Shakespeare's Problem Wars

War appears to a greater or lesser extent, in most of Shakespeare’s works; from an apparently heroic vision in the first cycle of history plays partly designed to support the patriotic cause of the Tudors, to a tendency towards scepticism emerging in the second cycle where the validity of the very grounds for war are questioned, with an emphasis on the cruelties that inevitably derive from it. With Troilus and Cressida the noble reasons behind the recourse to arms are in the end described as futile and unjustifiable, and the depiction of war shifts from the epic to satire. However it is in the plays which do not have war as the main subject where considerations on war are most poignant; is it possible, in broad terms, to speak of a transition from a realistic, Machiavellian conception to an idealistic, Erasmian one?