Author's Notes: Why Shakespeare Unlocks the Truth About Trump
Read our William Shakespeare informed articles here:
The Madness of King Donald: A Kingdom For a Middle Finger
The Thane of Mar-a-Lago: A Shakespearean Reckoning of Trump and the Void
There is a moment in every reader’s life when a book, a play, or a character suddenly illuminates the present moment. For us, that moment came when we realised that Donald Trump is not a new phenomenon, not a uniquely American aberration either, but a figure that William Shakespeare understood and captured with devastating precision over five hundred years ago. His works still possess a profound understanding of human nature, specifically, the nature of tyrants.
We grew up reading Shakespeare in school, studying his plays in English literature classes and watching performances at the RSC. Shakespeare was woven into our cultural DNA, part of the fabric of how we understand the world. We watched Trump rise, fall, and rise again; we saw him as a businessman, a politician, a demagogue. We saw a man breaking norms, attacking institutions, spreading lies. And then we started to see what Shakespeare had already seen so many years before: the archetypal tyrant, the hollow man, the void masquerading as a human being.
The Moment of Recognition: King Lear
The recognition came gradually, then all at once. It began with King Lear. We were reading it not for the first time, but perhaps for the first time witnessing a real tyrant in real time. And there it was: an aging king, surrounded by sycophants, incapable of accepting criticism, descending into madness as his grip on power tightened. A man who confused his personal whims with the national interest, whose arrogance increased even as his mind deteriorated, and who demanded total loyalty and destroyed anyone who questioned him.
