Tyrant

Shakespeare on Politics

By: Stephen Greenblatt

Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini

World-renowned Shakespeare scholar Stephen Greenblatt explores the playwright's insight into bad (and often mad) rulers.

As an aging, tenacious Elizabeth I clung to power, a talented playwright probed the social causes, the psychological roots, and the twisted consequences of tyranny. In exploring the psyche (and psychoses) of the likes of Richard III, Macbeth, Lear, Coriolanus, and the societies they rule over, Stephen Greenblatt illuminates the ways in which William Shakespeare delved into the lust for absolute power and the catastrophic consequences of its execution.

Cherished institutions seem fragile, political classes are in disarray, economic misery fuels populist anger, people knowingly accept being lied to, partisan rancor dominates, spectacular indecency rules - these aspects of a society in crisis fascinated Shakespeare and shaped some of his most memorable plays. With uncanny insight, he shone a spotlight on the infantile psychology and unquenchable narcissistic appetites of demagogues - and the cynicism and opportunism of the various enablers and hangers-on who surround them - and imagined how they might be stopped. As Greenblatt shows, Shakespeare's work, in this as in so many other ways, remains vitally relevant today.

©2018 Stephen Greenblatt (P)2018 Recorded Books

Worthwhile read.

Outstanding, interesting, and shows just how relevant Shakespeare still is and always will be. Take the time to read this one if you like both Shakespeare and the study of human behavior.

Scholarship and presentation

The authors Innovation and thoughtful insights into how politics mark a community make this book relevant for our day.

Timely essay on Shakespeare's tyrants

Greenblatt's scholarly elucidation of Shakespeare's tyrants implicitly comment on the spectacle of Trump. Masterful and thoroughly enjoyable.

Then as Now

Through Shakespeare's tyrants you'll be able to see and understand Trump's tyrannical makeup. Through multidunious references to Shakespeare's plays we come to see what makes a tyrant and to reach the inescapable conclusion that Trump is indisputably a tyrant embodying every evil and noxious characteristic of all of Shakespeare's tyrants put together. Shakespeare did not call out the tyrants of his time as such but instead left it to the thinking members of his audience to draw that inescapable conclusion for themselves from his depiction of the tyrants in his plays. So too does author Greenblatt in that he never once refers to Trump, but in his description and analysis of Shakespeare's tyrants one has to know that Trump is just as much a tyrant as any one of Shakespeare's tyrants. Author Greenblatt observed that Shakespeare indirectly pointed out the tyrants of his day by way of his tyranical characters of the past out of fear of being punished for treason. Perhaps Greenblatt too wants to take no chances of being subject to retribution now or in the future by obliquely asking us through his analysis of Shakespear's tyrants to quit ignoring the obvious with sugarcoating of and excuses for Trump's behavior and to recognize him for who and what he really is, plain and simply a tyrant without morality or any redeeming quality. With all this said, all-in-all and incredible book.

Necessary reading for our troubled times

Brilliantly written, Greenblatt ties Shakespeare’s tyrants and their storylines to today’s current American political quagmire.