Tyranny has long been a focus of many of Shakespeare's plays. Stephen Greenblatt has cleverly taken this as a theme for this scholarly but revealing study of those villainous creations that we thought we knew so well. The author's study of the text of these plays reminds us there is always plenty to learn about these individuals. This is essential reading for teachers and students of the Bard.
From the overthrow of Richard II the book follows the trilogy of Henry VI and picks out Jack Cade as a Trump like populist leader. The rise of Richard, Duke of Gloucester is punctuated by those who enabled his grab for the throne. Greenblatt tells us "By multiple acts (of murderess collaboration) taken by respectable people eager to be "guiltless from the meaning", tyranny is enabled". And later "Within the play, Richard's rise is made possible by various degrees of complicity from those around him. But in the theatre it is we, the audience, watching it all happening, who are lured into a peculiar form of collaboration".
In Macbeth, it may be that Lady Macbeth is the real tyrant, urging her husband to kill Duncan, telling him he has "the milk of human kindness". Then her great line: "a little water clears us of this deed". How wrong can you be. King Lear is an obvious target for this book, as is Leontes in A Winter's Tale.
For me, the penultimate chapter is the highlight of the book, as the author looks at some of those who are in peril from the tyrant but escape the net of his killing sweep, only to come back to destroy them. The quote from the last line in King Lear has never been so clear:
"The weight of this sad time we must obey;
Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.
The oldest hath borne most; we that are young
Shall never see so much, nor live so long".
The second half of the chapter dwells on the complications that is the plot of Julius Caesar and his destruction. A few pages was probably not enough to reveal it properly. However the final paragraph is brilliant and includes the sentence "What the tragedy offers instead is an unprecedented representation of political uncertainty, confusion and blindness".
The final chapter deals with Coriolanus but it was the first paragraph that resonated with me. "Communities are usually alert to the danger posed by certain people in their midst and contrive to isolate or expel them". Never has this been more true than this country's dismissal of Corbynism and Momentum. But it is Volumnia, the mother of Coriolanus that is again the real tyrant. Her goading of her son to stand for Consul is his undoing.
So whenever I see one of these plays again, I will definitely read again the relevant section from this
book. And enjoy the play even more.
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