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Thursday
“Despite having lost, the Defendant was determined to remain in power.” So reads the special counsel’s indictment of Donald J. Trump, released Tuesday afternoon at 5:15. Sensing that we need a Shakespeare play to do justice to such a momentous event in American history, I cast around for possibilities.
Richard II came first to mind since it is about a bad king who is forced to surrender his throne. But Richard, whatever his faults, is the legitimate monarch whereas Trump, by the laws of our land, is no longer president, whatever he may claim. He of course wishes to be a Richard-like monarch but that’s another matter. Also, he handles his defeat far worse than Richard, who gains a measure of nobility in his final days.
So I instead turned to the world’s greatest drama about an illicit power grab, which is of course the Scottish play. Rereading it, I was struck by how it begins with a failed coup, undertaken by the Thane of Cawdor. The resemblance ends there, however, because after Macbeth defeats him and is given his title, Cawdor does what every defeated presidential candidate in American history has done up to Donald Trump: he concedes graciously. It’s even more impressive in his case since concession is accompanied by execution. As Malcolm reports to his father Duncan,
I have spoke
With one that saw him die, who did report
That very frankly he confessed his treasons,
Implored your Highness’ pardon, and set forth
A deep repentance. Nothing in his life
Became him like the leaving it…
Needless to say, we will never see Trump confessing his treasons.
There are other parallels with the play. First of all, there are the lies about a stolen election from the very man who is trying to steal the election. This resembles Macbeth blaming others for killing the man he himself has killed.
And then there’s Lady Macbeth sounding like Trump trying to persuade Pence into refusing to certify the votes. Trump apparently told the vice-president, “You are too honest” when Pence refused to go through with his plot, forcing the president to resort to Plan B (pressure Pence with a riotous mob). Lady Macbeth puts her own kind of pressure on her husband to galvanize him into action:
Yet do I fear thy nature;
It is too full o’ th’ milk of human kindness
To catch the nearest way. Thou wouldst be great,
Art not without ambition, but without
The illness should attend it.
And later:
Macbeth: If we should fail—
Lady Macbeth: We fail?
But screw your courage to the sticking place
And we’ll not fail.
It’s not clear to me that Pence is filled with the milk of human kindness. Furthermore, Trump was asking him to sacrifice himself for Trump’s ambitions, not his own. Nevertheless, in the end he did the right thing. In a past post of which I’m particularly proud, I compared Pence to the soldiers for hire in A.E. Housman’s poem “Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries.”
Unlike Macbeth (at least so far), Trump has not managed to overthrow our aged leader. But he can be compared to Macbeth at the end of the play when he himself is being overthrown. Imagine him as the maddened king engaged in a final showdown, with special counsel Jack Smith playing the role of Macduff. Like Macbeth, who sees the writing on the wall, Trump wants to weasel out of the fight: he keeps trying to delay or have judges throw out indictments (see yesterday’s post). Like Macduff, however, Smith will brook no denial:
Macbeth: I’ll not fight with thee.
Macduff: Then yield thee, coward,
And live to be the show and gaze o’ th’ time.
We’ll have thee, as our rarer monsters are,
Painted upon a pole, and underwrit
“Here may you see the tyrant.”
Macbeth: I will not yield
To kiss the ground before young Malcolm’s feet
And to be baited with the rabble’s curse.
Though Birnam Wood be come to Dunsinane
And thou opposed, being of no woman born,
Yet I will try the last. Before my body
I throw my warlike shield. Lay on, Macduff,
And damned be him that first cries “Hold! Enough!”
Actually Trump, being a bully at heart, lacks Macbeth’s final desperate courage. I suspect he’ll strike a less impressive figure in court than he does before his fawning fans. We’ll see.
We can only pray that he’ll fare no better than Macbeth, with Smith sending him out of our lives for good.