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- Author: Andrew Hadfield x
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This chapter first outlines some of the issues and problems raised by Scotland and Scottish history for English readers in the last decade of Elizabeth's reign. It then shows how closely engaged William Shakespeare was with questions generated by his understanding of Scottish history, concentrating especially on Hamlet, a play that has already been persuasively read as a work informed by an understanding of Scottish affairs and politics. Hamlet's last action before he dies is to kill Claudius, showing that his soliloquy has a prophetic purpose in the plot. Claudius's reign bears striking similarities to that of Kenneth III. A key reign in George Buchanan's History of Scotland was that of Kenneth III, who ended the long tradition of elective monarchy in Scotland. Buchanan's sense of the significance of Kenneth's reign is encapsulated in the version narrated in Raphael Holinshed's Chronicle of Scotland.
This chapter examines Edmund Spenser's involvement in the Irish legal system and suggests how it may have influenced his later conception of Irish law in A view. It assesses the nature of Dublin civic and cultural life and how it would have appeared in the 1580s. The chapter charts Spenser's involvement in a significant debate that took place in Rathfarnham soon after he arrived in Ireland. Many aspects of Dublin life would not have seemed that much different from life in Westminster or Cambridge, especially if Spenser was staying in Dublin Castle as he had lived in Leicester House. As the writings of Bryskett, Stanihurst and others demonstrate, Dublin had no rivals as the cultural and intellectual centre of Ireland, leaving its mark on English settlers such as Edmund Spenser.