Signs and signatures
Shakespeare’s leanings a mystery
Darshan Singh Maini

When I visited England in 1964 as a British Council scholar, I was driven to several places, including Shakespeare’s home town on the river Avon. Since it was the 400th birth centenary year of the poet and playwright, I was keen to visit the place and see the various monuments erected to commemorate the Bard of Avon. And, amongst other things, I saw a couple of plays Richard II and Henry IV. Though history plays, in essence, they had a great political relevance. For all rulers and all kingdoms eventually are political means of acquiring power and of governance. Shakespear’s tragedies, dark comedies and the romances do subsume politics, but they are principally concerned with the heroes and their psychological problems, compulsions and anxieties. Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth, all have something to do with the business of the state. And even in such a romance as Shakespeare’s swan song, The Tempest Prespero is the playwright’s alter ego, carrying his final statement. The "brave new world" envisaged or dreamt of in the play remains an aiery thing. Thus, we may conclude that Shakespeare’s political vision suggests his view of history, of the future, of kingdoms and monarchies etc.

Again, Shakespeare’s view of history was formed when he was acquainted with Machiavellian "philosophy" of governance. Wydham Lewis’s book, The Lion and the Fox, for instance, shows how Shakespeare saw both the strong and the crafty monarchs turning to political intrigues and strategies to stay in power. In sum, Shakespeare saw through the patina of pomp and glory, and came to the conclusion that the calculations of almost all rulers had little to do with the people, and were calculated to serve the self. As Wydham Lewis puts it, "For always at the bottom of Shakespeare’s mind there is negation and chaos..." He lived in the Tudor times, and his history plays and the Roman plays later testified to his view of the monarchs as "the lion and the fox" in turn to suit their ends. To quote Lewis again, "So the Machiavellian nightmare occupied an important place in his art." Machiavelli’s paradigms, thus, were seen as eternal categories. The future kingdoms or republics or democracies all were governed by "fox and lion" figures, and Shakespeare’s ambivalence, best seen in a critical study called The Angel with Horns by A.P Rossitter, summed up, so to speak, Shakespeare’s vision of all types of rules. He saw clearly that the political tiger never changed his stripes and the political leopard his spots. "Every dog’s obeyed in office", as the distracted King Lear observes. Whatever the kind of person and the theme, he, by virtue of his power, exacts obedience. We may also remember that the dog in Shakespeare’s plays and poetry is always a word of contempt and revulsion. Also, the lines imply a severe indictment of the system that breeds a whole school of psycophants and stooges.

For his political plays, Shakespeare took the stories from Holinshed and Plutarch, and it’s through these sources that he elaborated his vision of politics in his history plays, and in the Roman plays. That he held the politician in deep distrust may be seen in his memorable lines:

With these lines, John Palmer, in his Political and Comic Characters of Shakespeare opens his book, and goes on to add, among other things that "the problems and situations that have confronted public men for the last two thousand years have changed but little." For whatever the form of government, the basic dispositions and character qualities remain unchanged. If we consider the politicians of our own day, the axiomatic truth of such an observation becomes obvious.

So, what kind of politics did Shakespeare cherish? Was he a conservative, a rebel, a revolutionary? Was he a monarchist or a republican? For, when we look closely into the entire corpus of his writings, we find ourselves asking such questions again and again. Of course, there are no direct answers, but Shakespeare’s hidden code and his ambivalence always left the reader uncertain, if not confused. To be closer, then, to the meaning of the code, it’s the time now to turn to his political plays and their protagonists.

The principal plays that concern us here are: Julius Caesar, Richard II, Richard III, First and Second parts of Henry IV and Henry V, Coriolanus. To be sure, references to other plays will be made and lines quoted to support our argument, but our attention should remain rivetted to the three English history plays and the two Roman. Julius Caesar is an early play and Coriolanus carries quite a few echoes from the earlier play. The clash between Caesarism and republicanism represented by the great and noble Marcus Brutus sets the stage for a drama of assassinations, political confusion and intrigues, mob fury and the rhetoric of incitement. Brutus is the most worthy and trusted of those close to the great, conquering hero, Julius Caesar. However, skilfully worked upon by the clever Cassius, he is gradually weaned away from Caesar to end up as one of the assassins who kills Caesar in the name of republicanism and democracy. Into this grim situation, when Caesar’s dead body is lying, washed with blood, steps in Caesar’s favourite protege, Mark Antony whose skilfully and cautiously worded speech, "Friends Romans, countrymen", has, since then, become the staple of schoolboy memorised speeches. He plays upon the emotions of the assembled plebians so skilfully that soon he has the howling mob in his hands, and he lets them loose to chase Brutus and the other assailants. One lesson that this scene in particular brings home to us is Shakespeare’s extreme distrust of mobs — a theme also seen later in Coriolanus and other plays.

Richard III, the Crookback evil usurper is perhaps Shakespeare’s most despised monarch. A self-acknowledged villain, he uses his physical deformity to promote his gruesome designs. Later cornered and routed, he tries to flee, a figure of mockery and derision. Finally, even Richard’s own mother curses him thus:

Richard II is the story of a king who is generous and gracious to the courtiers around, but somewhat foolish and naive. He is finally overthrown by Bolingbroke, brought to London in chains where the mobs, once his admiring subjects now throw "ashes on his sacred head". John of Gount’s speech before that tragic event sums up the Elizabethen view that to overthrow a legitimate King is to invite nemesis later. He calls the crowned, anointed monarch "God’s deputy", and to unseat him forcibly is treason against the Lord. His pathetic state in disposition does arouse a sense of outrage in the nobility, but as a self-centred King, he pays the ultimate price. While Henry IV (Bolingbroke) comes to power through his manipulative skills and half-truths, he does make a successful King and it’s in his company that the great comic character, Falstaff, wags his tongue to gain immortality. We quickly pass on to Henry, the Fifth, who is presented as an ideal, chivalrous king, arousing the admiration of his friends — and foes. His famous speeches on the battlefield against France are often quoted as an example of true royalty. Still, many a discerning critic has disputed this interpretation and believed that he was no better than his predecessors, only more eloquent, if not sly.

Coriolanus is generally regarded as Shakespeare’s strongest and most insightful political play. All the earlier critics, Coleridge, Hazlitt and A.C. Broodley had high praise for it, though Coleridge rightly regarded it as a supreme example of his philosophic double-vision. Cariolanus, a proud and conceited Roman aristocrat, has nothing but contempt for the people or the plebians. So, in the end, the play becomes a direct confrontation between patrician politics and plebian politics. Eventually, when events drive Coriolanus into exile and he returns in revenge to burn down Rome, his mother’s pleas alone seem to move him.

But he remains reluctant and supremely proud even in his hour of fall and death. His quicksilver, changing moods are characteristics of this tragic hero. His end isn’t poetic or sublime when we compare him with Hamlet, Othello, or Mark Antony. But it has a chaste, classical beauty. Was Shakespeare inclined towards the aristocracy, and hostile to the plebians? This is the general impression, but, as we have noticed earlier, the poet’s supreme ambivalence holds and abides.

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