The Donald and The Bard

Commentators trying to grasp the impact of the resistible rise of Donald Trump have been looking back into history in search of precedents.  Not far back, mind you: the most common comparisons have been with (surprise, surprise) Hitler, which is appropriate enough in light of Trump's love of the Big Lie and his penchant for Nuremberg-style rallies; and Mussolini, who offered much the same mix of depravity and clownishness as Trump.

A new book, "Tyrant: Shakespeare on politics" by Harvard professor Stephen Greenblatt, offers a longer and more interesting perspective.  Greenblatt points out that Shakespeare could not comment on the politics of his own time without risking beheading or worse.  Instead, he figured out how to use stories from earlier times to make points about his own.  Even this was not risk-free: when Elizabeth II saw a performance of Richard II, in which the monarch is deposed, she is said to have recognized immediately that "Richard is me".

Much of Greenblatt's book focuses on the historical plays that start with Richard II and end with Richard III, covering the Wars of the Roses.  The real Richard III may not have been the evil and amoral monarch depicted by Shakespeare -- there is an active Richard III Society still trying to clear the man's name -- but the Bard's text provides plenty of material for Greenblatt.  A bit more surprising is the attention that Greenblatt devotes to a character from one of the less well-known plays, Henry VI Part 2: Jack Cade, a commoner who led a brief but bloody attempt at insurrection.

I've read all of these plays fairly recently and discussed them in depth with a like-minded group of Shakespeare bores.  I'm amazed by how much more meaning Greenblatt is able to tease out of them than we ever could as a group.  In essence, Greenblatt uses Shakespeare to illustrate the well-known thesis that for evil to succeed, it is only necessary for virtue to be silent.  His analysis of the different ways in which people react to the obviously dangerous Richard III is particularly instructive.  Some are active supporters in the hope of reward; some refuse to believe what is going on; some hope that the system will prevent Richard form carrying out his plans, and so on.  Greenblatt refers to all of these people as "Enablers", a term that would probably not have occurred to Shakespeare, but one you suspect he would have liked. 

Greenblatt's analysis is subtle, but he wants to be sure that everyone gets the message.  To cite one example, he suggests that the goal of Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York -- the father of Richard III -- is to "make England great again"..  The word "grab', found in one of Trump's most notorious quotes, is also liberally used in describing Richard's actions.   And when Jack Cade describes himself as "the besom that must sweep the court clean of such filth",  Greenblatt points out the similarity to Trump's pledge to "drain the swamp". 

"Tyrant" is a short book at barely 200 pages and is admittedly not one with mass appeal.  After all, everyone sees Trump 24/7 whether they like it or not, but not everyone has the urge to read Shakespeare.  Even so, it's good to see that a humanities academic at Harvard has found a highly original way not to stay silent while the spectre of tyranny stalks the United States.