Power Politics in Shakespeare

Abstract

This paper intends to explain Shakespeare's concept of the monarchical power as having taken three inter-dependent approaches. In the first approach, the king is viewed as an absolutist, which is being backed by the concept of the king's demi-god authority prevalent at the time, which Claudio reckons with in Measure for Measure: "Thus can the demi-god, Authority, I Make us pay down for our offence by weight I The words of heaven" (l .3.120-2)t. Richard II and King Lear, particularly in the earlier phases of the respective plays, are a good example of this kind. The second approach brings the kings down from their divinely-protected pedestal to the secular level of statecraft, where the kings act both like heroes and villains, where their politics of survival, their machinations to sustain power, their maneuverings to outface their opponents, their faking of religion, their dissembling and shamming to win the subjects' hearts, and the paired method of accommodation and elimination, all become visible. I conic images of this group coming from the great usurper kings of Shakespeare: Richard III, Henry TV, Claudius and Macbeth. The third approach consists in Shakespeare's attempt at humanizing the kings, so that the power held by the king seems to be benefitting the commonwealth, as King Lear realizes in the storm scenes, or Prospero in rescinding his magical power and owning Caliban ("This thing of darkness I / Acknowledge mine" (The Tempest, 5.1.276-7)). 1n explaining the third approach, the critical term suitable for which is what Dollimore (1990)refers to as "the essentialist humanism," the paper establishes that for Shakespeare, as Johnson suggested a long time ago in refuting the allegations of Voltaire.i that the king and the beggar could both be described on equational terms, borne out by such lines as Hamlet's: "Your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service-two dishes, but to one table," and, "That's the end" (4.4.23-5). But, there is a fourth approach: Shakespeare seems to agree that essentialist humanism cannot be the final thing for a king to serve. The king is a mixture of multifaceted dimensions which overlap and interact, and the plays thrive on this fluid texture of the monarchical characters.