CLASSICS REVISITED
The death of kings
BY RAVI VYAS
Shakespeare: The Complete Plays, General Editor: Alfred Harbage, Penguin/ Viking, revised edition, 1977.
"THE higher the monkey climbs the tree, the more you see of his behind." This cautionary African folk adage adequately sums up the appeal of Shakespeare's historical plays, particularly "Richard II" and "Coriolanus", that centres on the struggle for power in a corrupt world. Shakespeare was obsessed with history, whether via Holinshed's Chronicles or the Roman histories that gave rise to "Julius Caesar", "Anthony and Cleopatra" and "Coriolanus". All his histories deal with the struggle for the English Crown that went on from the close of the 14th to the end of the 15th Century. But while "monitoring the centres of power", they all follow a pattern where every chapter opens and closes at the same point. In every one of the plays, history turns a full circle, returning to the point of departure. These recurring and unchanging circles described by history are the successive kings' reigns. Very simply, history repeats itself with a twist in the tail.
Circular structure
Each of the great historical tragedies begins with a struggle for the throne, or for its consolidation. Each ends with the monarch's death and a new coronation. In each of the Histories the legitimate ruler drags behind him a long chain of crimes. He has rejected the feudal lords who helped him reach the Crown; he murders, first, his enemies, then his former allies; he executes possible successors and pretenders to the Crown. But he is not able to execute them all. From banishment, a young prince returns — the son, grandson, or brother of those murdered — to defend the violated law. The rejected lords gather around him, he personifies the hope of a new order and justice. But every step to power continues to be marked by murder, violence, and treachery. And so when the new prince finds himself close to the throne, he drags behind him a chain of crimes as long as that of his predecessor. He has killed enemies, now he will kill his former allies. And a new pretender appears in the name of violated justice. The wheel has turned full circle. A new chapter opens to a new historical tragedy.
This scheme of things or model is not, of course, marked with an equally clear-cut outline in all his Histories. It is clearest in the two masterpieces of historical tragedy, "Richard II" and "Coriolanus". In these plays the struggle for power is shown in its "pure state". It is a struggle for the Crown, between people who have a name, a title and power that is not abstract or mythologised; for Shakespeare, power has names, eyes, mouth and hands. It is a relentless struggle of living people who sit together in one table:
For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground,
And tell sad stories on the death of kings:
How some have been depos'd; some slain in war;
Some haunted by ghosts they have depos'd;
Some poisoned by their wives; some sleeping kill'd;
All murdered.
"Richard II"
Richard II, a man of sensibility, has no political sense; he knows persons, not people; Coriolanus, a warrior who believes in the patrician regard for prowess and not in the democratic respect for consensus, undermines his own potential greatness as a leader.
Richard II is presented by Shakespeare as a victim of his vainglory. We first see Richard in a scene in which he makes use of his royal power (he uses the verb "to monarchise") to resolve a hectoring quarrel between two nobles of the realm, Bolingbroke and Mowbray. Surrounded by fawning courtiers and indulged in his capriciousness by the public's acceptance of his divine right, he does so with dramatic flourish: Mowbray is banished forever, and the popular Bolingbroke exiled for six years. To Shakespeare, this is not so much a sign of Richard's frivolity as an example of his bad judgment. Later, Richard again misreads the political landscape; in an attempt to finance incursions into Ireland, he seizes the property of the banished Bolingbroke — "his plates, his goods, his money, and his lands". His actions inflame the nobles against him, emboldens Bolingbroke to return with an army, and insures Richard's infamy as a "most degenerate" ruler.
Profound disconnect
Despite his omnipotence ("Is not the king's name twenty thousand names?/ Arms, arm, my name!"), Richard has no understanding of his subjects and sees no reason to pander to them. Bolingbroke, on the other hand, is a master politician, whose "courtship to the common people" is a spectacle of stage-managed humility. Richard is shocked by Bolingbroke's lumpen performance: "How he did seem to dive into their hearts/ With humble and familiar courtesy;/ What reverence he did throw away on slaves,/ Wooing poor craftsmen with the craft of smiles/ And patient underbearing of his fortune." By the end of his life, Richard II has learned wisdom and humility: "I wasted time, now doth time waste me."
Coriolanus learns nothing from his hardships. He cuts through enemies like "a harvest-man that's tasked to mow"; he looks upon the common people as "fragments" and "crows to peck the eagles". Democracy is all talk; he is bound by no authority, save his own. When the citizens banish him from Rome, he declares, "I banish you," and then adds, "I turn my back/ There is a world elsewhere."
The ambiguities of "Coriolanus" have lent themselves to many interpretations. But both plays show, to borrow an expression from Bertolt Brecht, that the straight line in a corrupt world is the crooked line.
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