Content area
Full Text
Theodor Meron, Bloody Constraint: War and Chivalry in Shakespeare. New York, Oxford University Press, 1998. Pp. 246. $29.95, hardcover.
In his introduction to Bloody Constraint: War and Chivalry in Shakespeare, distinguished professor of international law Theodor Meron states that his purpose in writing has been to correct an omission from a previous book, Henry's Wars and Shakespeare's Laws. This omission, noted by reviewer Adam Roberts, was Meron's failure to discuss what has been lost (as opposed to gained) by the substitution of a legal and international code covering the prosecution of warfare for the customary code of chivalry that it may be said to have supplanted. Bloody Constraint goes a considerable way toward correcting the earlier omission. Meron's book demonstrates that the work of the greatest poet and dramatist of the English language may be read to illuminate the aspects of chivalry that made it, in its time, and perhaps in our own, a moral system that is particularly pertinent to the soldier. This is an important work for those who are interested in the history of military ethics. By attempting to focus on what has been lost with the eclipse of chivalry, this volume also suggests a...