Political propaganda in Shakespeare's history plays

This dissertation has attempted to understand the political propaganda in the history plays of William Shakespeare and draw connection between the Shakespearean Stage and the mass media of our age in terms of the loss of the real concept of Jean Baudrillard and social psychology techniques such as primacy effect, cognitive dissonance theory and classical conditioning of the modern age. Analysing Macbeth, King John, Richard II and Richard III in the light of new historicism and deconstruction theories has given the chance of crosschecking the findings about the loss of the real through two different methods. Both the outcomes of the new historicist analysis, which demonstrated the distortions of the historical events from the windows of the Renaissance authors like Raphael Holinshed, Edward Hall, Richard Grafton and George Buchanan, and the outcomes of the deconstruction which revealed the binary oppositions causing violent hierarchies for the favour of the monarchy have indicated the fact that Shakespeare distorted historical realities in his history plays. Both the loss of the real as the outcome of the new historicist and deconstructive analyses, and Shakespeare's quality in using social psychology techniques such as classical conditioning, primacy effect or cognitive dissonance theory have enabled this dissertation to reinterpret Shakespeare from a different perspective. William Shakespeare, probably the greatest playwright of all times, always allows us to restudy and reinterpret his plays in the light different methods and techniques. As long as human being advances in time, science and technology, his plays allow us to reinterpret them from different perspectives. Therefore, it is possible to maintain that Shakespeare is never out of date and will always attract the attention of the researchers. Keywords: Elizabeth theatre, William Shakespeare, Jean Baudrillard, Jacques Derrida, deconstruction, new historicism, social psychology, simulacra and simulation