NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN? CICERONIAN FRIENDSHIP AND OLD AGE IN SHAKESPEARE'S SECOND TETRALOGY AND BEYOND

This essay explores Shakespeare's use of Cicero's treatises De Amicitia and De Senectute.It argues that Shakespeare and his audience would have seen both the treatises and their subject matter as closely connected, and that, above all, in the Gloucestershire scenes in 2 Henry IV, Shakespeare borrows from Cicero's texts to give a positive portrayal of enduring friendships between old men. This gives a vital context for the treatment of friendship (or the loss of it) elsewhere in 2 Henry IV, as well as in Henry V and Henry VIII. The good old age and the good death are ideally to be found in country life, and this connection is reflected also in the relationship between Lear and Gloucester in King Lear, where the enduring nature of their friendship is attested to by the identification of Lear as Edgar's godfather. Recovering the Ciceronian context for some of Shakespeare's old men and their relationships with each other is an important corrective to much current writing on both friendship (emphasizing youth) and old age (emphasizing isolation).