Argument was the basis of Renaissance education; both rhetoric and
dialectic permeated early modern humanist culture, including drama.
This study approaches Shakespeare's history plays by analyzing the use
of argument in the plays and examining the importance of argument in
Renaissance culture. Knowles shows how analysis of arguments of speech
and action take us to the core of the plays, in which Shakespeare
interrogates the nature of political morality and truth as grounded in
the history of what men do and say.