Thursday
A twitter thread by one Scott Monty, who writes regularly about leadership issues, has sent me back to Stephen Greenblatt’s very insightful Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics, which shows us how well Shakespeare understood the authoritarian mindset. Monty finds a number of connections between New York University historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat’s work on Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present and (thanks to Greenblatt) Shakespeare’s Richard III as he analyzes figures like Jair Bolsonaro, Rodrigo Duterte, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Viktor Orbán, Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump and Trump wannabe Ron DeSantis.
According to Ben-Ghiat, all authoritarian figures are driven by the urge to control. And yet even as they proclaim “law and order rule,” they enable lawlessness. This paradox, she notes, means that their government invariably “evolves into a criminal enterprise.”
They also lack all empathy, and Monty quotes Richard III’s admission, “Tear-falling pity dwells not in this eye.” Monty notes that, for his part, Mussolini said the secret to his success was to “Keep your heart a desert.”
A particularly interesting observation (this from Ben-Ghiat) is that strongmen, while they may be “genius strategists,” seldom have a master plan for their rule. This has certainly been true of Donald Trump and it’s true of Richard III as well. As I read the following passage from Greenblatt’s Tyrant, I think of Trump’s look of stunned disbelief on election night 2016 that he has just been elected president:
But once Richard reaches his lifelong goal–at the end of the third act of Shakespeare’s play–the laughter quickly begins to curdle. Much of the pleasure of his winning derived from its wild improbability. Now the prospect of endless winning proves to be a grotesque delusion. Though he has seemed a miracle of dark efficiency, Richard is quite unprepared to unite and run a whole country.
The people that Richard proceeds to bring into his administration are not unlike those Trump brought into his own. Loyalty trumps competence, as Greenblatt notes:
The tyrant’s triumph is based on lies and fraudulent promises braided around the violent elimination of rivals. The cunning strategy that brings him to the throne hardly constitutes a vision for the realm; nor has he assembled counselors who can help him formulate one. He can count–for the moment, at least–on the acquiescence of such suggestible officials as the London mayor and frightened clerks like the scribe. But the new ruler possesses neither administrative ability nor diplomatic skill, and no one in his entourage can supply what he manifestly lacks. …Cynical operators like Catesby and Ratcliffe are hardly suited to be statesmen. Though higher in social station, they differ little from the hoodlums Richard hires to do his bidding.
Richard does manage to bring in some competent administrators, especially Lord Stanley. But Stanley, like some of Trump’s more responsible Cabinet picks early in his administration, ultimately finds himself looking for a way out:
Lord Stanley cuts a more plausible figure as a prudent adviser–and the play depicts him reluctantly conveying the king’s wishes–but, as his early nightmare suggests, he has long been afraid of “the boar” and can hardly be expected to serve as a linchpin of the upstart regime. Secretly he is already in contact with the regime’s mortal enemies.
Richard’s one reliable ally is the Duke of Buckingham, who has helped Richard ascend to power, and I particularly like Greenblatt’s discussion of how Richard tries to persuade Buckingham to kill Richard’s two nephews. Their father Edward IV having died, the princes are next in line to the throne and therefore stand in Richard’s way. Like Donald Trump, Richard wants a subordinate to do something dirty without explicitly telling him to do so, thereby retaining plausible deniability. Buckingham, however, forces him to spell it out:
Though he has carefully sent everyone else out of earshot, Richard is at first somewhat coy about what he wants. “Young Edward lives,” he notes, referring to the late king’s heir, who is being held along with his brother in the Tower; “think now what I would speak.” But Buckingham steadfastly refuses to play the guessing game, whose meaning is not difficult to divine. Richard, increasingly vexed, is forced to make his meaning clear.
O bitter consequence,
That Edward still should live! ‘True, noble prince!’
Cousin, thou wert not wont to be so dull:
Shall I be plain? I wish the bastards dead;
And I would have it suddenly perform’d.
Greenblatt’s point is that Richard needs accomplices in his crimes, just as Trump has sought accomplices to overturn the election. Sometimes Trump has been as straightforward as Richard’s “I wish the bastards dead”: for instance, he asked Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to find him “11,000 votes.” More frequently, however, he has expected others to make the demands, in part to keep his fingerprints off of illegal activities, in part to assure himself of his subordinates’ loyalty. It’s such loyalty that Richard wants as well:
At this critical moment at the onset of his reign, he wants and needs to be assured of his associate’s loyalty, and that loyalty is best guaranteed by having Buckingham make himself an accomplice to a horrendous crime. Though it would have been still better if Buckingham had suggested on his own that the children be killed–hence Richard’s initial coyness–the associate’s simple “consent” will serve as a sufficient guarantee.
This desperate need for loyal accomplices shows how isolated Richard (like Trump) feels:
For the tyrant, there is remarkably little satisfaction….Whatever pleasures he might have imagined would be his give way to frustration, anger, and gnawing fear. Moreover, the possession of power is never secure. There is always something else that must be done in order to reinforce his position, and since he has reached his goal through criminal acts, what is required inevitably are further criminal acts. The tyrant is obsessed with loyalty from his inner circle, but he can never be entirely confident that he has it. The only people who will serve him are self-interested scoundrels, like himself; in any case, he is not interested in honest loyalty or dispassionate, independent judgment. Instead he wants flattery, confirmation, and obedience.
When the tyrant senses that previously loyal followers are having second thoughts—Buckingham for Richard, Attorney General Bill Barr and Vice President Mike Pence for Trump—the tyrant lashes out. Previous service means nothing:
Buckingham, he reflects, “grows circumspect” and circumspection is potentially dangerous….And when his old ally …repeatedly asks for the reward that he had been promised for his many services, Richard peremptorily dismissed him: “Thou troublest me, I am not in the vein.” Having participated in the entrapment and betrayal of so many others, Buckingham is able to read the ominous signs very clearly and decides to flee for his life. His effort is in vain; he will eventually be caught and executed.
The day that Trump no longer has the ability to influence political events will be the day that he finds himself alone, like Richard, on Bosworth Field. Never have been loyal to anyone else himself, he will find himself repaid in kind. “A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!” Richard famously cries out before Richmond—the man who will replace him on the throne as Henry VII—cuts him down.
No one mourns him.
Clarification: Reader Carole Williams wrote in noting that it’s important to distinguish between Shakespeare’s Richard III and the actual Richard III:
I am assuming you are talking about the main character in Shakespeare’s play Richard the Third, as there has long been a Richard III society here for the real man. This play was written for Tudor monarch whose forebear Henry VII seized the throne, and had to have an excuse for doing so. But as a character in a play, this fictional king serves your argument well.
I read British author of hundred years ago, Josephine Tey: The Daughter of Time when I was 17 and although her argument is more basic than more recent works, it is highly readable and based on what was known then. Did you see the excitement when his body was found in Leicester a few years ago?