Public Execution and Justice on/off the Elizabethan Stage: Shakespeare’s First Tetralogy

Year 2016, Volume: 6 Issue: 2, 361 - 379, 30.12.2016

Murat Öğütcü

Abstract

The Elizabethan regime in its last fifteen years faced many socio-political tensions. Although disorganised at first, as time passed, tensions increased and attempts were made to voice aloud socio- political criticisms, but use of the repressive state apparatus of the judicial system suppressed these. Accordingly, public execution was employed to exert the executive powers of the monarch against dissent. Deserved punishment in the theatre’s public executions could create a cathartic effect, reducing tensions about injustice that was felt by the Elizabethan playgoers in real life. Yet, the arbitrariness of justice in the executions on and off the stage complicated the creation of such a catharsis, as displayed, especially, in Shakespeare’s first tetralogy (ca. 1589-1594). Accordingly, this article analyses the politics and poetika of public execution and it suggests that scenes of executions in theatres increased the socio- political tensions caused by the injustice of the Late Elizabethan Period.

Keywords

Shakespeare, History Plays, First Tetralogy, Public Execution, Politics, Poetics

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