A lively collection of essays from scholars from across Europe, North America and Australia, including some with first-hand experience of the Yugoslav civil war or of life behind the 'iron curtain'. The book ranges from Shakespeare's use of manuals on war written for the sixteenth-century English public by an English mercenary serving in the Spanish army in the Netherlands, to reflections on the ways in which Shakespeare has been represented in Nazi Germany, wartime Denmark, or cold war Romania, Together, these essays constitute a new approach to reading Shakespeare; one that integrates historical and cultural research with performance analysis to assess the relevance of the plays as presented and performed in different countries and at different moments in history. By returning several times to Henry V, the book asks how it is that the same play has been used both to comment adversely on the war in the Falklands and to support the war in Iraq.