SOURCE: “Troilus and Cressida: Poetry or Philosophy?” in Shakespeare as Political Thinker, edited by John Alvis and Thomas G. West, Carolina Academic Press, 1981, pp. 145-56.

In the following essay, Flannery remarks that in Troilus and Cressida Shakespeare demonstrated his understanding of the politically subversive nature of poetry when he portrayed Achilles' insubordinate use of language.

There was an article in the Chinese Communist Party newspaper, the People's Daily, not long ago, which is helpful in understanding the relationship between poetry and politics with particular reference to Shakespeare.¹ In the article, which, of course, expresses the authoritative views of the party leadership, the music of Beethoven and Schubert was blacklisted because of their “bourgeois and capitalist mentality,” and because their music did not “reflect the class spirit.” Beethoven's Sonata No. 17 was compared to one of Shakespeare's plays which, the article proclaimed, “only serves to disseminate the filthy nature of...