Status Updates From The Complete Works of Willi...

Henry V

Sovereignty as theatre--the corporate personhood of Talbot is here rendered by the prologue as a creature of theatrical imagination, a matter of ideology as disseminated to an audience. Thereafter the ecclesiastics persuade a willing Hal to war so as to avoid a proto-dissolution act in parliament. NB also the concordance of Falstaff with the traitors, plus the liquidation of Falstaff's gang.

Much Ado About Nothing

Tragedy in the vein of Othello is averted when the illegitimate son, a loser in war, seeks revenge through the staging of a play-within-the-play of a protagonist's akrasia but is refuted by a counterplay-wthin-the-play staging her decease. That her interiority is never staged (silence again, a la Bianca and Silvia, et al.) fits the notion that grief is private as noted herein.

The Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra
Started 05/02/26
Finished 08/02/26
☆☆☆☆

2 Henry IV

Different levels of converting disorder into order, maybe. Falstaff must be excluded, not because he is some sort of proto-lumpen who parasites off crime and credit, but because his form of disorder, which speaks some sort of truth to power, may not be permitted to exist after the monarchy assimilates what it needs from him.