The medieval castle had a long life as a symbol of wealth and authority,
as a stage on which an increasingly irrelevant aristocracy could play out
their rituals of power, and as a symbol of lineage and a reminder of a glorious
past. Shakespeare in his history plays glorified the rise of the Tudor
dynasty out of the struggles of the houses of York and Lancaster. In Henry
V, soldiers Gower, Fluellen, Macmories, and Jermy at the siege of Harfleur
argue whether mining and blowing up walls accords with “the discipline
of war.” Meanwhile Cervantes in 1605 put finish to the pretensions of
chivalry with his delusional knight Don Quixote of la Mancha, tilting at
windmills on the central Spanish plains.
World History
