SOURCE: "Shakespeare: Liberty and Idol Ceremony," in Civil Idolatry: Desacralizing and Monarchy in Spencer, Shakespeare, and Milton, Associated University Presses, 1992, pp. 124-63.

In the following excerpt, Hardin studies the thematic links between ceremony and proper rulership in the Henriad.

Apologia

Arguing that in Shakespeare scholarship "the ideas of the time have become a club with which to clobber the character," Richard Levin has offered a worthy refutation of many thematic "readings" of the plays. His case against academic nonsense can make anyone think twice before producing an interpretation of a play that depends on historical and intellectual backgrounds. Such readings, says Levin, "are all based upon the contention that the real meaning of the plays is wholly or largely determined by some component of the extradramatic background and can only be apprehended in relation to it." A good example is the old argument that King Lear commits a...