hostility, or contest: as, to be at war (that is, engaged in active hostilities). The Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan in 2021, twenty years after their ouster by U.S. noun A contest beween nations or states (international war), or between parties in the same state (civil war), carried on by force of arms. But warfare in Shakespeare’s plays is much less human centered than critics have generally acknowledged. idiom (at war) In an active state of conflict or contention. Only humans worry about whether or not a war is “just,” only humans fight for “holy” causes, and only humans seek immortal fame through acts of organized violence. Major works on war include Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian War (431 bc) and Carl von Clausewitz’s On War (1832). ![]() ![]() It is generally assumed that war in Shakespeare’s plays is a human affair. ![]()
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