Bullies, Tyrants & Liars

(And other toxic pond life)

“Bleed, bleed, poor country!

Great tyranny, lay thou thy basis sure,

For goodness dares not check thee!”  [Macbeth 4.3]

Do good people allow evil to run riot?

It seems so, over and over again throughout history.

For in the face of bullying, of immoral and unscrupulous tyranny, to stand up and speak out is a dangerous hobby.

What can we do with these bullies, tyrants and liars?

Shakespeare wrote dramatic stories.

Not texts to be set for exams.

Nor, to be fair, to be scribbled about on blogs.

He was just an actor and writer who knew how to grab an audience.

He understood what makes a powerful story: love and hate, power and ambition, good and evil.

Unsurprisingly, he serves up a smorgasbord of rotters – the bullies, tyrants and liars who, at best, make mischief; at worst, are forces of chaos and destruction.

In our increasingly worrying world, we seem to be at the mercy of unpredictability,

ruthlessness, inhumanity, greed, ambition, a grim grip on absolute power, from more than one corner of the globe.

What are we to do with them?

What resonates with us today from the antics, and fates, of the dark villains of Shakespeare?

Case no.1: Leontes (The Winter’s Tale) - delusional and dangerous.

Everyone’s having a jolly time with the State visit of Polixenes, Leontes’ childhood best friend, to the court. But when Queen Hermione, pregnant wife to Leontes, appears to be getting on too well with Polixenes, Leontes constructs a scenario of betrayal and adultery.

Just saying, I personally think these ravings and mutterings of a jealous suspicious king are some of Shakespeare’s most potent writing. The rhythms are wild, full of pulsing energy, the venom and heated fury in the language is astonishing, the images he conjures of his wife’s infidelity are crude – just brilliant writing. What a joy for an actor!

Great writing, denoting very bad behaviour.

Leontes is, of course, wrong.

Everyone tells him he’s wrong.

His right-hand man, Camillo, tries to do the right thing, spelling it out for him:

“Good my lord, be cur’d

Of this diseas’d opinion…’tis most dangerous.”      [1.2]

Leontes persists. “Say it be, ‘tis true.”

There is a nasty little habit in dangerously manipulative folk: if you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes true. At least, that’s what they think or hope.

Camillo is emphatic:

“No, no, no, my lord.”

Leontes’ response, like all bullies, is to turn on those who oppose him:

“…you lie, you lie,

I say thou liest, Camillo, and I hate thee.”

Camillo has to play along with this feverish temperament, if only to the end of the scene, as Leontes commands him to kill Polixenes. His tyrant credentials are laid out for us clearly:

“Do’t, and thou has the one half of my heart;

Do’t not, thou split’st thine own.”

In other words, do as I say, and you remain in my favour; don’t go along with me, you die.

Leontes’ own vanity and trajectory of furious indignation propel him into vicious accusation and revenge. He will not be humiliated. (Sound familiar yet?)

Polixenes scarpers, getting out of the way of Leontes’ promised retribution, Camillo scarpering with him.

Hermione is left to bear the full force of Leontes’ madness.

She does have a champion in her corner, the magnificent Paulina, who unhesitatingly calls

out the behaviour of the king, despite his vile insults towards her. She holds forth to the courtiers who daren’t stand up to his ravings:

“these dangerous, unsafe lunes i’ the king” [2.2]

“tyrannous…jealous…mad…[2.3]

She is the only one prepared to stand her ground and speak truth to deranged power.

It does not, of course, stop him.

Leontes doesn’t hear truth. He condemns every word of criticism or disagreement as lies.

He takes one look at his newborn daughter, decrees her a bastard, and orders her to be slung out to some far-flung land and left to die.

Everyone knows Leontes is wrong. Accusations of tyrant clang through the action.

But he will not stand down.

You are with him, or you die.

Hermione, having just given birth in prison, has to stand in the court accused of treason, not only adultery but plotting to kill Leontes and helping Polixenes escape.

Leontes patiently points out to the court that he should be cleared of the accusation of tyranny, since he “so openly proceed in justice.”

See how honest I am? See how I abide by our law?

Hermione is dignified, full of sorrow for her husband’s delusion, and seeking only the restoration of her honour.

Leontes repeats his lies as evidence of truth.

The culmination of the trial is the dramatic unsealing of the Oracle, Apollo’s words being pretty unequivocal:

“Hermione is chaste, Polixenes blameless,

Camillo a true subject, Leontes a jealous tyrant,

his innocent babe truly begotten; and the King shall

live without an heir if that which is lost be not

found.”

The courtiers have three lines of joy and relief before Leontes exclaims

“There is no truth at all i’ th’ oracle.

The sessions shall proceed. This is mere falsehood.”

Usually accompanied by appropriately violent claps of thunder.

He won’t/can’t back down. He can’t admit he was wrong. He will not be humiliated. (There’s definitely some resonance going on here somewhere…)

Overturning the highest law, pronouncing the words of the gods as lies, is the pinnacle of his tyrannous achievements.   

Events swiftly overtake him. It takes the loss of Hermione and both his children for Leontes to decide he may have overdone things. He finally breaks.

Their deaths, he weeps, shall be to him his

“shame perpetual. Once a day I’ll visit

The chapel where they lie, and tears shed there

Shall be my recreation. So long as nature

Will bear up with this exercise, so long

I daily vow to use it. Come, and lead me

To these sorrows.”

This tyrant, at least, has come face to face with his own lies, his own violent actions, and is a broken man.

A pity it took death and destruction to get him to that point.

And this is only the end of Act 3 – there are two whole acts to go before Leontes can finally be granted any kind of judgement/forgiveness.

Kings, dukes, lords have a habit of throwing their weight around. The rotten ones, anyway. And also the villains a few rungs down the ladder.

Case no.2: the master liar and manipulator: Iago. (Othello)

Passed over for promotion, he seethes and plots Othello’s downfall. This cannot be the single motivating factor for his actions – he is such a complex, psychological study – so that much time in rehearsal is spent working out exactly WHY he is so chillingly vicious, why the disappointment at not being promoted is the final straw. What were all the other straws?? His terrifying swagger through the play certainly reveals that ultimately he will take down

anyone who is against him, including his own wife.

That is for another time. For now, we simply acknowledge his lies, how he drops gradual hints, a slow drip drip drip in Othello’s ear, creating the picture of Desdemona’s supposed adultery, ensuring her lost/stolen handkerchief is proof of her guilt. Keep the lie going and it becomes truth…

This is a master at work. He has everyone around him dancing like puppets and, one by one, he cuts them down. Only when Emilia, his wife, refuses to keep silent is Iago unmasked for the “hellish villain” he is. Iago stabs her for betraying him, but fails to escape and is brought back to face his punishment.

A brave voice speaking out? At the risk of her own life?

Case no.3: Don John (Much Ado about Nothing)

As a discontented bastard, he has no power. But he wants it. Or at least, he wants to create disorder, chaos and misery. He is blisteringly honest about his hunger to transgress:

“…it must not be denied but I am a plain-dealing villain. I am trusted with a muzzle, and

enfranchised with a clog; therefore I have decreed not to sing in my cage. If I had my mouth I would bite…” [1.3]

So he wields his tyranny and dispenses lies in a domestic situation, targeting an innocent young gal and her gullible, reprehensibly vengeful fiancé.

Don John succeeds in causing wretched desolation and tearing apart a close group of chums, then escapes leaving misery in his wake.

He doesn’t get far. The improbable, lovably comic police force of Messina manages to bring truth and justice to the chaos, Don John is arrested and brought back to face punishment.

Dogberry, Verges and the Watch have good hearts, they are earnest to get the job done even as we laugh at them.

Can we cling to this? That ‘right’ is ‘might’? That the law will triumph…eventually?

With so many of these liars, I struggle at the readiness of those around them to believe so easily the poison being poured into their ears. In our contemporary world, the liars who are attempting to justify their horrific decisions are clearly lying. We know they are lying. Doesn’t stop them though, so convinced are they that their words will validate their actions.  

Case no.4: Richard III

Where do I start?

Shakespeare’s Richard is a fantastic tapestry of charisma, intelligence, sadistic evil, breathtaking manipulation and dazzling language. We cannot stop watching this hypnotic creature as he massacres his way to the throne. If you are old enough and lucky enough to have seen Anthony Sher’s ‘spider’ Richard at the RSC, you know you will never see a more stomach-churning brilliant manifestation of this monster.

He sets out his stall in Henry VI iii, graphically delineating his own physical failings with which Nature has cursed him:

“To shrink mine arm up like a wither'd shrub;

To make an envious mountain on my back,

Where sits deformity to mock my body;

To shape my legs of an unequal size;

To disproportion me in every part,

Like to a chaos.” [3.2]

The result of which, he informs us, is that he will take his pleasures in murdering his way to the crown – “I can smile, and murder whiles I smile.”

I choose one scene to share with you, a treasure chest of a two-hander showdown, to reveal Richard’s genius manipulation. We are now in Richard III, Act 1 Sc.2.

Lady Anne, widow of Henry VI’s son Edward, is processing behind the coffin of Henry VI.

She kicks off with a graphic diatribe against the “hated wretch” Richard, cursing him and any wife and child he may get. Richard arrives, enabling Anne to address her disgust to him personally. She notes the fear in the gentlemen carrying the coffin:

“What! Do you tremble? Are you all afraid?

Alas, I blame you not; for you are mortal,

And mortal eyes cannot endure the devil.

Avaunt, thou dreadful minister of hell!”

You can sense her shuddering hatred and furious outrage throughout her speeches as she lets him have it with both barrels: “foul devil”, “thou lump of foul deformity”, “inhuman and unnatural”, “villain, thou know’st no law of God nor man,” “thy bloody mind that never dreamt on aught but butcheries”. She curses him, she calls him out on murder, she calls him every vile name she can summon from her broken, desperate heart.

And Richard?

He purrs at her “Sweet saint, for charity, be not so curst,” “divine perfection of a woman”.

As the corpse of Henry VI starts to bleed afresh, (a sure sign that the murderer is close to the body) Richard embarks on the most extraordinary wooing of Anne, his language rich and warm as any lover’s, positively pulsing with wide-eyed innocence and sincerity, he calls on Anne’s Christian soul to forgive, claims he had nothing to do with the murders, then admits he did but he helped these good men to their deserved place in heaven, and all was done for love of her, her beauty.

Every insult from Anne is answered by Richard as a lover.

She snarls that he is fit only for one place – hell. He counters that there is one other place he is fit for.

Anne: Some dungeon.

Richard: Your bedchamber.

She rails at him that she will be revenged on him that killed her husband.

Richard: He that bereft thee, lady, of thy husband,

Did it to help thee to a better husband.

Anne: His better doth not breathe upon the earth.

Richard: He lives that loves thee better than he could.

Richard is deaf to anything she throws at him, except to spin it to his own advantage. He ignores accusation and truth (sound familiar?) and rewrites it as his own declaration of passion (which is a lie).

Anne tries to keep going, even spitting on him:

Anne: Would it were mortal poison, for thy sake.

Richard: Never came poison from so sweet a place.

Anne: Never hung poison on a fouler toad.

Out of my sight! Thou dost infect mine eyes.

Richard: Thine eyes, sweet lady, have infected mine.

He is relentless.

His manipulation reaches its crescendo when he opens his shirt, kneels before her, offering her his sword, and declares that he killed her husband, but it was because of her, her beauty: if she cannot forgive him, she must kill him.

Richard: Take up the sword again, or take up me.

She lets the sword fall. He manoeuvres her into a hopeless position. She is confused, overwhelmed and, horribly, unable to keep up the fight. She wishes she knew what was in his heart, his true intention, she fears that he is lying.

Richard: Then never was man true.

The close of the scene takes your breath away. He offers her his ring and she puts it on.

He has persuaded her that he is penitent, that she is the instrument of his redemption.

She is enthralled, disarmed and caught in his trap. His web.

She exits and he lets us know immediately the ludicrous, wild victory he just won.

Richard: Was ever woman in this humour woo’d?

Was ever woman in this humour won?

I’ll have her – but I will not keep her long.”

We can’t help loving this creation, the unbelievable darkness in his humour, in his heart. But he is a fiction.

When this kind of strategist and manipulator emerges into the real world, the thrill and laughter stops.

Forcing adversaries into a position where they are damned if they respond, damned if they don’t.

Out and out lies.

Empty but dazzling oratory.

Blatant political and emotional manipulation.

Who can stop them?

 Anne’s curses come back to bite her. It doesn’t end well for her.

The other ladies are quite clear as to Richard’s nature. Queen Margaret has been shouting from the rooftops what a vile psychopath he is, and is unafraid of denouncing him to his face:

“Stay dog, for thou shalt hear me.”

She calls on heaven to “hurl down their indignation

On thee, the troubler of the poor world’s peace!

The worm of conscience still be-gnaw thy soul!

…thou elvish-mark’d, abortive, rooting hog!...the son of hell!…” [1.3]

A phrase that chimes so wretchedly today across our war-torn and invaded world:

“The troubler of the poor world’s peace.”

Queen Elizabeth (widow to Edward IV, mother of the murdered princes in the tower) witnesses the arrests of innocent men and the terrifying trajectory of Richard’s power:

“Insulting tyranny now begins to jut

Upon the innocent and awless throne:

Welcome, destruction, blood and massacre!

I see, as in a map, the end of all.” [2.4]

Richard’s own mother confronts him, demanding to speak, and his reply is straight from the bully-tyrant’s playbook: “Do then; but I’ll not hear.”

As the other women of the play do, she curses him, calls down on heaven to bring him to justice, summons the spirits of his murdered victims to plague his mind and strengthen Richard’s enemies:

“Bloody thou art, bloody will be thy end;

Shame serves thy life, and doth thy death attend.” [4.4]

Richard’s response is always to hurl back abuse and insult. Laugh at them. (Familiar behaviour...)

The mothers of our current troublemakers have left no such condemnation of their offspring. What we do have are commentators and journalists calling them out and bearing witness, voices from the opposition and from analysts doing the fact-checking and holding them to account.

It isn’t stopping the violence, the killing, the chaos, the political and economic bedlam.

But they are voices trying to be heard above the lies and the maelstrom of arrogance.   

You can’t, by the way, completely blame Mary L Trump (niece) for surfing the tidal wave of the Donald’s leadership and putting a number of books out there. Their family life and growing up sounds a nightmare. And I’m sure she has her own axe or ten to grind.

But there it is, a voice. Logging his ignorance, aggression, bullying tactics and total lack of strategic or political sense.

Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man.

Wo Could Ever Love You: a Family Memoir.   

The Reckoning: America’s Trauma and Finding a Way To Heal.

I fear this blog post could go on and on and on. (Don't worry - it won't. And if you keep going, there's a delightful reward at the end.)

The bullying fathers – Lord Capulet, Hermia’s dad, Polixenes.

The hypocrisy, abuse of power and manipulations of Angelo in Measure For Measure.

The countries that throw out into exile their gentler leaders – The Tempest, As You Like It.

Angelo & Isabella, Measure For Measure, Prague Shakespeare Company.

The bullying tactics of Petruchio in The Shrew; Lady Macbeth’s manipulation and belittling of her husband; the machinations and betrayals of evil children which threaten the State – Regan, Goneril, Edmund in King Lear.

And so many more.

Important to note, here, that we shouldn’t think the entire world is unjust, tyrannous and terrifying; Shakespeare usually offers a corresponding king, duke or lord who shows wisdom, kindness and intelligence. And there is usually a female character clearly speaking out.

These decent leaders and observers don’t need or choose to rule with threat, bullying or violence. Subsequently, they often suffer at the hands of the bad guys.

‘Call them out on all of it’ Emilia inspires us, Hermione and Paulina tell us, Queen Margaret,

Queen Elizabeth and the Duchess of York tell us.

Don’t stop holding them to account, proclaiming the hypocrisy, the inhumanity, the ignorant stupidity, the evil.

The bullies’ and tyrants’ own countries need this more than anyone, for they are the most likely to be silenced, to be oppressed, to disappear.

The good guys (mostly) abide by International Law and the rules of diplomacy and decency.

The bad guys ignore them.

Shakespeare doesn't let his good guys cross the line and fight the rotters with like-for-like unlawful, evil aggression.

They band together, hold fast in the face of tyranny, retain the moral high ground, regroup and face up to the monsters.

Most importantly, the outraged voices never stop speaking out truth to misguided power.

Don’t think for one minute that I consider the "right-thinking" nations to be angels. I can’t think of one country or leader who doesn’t have a flaw. We are, after all, merely human.  

Shakespeare’s good guys also carry flaws.

But they know, in the end, what is right and what is unacceptable, what is intolerable.

Listen to the observers, the commentators.

They witness.

And they keep on speaking.

A reward for getting this far...click and enjoy