Sovereignty, Justice, and Political Power

King Lear intertwines two family stories: one of disinheritance and the consequent crisis of sovereignty that follows on the division of territory and political authority; the other of legitimacy, illegitimacy, resentment, and revenge against a father. The political plot of King Lear puts sovereign authority, patriarchal authority, political strategy, and violence into juxtaposition with the claims of social justice. The play puts into question the idea of a ‘sovereign body’, in particular in its treatment of economic and social transformations in attitudes to value and exchange, and in its meditation on the way sovereign power destroys human and social bodies. These themes can be reflected in interpretations of the drama that emphasize loneliness and meaninglessness. The drama also focuses on forms of violence which track social status, and instantiate forms of authority, including sovereignty.

Conclusion

This chapter sets out contemporary and past conceptions of the political way. It shows how the political way conveys both positive and negative value. The negative evaluation of politics has generated projects to displace it, and to replace it with benevolent dictatorship, or with violent authority, or with economic freedom of exchange. But these and other projects can never be free of strategy, of questions about authority, or of the claims of publicity and accountability; so politics always returns. The chapter considers the analogies between theatre and politics, and the difficulty of equating political power with sovereignty.

Politics and Magic

The idea that politics and magic are intertwined is both preposterous and commonsensical. Macbeth and Tempest both tell stories of the uses of magic power for political purposes—to undermine rule or to maintain dominance. The relationship between supernatural power and political power can both be seen as a metaphorical comment on an ineffable, mysterious quality of political power, and as an evaluative comment on the identification of politics with sleight of hand and trickery. The problems of discrimination between appearances and reality, between manipulation and authority, are dramatized in both these plays; and raise the question of the theatricality of political power and conduct, as well as raising evaluative questions about the evils of authoritarianism, colonial domination and exploitation.

Political and Military Power

This chapter shows how Coriolanus juxtaposes the claim that military distinction is a sign of fitness for governing authority, with the claims of popular choice of governors. The plot of Coriolanus also brings the strategies of dynastic kinship ambition into conflict with militarist authoritarianism, with open government, with the logic of class struggle and the threatened or actual uses of popular violence in order to prosecute political claims, and with tricky uses of political strategy. An overarching theme in Coriolanus is the conflict between loyalty and allegiance to a state, and the factors that push individuals into treachery; the analysis in this chapter focuses on the range of ways that individuals are tied to their societies, their state, and their interpersonal and intimate networks.

Politics and Theatre

The plot and action of Hamlet include dramatization of dilemmas of sovereignty, patriarchy, supernatural forces, political strategy, political violence, regicide, kinship, popular sovereignty—all forms of power and modes of conduct which are juxtaposed and intertwined. This chapter focuses on the play’s treatment of the theatrical nature of politics, and the way that the play can be interpreted as an exemplification of political theatre, treating as it does contemporary allusions to matters of succession and legitimate rule, in particular the rights and wrongs of women and power. The plot of a theatrical performance as a device to reveal wrongdoing raises the more general question of uses of theatre for political purposes.

Friendship and Justice

Merchant of Venice and Timon of Athens are both read, in this chapter, as questioning the place of friendship in political societies and states. Classically, friendship, or friendly relations at least, between citizens has been understood as a condition of political stability; but in the early modern era an idea of friendship as a transcendent tie, indifferent to politics, and in tension with it was developing. Republican thought also questions the relationship between friendship and commerce, with some critics seeing these as antithetical, others seeing them as bound up together. Both of these plays problematize the dilemmas of exchange, of contract, of bonds in the sense of agreement and promise, in relation both to intimate ties, and to the authority of sovereign institutions. Merchant of Venice considers these matters in particular in relation to a society fissured by religious antagonism—by anti-semitism; both plays consider them in relation to a society marked by clear sex and gender distinction and exclusion.

Violence and Political Authority

This chapter explores how Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet explicitly dramatizes civil city life threatened by civil violence. These two competing forms of power—civil city life and civil violence—are further juxtaposed, in the plot, with inter-personal erotic intimacy, which is figured, in the language and in the action of the play, as potentially transcendent of material relations; with the norms and social logic of commerce and exchange; and with the aspiration to finality of sovereign authority. The play demonstrates how violence and an economy in which everything is for sale are as destructive of civic republican politics as they are of intimate love.

Political power and Measure for Measure

This chapter analyses Shakespeare’s consideration of the pulls of seclusion, and of concealment, against the demands of public government and open contestation of the power to rule. Measure for Measure dramatizes the abuse and corruption of authoritarian governing power, in particular in the form of male sexual coercion and exploitation of females. The plot focuses on a ruler’s use of secrecy and surveillance in order to monitor their attempts to counter overly lax law enforcement with authoritarianism. It also puts questions of market rationality, and the imperatives that govern poor people’s attempts to earn livings in constrained urban circumstances in relation to questions of political order, and into relation with the imperatives of theological truth and spiritual virtue. The claims and imperatives of frank public speech, as a method of revealing corruption and pursuing justice, are brought into relationship with the political strategy of trickery.

Political Power and Othello

This chapter sets out and considers political readings of Othello, which is more commonly interpreted in an ethical or psychological frame. The plot puts sovereign state power into contradistinction and competition with patriarchal authority, with social antagonisms and oppressions, notably racism, with the political and moral claims of open frank speech, and with the ‘machiavellian’ strategies of hypocrisy, trickery, and ruthlessness. Shakespeare’s dramatizations of these powers and structures both emphasizes how ethical inter-personal and intimate relationships are shaped by political and social factors and forces, and also brings into question the claims of sovereignty and patriarchy vis-à-vis the forces of social antagonism. The claims of frank public speech in relation to political power are ambiguous: free public speech is a necessary condition of political life properly speaking, but is always risky and often compromised.

Introduction

This chapter introduces the concepts and problems of political conduct, political power, statecraft, and resistance that Shakespeare treats in his dramas, discussing how they are put into relationship with other forms and kinds of conduct and power: military distinction, intimate and interpersonal connections, religious authority, economic exchanges and circulations. Diverse meanings of ‘politic’ and associated terms—in particular the question of the extent to which political conduct must be open, and the extent to which it is associated with occult or tricky strategy and secrecy—are also dramatized by Shakespeare. The book’s method—which consists of readings of Shakespeare’s dramas in a way that highlights how political power structures plots, and is articulated in texts—is set out, including discussion of the political theory context for Shakespeare’s dramatic art, and its continuing relevance in political thought.