Tuesday
I write today to take issue with a New York Times article comparing Trump to various Shakespeare protagonists. He is not, I argue, going out like Julius Caesar or Richard III. I’ll accept the King Lear comparison—I’ve made it myself—but Lear ends by discovering a love beyond self, which I don’t see on Trump’s horizon. I regard him rather as the doubly-dying wretch in Walter’s Scott’s “My Native Land.”
Here’s Peter Baker interviewing Shakespeare scholar Jeffrey R. Wilson, author of Shakespeare and Trump:
At times, Mr. Trump’s railing-against-his-fate outbursts seem like a story straight out of William Shakespeare, part tragedy, part farce, full of sound and fury. Is Mr. Trump a modern-day Julius Caesar, forsaken by even some of his closest courtiers? (Et tu, Bill Barr?) Or a King Richard III who wars with the nobility until being toppled by Henry VII? Or King Lear, railing against those who do not love and appreciate him sufficiently? How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless electorate.
“This is classic Act V behavior,” said Jeffrey R. Wilson, a Shakespearean scholar at Harvard who published the book “Shakespeare and Trump” this year. “The forces are being picked off and the tyrant is holed up in his castle and he’s growing increasingly anxious and he feels insecure and he starts blustering about his legitimate sovereignty and he starts accusing the opposition of treason.”
And further on:
With six weeks until he leaves office, Mr. Trump remains as unpredictable and erratic as ever. He may fire Mr. Barr or others, issue a raft of pardons to protect himself and his allies or incite a confrontation overseas. Like King Lear, he may fly into further rages and find new targets for his wrath.
“If there are these analogies between classic literature and society as it’s operating right now, then that should give us some big cause for concern this December,” said Mr. Wilson, the Shakespearean scholar. “We’re approaching the end of the play here and that’s where catastrophe always comes.”
My long-standing problem with comparing Trump to Shakespearean figures is that it elevates him. The man is not tragedy but farce, as I wrote in one post.
But because contrasts can be as productive as comparisons, let’s look at Julius Caesar and Richard III.
Noteworthy about our current moment is that GOP senators have not turned against him. In a recent Washington Post survey, only 27 of the 249 Republican members of Congress are acknowledging that Biden won the election. It’s as though Cassius, Brutus and company are all applauding Caesar for having crossed the Rubicon. Barr, a key Trump enabler until now, does not suddenly become noblest-Roman-of-them-all Brutus just because he’s finally admitting that there was no significant voter fraud. Like Cassius, the GOP may be lean and hungry, but lean and hungry currently supports Trump.
What about Richard III? Well, he has certainly been unscrupulous in his power grab. Instead of whining endlessly about being a victim, however, he displays courage under fire. Even Trump’s supporters aren’t praising him the way that Catesby praises Richard:
The king enacts more wonders than a man,
Daring an opposite to every danger:
His horse is slain, and all on foot he fights,
Seeking for Richmond in the throat of death.
Rescue, fair lord, or else the day is lost!
There is no resemblance between Trump’s frivolous lawsuits and Richard fighting to the death:
Richard: A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!
Catesby: Withdraw, my lord; I’ll help you to a horse.
Richard: Slave, I have set my life upon a cast,
And I will stand the hazard of the die:
I think there be six Richmonds in the field;
Five have I slain to-day instead of him.
A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!
Now, one could make a case for a Biden comparison with Richmond, the future Henry VII. Here he is proclaiming victory:
God and your arms be praised, victorious friends,
The day is ours, the bloody dog is dead.
Richard then goes on to pardon those who fought against him. Like Biden, he wants there to be an end to bloody partisanship and offers himself and his diplomatic marriage with Elizabeth as the answer to England’s civil strife. He proclaims the war between the Yorks and the Lancasters to be over:
Proclaim a pardon to the soldiers fled
That in submission will return to us:
And then, as we have ta’en the sacrament,
We will unite the white rose and the red:
Smile heaven upon this fair conjunction,
That long have frown’d upon their enmity!
What traitor hears me, and says not amen?
England hath long been mad, and scarr’d herself;
The brother blindly shed the brother’s blood,
The father rashly slaughter’d his own son,
The son, compell’d, been butcher to the sire:
All this divided York and Lancaster,
Divided in their dire division,
O, now, let Richmond and Elizabeth,
The true succeeders of each royal house,
By God’s fair ordinance conjoin together!
There’s currently a debate about whether Biden’s Justice Department should prosecute the Trump for crimes committed during his presidency or just forget and move on. Richmond’s decision is useful here. He distinguishes between those who fought nobly against him and those who are still intent on stirring up conflict. He has death in mind for those who would once again “make poor England weep in streams of blood”:
Abate the edge of traitors, gracious Lord,
That would reduce these bloody days again,
And make poor England weep in streams of blood!
Let them not live to taste this land’s increase
That would with treason wound this fair land’s peace!
In short, he announces that, whether his future actions, whether merciful or stern, will be done with the future of the kingdom in mind. It’s a good model for our next president.
As for Trump, however, I turn to Walter Scott for a final summation. Scott is talking about patriotism in the deepest sense—someone who puts his country first–and there’s no question that he would see our current president as a wretch “concentered all in self.”
My Native Land
Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne’er within him burn’d,
As home his footsteps he hath turn’d
From wandering on a foreign strand!
If such there breathe, go, mark him well;
For him no Minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim;—
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonored, and unsung.