Hi, my name is Eliot Cohen and I'm Dean of
Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced
International Studies, SAIS. And I would like
to welcome you to this first lecture in the
course, Rough Magic: Shakespeare on Power.
What we're going to be doing in this course
is looking at what Shakespeare has to teach
us about political power and the men and women
who seek it. The title of the course is taken
from The Tempest, in which at the very end
Prospero the Magician, who rules over a desert
island, says, "but this rough magic I here
abjure, I'll break my staff, bury it certain
fathoms in the earth, and deeper than did
ever plummet sound I'll drown my book." Prospero
has decided to give up, in other words, on
political power. And we'll explore why people
do that in the very last section of the course.
Now you might be asking yourself, why would
the dean of SAIS, who has a background chiefly
as a military historian and as a student of,
and to some extent a participant in the making
of American foreign policy, be teaching a
course on Shakespeare? Some of you may know
that in fact, I intend to write a book and
a lot of what's in this course is really the
raw material for this book. And a friend of
mine once said to me when I raised this issue
with him, he would say he's a very well-known
English literature professor. He said, "You
know, Eliot, I think everybody should write
a book about Shakespeare." Maybe so, but the
truth is the reason why I want to do this
and where I think I can bring something special
to the study of Shakespeare is I'm not a literature
professor.
I would never claim to be, that's not my area
of scholarship. But I have spent my entire
career studying political power and political
people, of studying war and military people.
And because of my opportunities to serve in
government and simply by being part of the
Washington scene, I've seen presidents and
prime ministers. I've met royalty, foreign
ministers, generals. I've seen battlefields.
I've seen the corridors of power. And so I
think I have a somewhat different perspective
than perhaps a literature professor might
have. Okay but why Shakespeare? Well, I've
always loved Shakespeare, but for me, the
moment which I realized that there's something
to be done here by way of a course, and ultimately
a book, was when my wife and I went to see
a performance of Henry VIII; this is a play
that's not put on all that frequently.
Some people even questioned whether Shakespeare
wrote all of it, although the part I'm about
to show you, he pretty clearly did. And there's
a moment when Cardinal Woolsey, who has been
Henry VIII's chief minister, is suddenly deposed
and he's just shocked. Let's look at that:
"Farewell, a long farewell, to all my greatness!
This is the state of man: today he puts forth
the tender leaves of hopes; tomorrow blossoms,
and bears his blushing, honors thick upon
him; the third day comes a frost, a killing
frost." Then he continues after he describes
falling, "Like little wonton boys that swim
on bladders, this many summers in a sea of
glory, but far beyond my depth." It's a very
dramatic speech.
And he's saying to his faithful assistant,
Thomas Cromwell, whose features in a wonderful
trilogy now by Hilary Mantel, that in some
ways he had to come in. Well, I thought to
myself when I saw that, when I heard that
speech, I know that guy. There are a lot of
people in Washington and in other capitals
who swim in the sea of glory and find themselves
beyond their depth and all of a sudden they
fall never to hope again. It's not at all
an uncommon story. And that really informed
my reading of Shakespeare thereafter. And
not just my reading of Shakespeare. One of
the things that's striking about Shakespeare
is how many politicians were actual absolutely
entranced by him. One of them was Abraham
Lincoln. Lincoln probably never saw Shakespeare
performed until he became president. But he
did read Shakespeare very closely and he was
absolutely fascinated by him.
And towards the end of the Civil War, he was
visiting a battlefront and he came back on
a steamer heading to Washington DC. And he,
he began talking about the play Macbeth. And
he pulled out a copy of it and began reading
it to his colleagues who were with him on
the, on the boat. And this is the par he quoted:
"Better be with the dead, whom we, to gain
our peace, have sent to peace, than on the
torture of the mind to lie in restless ecstasy,
Duncan is in his grave. After life's fitful
fever he sleeps well. Treason has done his
worst; nor steel nor poison, malice domestic,
foreign levy, nothing can touch him further."
Well, five days after that trip Abraham Lincoln
went to Ford's theater and by the end of the
play of course, treason had indeed done its
worst.
Of course, there's a great irony here. Lincoln
was assassinated by a formidable Shakespearian
actor who was obsessed with Shakespeare. And
it's not just the great politicians or, let
us say, the good politicians as Lincoln undoubtedly
was, who were fascinated by Shakespeare. The
Nazis were fascinated by Shakespeare. And
in fact, the play Coriolanus, which we'll
talk about a little bit later on, which is
about a Roman general who turns on Rome, was
performed and given a great deal of attention
by Nazi leadership. In this case, we might
want to ask ourselves, what did Lincoln see
in this? Was it perhaps a reflection of his
own ambition and his misgivings about it?
Because that's really in many ways the theme
of Macbeth. Did Lincoln too perhaps feel the
torture of the mind? Well, we'll explore all
those things. The way this course is going
to be structured is a series of pretty short
lectures like this one at the end of which
I'll give you something to think about.
And I'll suggest something that you might
want to look at before the next lecture. After
every three lectures, after each of these
lectures there will be an online chat where
people will be able to speak with one another,
about the play and about their thoughts about
it or about the issues that we've raised.
And then after every three lectures there'll
be a one hour live session which I will be
interacting with you and responding to your
comments and I look forward to that. So let
me then move to where I'd like us to go for
the next lecture. It's a really fun exercise
to do what I suggest here Googling a political
figure in Shakespeare and seeing what you
come up with? I'll be curious to know what
you find. And then in the next lecture I'm
going to ask what is it that we think Shakespeare
really understood about politics. And for
that, let me suggest that you read up about
the Essex rebellion against Queen Elizabeth
and you'll see that Shakespeare, in fact,
ended up being embroiled in politics. So,
I look forward to working with you on this
course and to sharing my insights and hearing
yours and I'll see you at the next lecture.
Hi, this is Eliot Cohen and I want to welcome
you back to Rough Magic: Shakespeare on Power.
The topic of today's lecture is what Shakespeare
knew about politics.
There are those who have read Shakespeare
and who have said his understanding of the
court politics of his time and of previous
British history was so good that he couldn't
have just been an actor and a playwright.
He must actually been the pen name of some
nobleman of some kind. We know that that's
not true. We know that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare,
that the theatrical world of his time was
pretty small. We have actually lots of records
from Shakespeare. We know that he was very
careful about what he put on paper, or if
he was not careful, then none of the thing
has come down, of a political nature. He was
writing at a really fraught time. There were,
this was a time when, of course, Henry VIII,
Queen Elizabeth's father, had separated from
the Catholic church. There were tremendous
divisions between Catholics and Protestants.
There were conspiracies. This was a time you
made a mistake and you could end up in the
tower. But it's also the case that Shakespeare
knew courts. There were two main theatrical
companies in London: the Lord Chamberlain's
men and the Lord Admiral's men. Shakespeare
is with the Lord Chamberlain's men. We know
that he routinely performed for senior officials
at the court and indeed for the monarchs themselves:
Elizabeth I and then James I. And we knew
that this actually cut very close to contemporary
politics. The most famous case is when the
Lord Chamberlain's men were asked to perform
at the home of the Earl of Essex, who had
been a favorite of Queen Elizabeth I, but
who was involved in a conspiracy, was leading
a conspiracy to overthrow her. And later on
that same year, this is what Queen Elizabeth
said, "I am Richard II, know ye not that?"
The play that Shakespeare and is a player
has been asked to perform was indeed Richard
II, which is about an incompetent monarch
being deposed by a much more competent nobleman.
The Earl of Essex, of course, ended up on
the block. He was apparently the last man
to be beheaded at the Tower of London and
it took three strokes before the executioner
was able to lop off his head. So we know that
Shakespeare was involved in the courts and
he saw them, but what is it that he saw? I
think the key thing to remember about Shakespeare
he is first and foremost of student of character.
And that's part of what makes him so universal.
That's why there are versions of Shakespeare
in really every language on Earth. That's
why there's great Japanese movies by Akira
Kurosawa, which are basically about Shakespeare,
is because their studies of character.
And if there's one thing that we have learned
about politics, it is indeed the character,
the character matters. But I would say that
there's something else that's really important
to understand about Shakespeare and that explains
why he has so much to teach us. Shakespeare
was above all, I would say, a student of courts.
That is to say political situations where
you have a very powerful figure at the center
and radiating out from that circles of power
as it were. And there are always people who've
been in it and there are always people who
want to get inside it. And in the play Cymbeline,
there�s a wonderful passage between a retired
old nobleman who is exiled from the court
and he's bringing up two young princes who
don't quite know that they're princes, and
he's basically telling them it's not as much
fun as it looks.
There are a lot of wonderful pieces of this
dialogue with the young princes. Particularly
when he says, "The art of the court as hard
to leave as keep; whose top to climb is certain
falling, or so slippery that the fear's as
bad as falling." So Valerius, who's one who
speaking, knows it's not what it's cut out
to be, it's not what you think. And the boys
respond that that may be true, but we still
want be, as the saying goes, "in the room
where the deals are made." Maybe this is fine
for you living out here in a cave, but we
really want to see what politics is really
like. Well, this idea of politics as a court,
I think, is really extraordinarily powerful.
Most hierarchical organizations, companies,
universities have something of the future
of a court.
There's a number one, there may be a number
two, there's a whole bunch of number threes
and number fours. And there are people who
are jostling for power and for influence.
And there's the second idea in Shakespeare,
which is very powerful, and that is that politics
is theater. Shakespeare, not surprisingly
perhaps, at a powerful, powerful sense of
the way in which theater is a metaphor for
much of our life. And it can be extraordinarily
powerful. In fact, in Hamlet, there's a very
famous passage where Hamlet, whose father
had been murdered by his uncle, decides in
essence to out his uncle and his mother, whom
the uncle has married by putting on a play.
And of course it ends, this famous speech
ends, "The play's the thing wherein I'll catch
the conscience of the King." Well, so too,
in politics, there is frequently a director,
actors, a script, an audience, a stage.
And once you think about that metaphor, it
really explains a lot of how political people
behave. And we'll see in Shakespeare's plays,
there are, some people who don't act very
well. But then there are some who are masters
and the one that will spend the most time
with will be Henry V, who as we will see is
an extraordinary actor, but he's more than
that. He's a director, he's moving people
around on a stage. He's written all the stage
directions. He, in a way, he's written the
script as well. I think you'll find if you
reflect on this metaphor, once you have it
down, it'll be very hard to let go of it.
So let me conclude with some thoughts for
the next lecture. Ask yourself whether it's
possible to be an effective leader without
being something of an actor. And is that a
problem or maybe it's not. And then next time
what I want to do is talk about a particular
tool that Shakespeare uses, and that's the
soliloquy. That speech that's given either
to oneself or to the audience, which is in
some ways the most powerful a weapon in Shakespeare's
arsenal. And I've suggested to you one particular
soliloquy that we'll spend a good bit of time
with.
I look forward to seeing you at the next lecture.
Hi, this is Eliot Cohen and welcome back to
Rough Magic: Shakespeare on Power. The topic
of this lecture is the soliloquy. And periodically
in this course what I'm going to do is take
a bit of a break and look at some of the techniques
that Shakespeare uses to explore the theme
of power, people who exercise power, people
who desire to exercise power. Now, the particular
technique that I'm going to talk about today
is probably not one that Shakespeare invented,
but it is certainly one that he has mastery
of: the soliloquy. Soliloquy is a moment when
an actor gives a speech, speaking perhaps
to themselves, but more frequently to the
audience, in which they reveal who they think
they are and what they think is going on.
They may deceive themselves to be sure in
a variety of ways, but a soliloquy is a moment
where you don't lie, that is deliberately
tell a falsehood.
It's a rendering of the world as it's seen
by your inmost. It is usually delivered to
the audience, although not always. It's what
the actors call breaking the fourth wall.
That is to say the invisible wall that separates
the stage from the audience. And it can be
extremely powerful. For those of you who've
seen the series House of Cards, it's exactly
what Kevin Spacey playing Frank Underwood
does. And, in fact, Kevin Spacey was playing
Richard III just before he went to House of
Cards. Richard is one of Shakespeare's most
fascinating villains and one of the things
that's disturbing about the play, Richard
III, is we find ourselves sympathizing with
him in a certain way or laughing at his jokes.
And really the way Shakespeare does this is
through the soliloquy. So, what I'd like to
do in this lecture is walk you through a soliloquy
that Richard gives actually before Richard
III in Henry VI part three, act three, scene
two.
And what's happened is that his brother in
the course of the English Civil War has become
king. He is making a gracious remark about
Lady Gray, who is the widow of one of the
nobles who have been fighting on the other
side. It's pretty clear he has some fairly
lecherous interests in her. And Richard is
watching all of this and he's thinking about
Edward. He's thinking about his other brother
Clarence, he�s thinking about his nephews.
And so he begins here, he begins with envy:
"Edward will use women honorably, would he
were wasted, marrow bones and all." It's clear
not just that he lacks fraternal feeling.
It's clear that there's an element of envy
directed towards his brother. And it's not
just about power. It's also, in some ways,
it's envy about sex.
Richard then begins to muse about his own
ambition. And I think the thing to notice
here is this is not an undignified or particularly
unworthy depiction of an ambitious politician.
They have a great dream for themselves. They
think themselves very capable, but they have
no idea of how they're going to get where
they want to go. And it is deeply distressing
to them. And he knows that in many ways the
odds are against them. So, the question then
is, well, is there an alternative? "What other
pleasure can the world afford? I'll make my
heaven in a lady's lap." And this is really
a pretty cruel piece of self-examination here.
Shakespeare portrays Richard as hunchbacked,
withered arm. In truth, probably Richard had
scoliosis, but that's about it. But what's
striking here is that he knows himself to
be physically unattractive to women, but I
think in a deeper way, he knows that he is
unloved and at some level unlovable:
"Love forswore me in my mother's womb." And
it's possible actually to feel sorry for Richard
at this point. "And am I then a man to be
beloved? Oh, monstrous fault to harbor such
a thought!" Well, what are the alternatives?
The only alternative is to pursue the crown.
Not that he has any particular idea of what
he wants to do when he achieves it, but he
wants the crown and nothing else will do.
He'll "account this world but hell," and he
uses the word that impaled that the, his misshaped
trunk that bears this head be round impaled
with a glorious crown." That usually when
something's impaled it's not particularly
nice. From there he moves to this passage
which is extremely claustrophobic. He's like
one lost in the wood that he can't find the
open air and he's torn by the thorns, is tearing
the thorns and he is saying that although
he thinks he can get there by subtle and sophisticated
ways, that's where it will come out.
He's ready to get there simply with a bloody
axe. He'll do whatever it takes. And then
the mood shifts yet again, because he does
think he can get there suddenly because he
thinks he's a brilliant actor. Think about
the previous lecture. He thinks that he's
better than Niccolo Machiavelli. And at the
end, that goal that originally seemed completely
implausible, he thinks he can do it without
difficulty: "Can I do this, and cannot get
a crown? Tut, were it farther off, I pluck
it down." So it's an extraordinary depiction
of a shifting set of moods. And I think there
are a number of things we should take away
from that. One is that it is really important
to have a three dimensional view even of political
characters who we find deeply unappealing.
And Richard III is a monster as Richard III
is he then becomes, he is a monster.
He is cruel. He is unprincipled, he'll lie,
he'll seduce, he'll certainly murder, but
we can empathize with him. We can get inside
his head. Secondly, his thoughts prove he's
not a static figure in any way. He is a complicated
human being. And the third thing that I think
we understand that this particular case and
that a soliloquy can reveal in a way that
very few other theatrical devices can is how
ambition for power can be profoundly corrupting
and soul destroying. And that's really what's
happened here. Richard is completely consumed
by his desire for power. So, that's just one
example of how this, how powerful a soliloquy
can be. It can be somewhat unnerving because
it is a window into a human soul.
Let me suggest that we follow up with this.
If you would by imagining what kind of soliloquy
a powerful figure, present or historical,
might give. Richard Nixon actually gave something
that was a bit like a soliloquy as he left
the White House to get on a helicopter after
resigning the presidency. He reflected on
who he was and the things he had done wrong.
And it was not nearly as eloquent as Richard
of Gloucester, but it was quite revealing.
And you might want to think about what that
a soliloquy by any figure that you care to
reflect on might give, and I would suggest
writing it down. You can have fun with that.
For the next lecture, we're going to move
into the second section of the course, and
that's on how people acquire power. And of
course, the easiest way in a monarchy is to
inherit it.
Well, we'll be looking at one of the scenes
in Richard II. Richard II is a legitimate
king, but he is incompetent. He's brilliant.
He has magnificent command of the English
language, but he makes all kinds of mistakes.
And this is a powerful scene, which I'm going
to think you'll read one of the most extraordinary
patriotic evocations of a country that you'll
ever hear. And that's John of Gaunt's famous
speech. As you can tell from my notes here,
it doesn't end well for Richard II, but more
on that next time when we continue Rough Magic.
