Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics by Stephen Greenblatt

Author:Stephen Greenblatt [Greenblatt, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Genres & Styles, History & Criticism, Humanities, Literary Criticism, Literature, Political Ideologies, Political Science, Politics
ISBN: 9780393635751
Google: cE-BswEACAAJ
Amazon: 0393635759
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2018-04-17T03:00:00+00:00

Eight

MADNESS IN GREAT ONES

RICHARD III AND MACBETH are criminals who come to power by killing the legitimate rulers who stand in their way. But Shakespeare was also interested in a more insidious problem, that posed by those who begin as legitimate rulers and are then drawn by their mental and emotional instability toward tyrannical behavior. The horrors they inflict on their subjects and, ultimately, on themselves are the consequences of psychological degeneration. They may have thoughtful counselors and friends, people with a healthy instinct for self-preservation and a concern for their nation. But it is extremely difficult for such people to counter madness-induced tyranny, both because it is unanticipated and because their long-term loyalty and trust have inculcated habits of obedience.

In the Britain of King Lear, though the aged king begins to act with the unchecked willfulness of a tyrannical child, at first no one dares to say a word. Having decided to retire—“To shake all cares and business from our age,/Conferring them on younger strengths” (King Lear 1.1.37–38)—he assembles his court and announces his “fast intent,”—that is, his fixed decision. He declares that he will divide his kingdom into three, distributing the parts to his daughters in proportion to their ability to flatter him:

Tell me, my daughters,

Since now we will divest us both of rule,

Interest of territory, cares of state,

Which of you shall we say doth love us most,

That we our largest bounty may extend

Where nature doth with merit challenge? (1.1.46–51)

The idea is insane, and yet no one intervenes.

It is possible that the spectators to this grotesque contest say nothing because they believe it is merely a formal ritual, designed to gratify the autocrat’s vanity on the occasion of his retirement. After all, one of the highest-ranking noblemen, the Earl of Gloucester, remarks in the play’s first moments that he has already seen a map with the division of the kingdom scrupulously plotted out. And at this point in Lear’s long reign, everyone may be accustomed to the great leader’s boundless desire to hear his praises sung. While inwardly rolling their eyes, they sit around the table and give him the “mouth-honor” he wants, telling him how blessed they are to stand in his shadow, how overwhelmed they are by his accomplishments, and how they value him more “than eye-sight, space and liberty” (1.1.54).

But when Lear’s youngest daughter, Cordelia, his favorite, refuses to play the nauseating game, it all suddenly becomes deadly serious. Enraged by Cordelia’s principled recalcitrance—“I love your majesty/According to my bond,” she says, “no more nor less” (1.1.90–91)—Lear disinherits and curses her. Then finally is opposition to Lear’s behavior openly expressed, and only by a solitary person, the Earl of Kent. The loyal Kent begins to speak with the requisite ceremonious courtesy, but Lear abruptly cuts him off. Dropping the courtly manner altogether, the earl then voices his objection directly:

What wouldst thou do, old man?

Think’st thou that duty shall have dread to speak

When power to flattery bows?

To plainness honor’s bound

When majesty falls to folly. Reserve thy state,

And in thy best consideration check

This hideous rashness.

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