Chapter 6 concentrates on the Iraq War (2003–11) and a resurging critical interest in just war theory, reflected also in the design and reception of Shakespearean productions. Global public protests preceded the coalition invasion, led by the United States and Britain, of Iraq in March 2003, and the arts, including theatre, provided platforms for voicing this opposition. Chapter 6 adopts just war theory as its organizing principle: the first part considers the justification of conflict (jus ad bellum) as it is critiqued in Nicholas Hytner’s Henry V (2003); the second part examines the violation of just conduct during conflict (jus in bello) as explored within Roy Williams’s Days of Significance (2007) and Sulayman Al Bassam’s Richard III: An Arab Tragedy (2007); the final part considers the end of conflict (jus post bellum), the relevance of the term ‘post-war’, and the erasure of Western wartime responsibility through an analysis of Monadhil Daood’s Romeo and Juliet in Baghdad (2012). This chapter argues that these productions, similar to contemporary Iraq War literature, are sceptical of conflict resolution and closure, but that other production and reception conditions shift their interpretative currency through structures of arts sponsorship and the political and cultural views brought to the theatre, all of which qualify the labelling of these productions as ‘anti-war’.

This chapter focuses on issues of objection and dissent. As well as examining the ways in which the theatre challenged or questioned the war - through works such as Drinkwater’s X=0 (1917) and Malleson’s banned Black ‘Ell (1917) - it considers the theatre’s representation of objectors to the war - through pieces such as Jones’ The Pacifists (1917) and Collins’ revue sketch The Consciensciousless Objector (1916). It contextualises the production of these works in relation to changes in wider attitudes towards the war, as well as considering how playwrights with pacifist leanings were constrained both by the censor and by cultural nationalism. It discusses the contribution of George Bernard Shaw to debates over the war and, as the final chapter in this part of the book, it also links to part III and the discussion of changing attitudes towards the war in the 1920s and 1930s.

This interview with Nicholas Hytner concentrates on his 2003 production of Henry V at the National Theatre, which opened a few months after the US–UK coalition invasion of Iraq in March 2003. Hytner reflects on the production decisions that responded to the immediacy of the conflict and the strong public opposition to it witnessed in the historic 15 February protests. The interview considers whether theatre can influence public opinion during wartime and how our use and understanding of Shakespeare’s plays has changed over time and through different conflicts.

Pacifist activism flourished in Britain and America during the first half of the twentieth century, and peace was a central preoccupation for writers and intellectuals before and during both world wars. Vera Brittain, Bertrand Russell, George Orwell, Virginia Woolf, Storm Jameson, and Aldous Huxley were all actively engaged in some form of peace writing. This chapter examines this history in the British context, from the impact of conscription during the First World War to the grave challenges to peace of the 1930s. It investigates a variety of texts by conscientious objectors, peace campaigners, feminist pacifists, anti-war poets, public intellectuals, and internationalist reformers. This literary and political history reveals how the notion of peace shifted radically during this period. What began as a moral imperative – inherited from Christian teachings and the liberal legacy of the Enlightenment – was transformed into a secular notion with extensive political potential. As this chapter shows, pacifist thought underpinned arguments towards socio-political reform, and it shaped the language of rights central to political discourse after the Second World War.

Chapter 6 examines how veterans responded to Vietnamese war memory at four key sites: the War Remnants Museum, Hỏa Lò Prison Museum, Sơn Mỹ Memorial and Museum, and Long Tân. When veterans returned to Việt Nam, they discovered that the Vietnamese narrative of the “American War” rendered them perpetrators of atrocities or, at best, passive victims of imperialist warmongering nations. While some returnees embraced Vietnamese war memory, others rejected or challenged it, and many struggled with the tensions and contradictions between different versions of the war. Across national and ideological lines, veterans displayed a selective acceptance of Vietnamese war memory, isolating elements that corroborated their memories of war and rejecting the legitimacy of others. This chapter also considers varied response to the Vietnamese erasure of veterans’ wartime allies and concludes by examining how Australian returnees increasingly approached the site of Long Tân through the Australian tradition of “Anzac” pilgrimage.

This chapter surveys novels and short stories that illustrate Americans’ complex response to the First World War from 1914 through the 1930s. Registering conflicting views, ultimately this fiction presents a war that resists easy categorization. Fiction by military veterans, medical professionals, and home-front eyewitnesses is represented – including canonical authors such as Ernest Hemingway, Willa Cather, and Katherine Anne Porter; lesser-known writers such as Thomas Boyd, Victor Daly, and Mary Borden whose work has recently been republished; and authors of now out-of-print fiction such as James Stevens, Mary Lee, and Elliot White Springs who deserve greater recognition. A summary of recent literary criticism denotes trends in critical approaches and demonstrates that scholars are re-examining canonical novels and taking an increasing interest in short stories meant for both literary and popular audiences.