William Shakespeare’s works are not short of insight on the perils of power and “vaulting ambition”. Some are dramatically relevant to this era of war and ceaseless tension, from Richard III to Julius Caesar and King Lear.
But Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer, reflecting on the 400th anniversary of the Bard’s First Folio this week, might have chosen a better example than to cite the words of a treasonous assassin whose own demise is hurtling into view.
On LBC, she was asked whether the embattled Rishi Sunak finds himself ruefully reflecting on the words “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown” (Henry IV, Part II).
Stumped to come up with a retort from England’s national poet, Ms Frazer eventually went with the line “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow”. It was an attempt to emphasise the PM’s forward-looking strategy ahead of his date with voting destiny next year.
The anguished lines are delivered by Macbeth, the murderer of a rightful king, shortly after he is told of the suicide of his tormented wife. Ms Frazer did not go on to the end of the passage: “Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
To be fair, Ms Frazer does have a sprawling brief at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, and she studied law not literature at Cambridge. But the First Folio anniversary has been well publicised with several events taking place nationwide, including a special BBC season.
Politicians in general would do well to heed their Shakespeare, according to Professor John Mullan at University College London.
“There’s a line in Henry IV Part I when the hotblooded Hotspur refers to the usurping Henry IV by his previous name as that ‘vile politician Bolingbroke’. The word ‘politician’ was clear to Shakespeare’s audience as a pejorative term,” he told the Standard.
“But we know in the play that Hotspur’s doomed and Bolingbroke is going to win. So there in a nutshell is how it works in Shakespeare’s history plays: the wily politician who can play on his opponent’s weakness and win over the public always comes out on top.”
The first collection of Shakespeare’s plays, the First Folio was entered on the Stationers’ Register in London on November 8, 1623 thanks to two of the playwright’s devoted friends, seven years after his death in Stratford.
Their publication of 36 plays ensured the survival of 18 works that had never been published before - including Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, Twelfth Night and Julius Caesar.
Just before leaving the culture brief, Ms Frazer’s predecessor Nadine Dorries tweeted a photoshopped picture from a film adaptation of Julius Caesar, depicting Mr Sunak as Brutus, about to plunge a knife into the back of Caesar/Boris Johnson.
Ms Dorries was roundly condemned for the imagery, coming after MPs Sir David Amess and Jo Cox were stabbed to death. But she has refused to drop the line of attack, returning to the fray with a new book called “The Plot: The Political Assassination of Boris Johnson”.
Shakespeare’s Roman play remains a totemic work for students of both ancient history and power politics. It contains one line with tragic resonance given Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Israel’s conflict against Hamas: “Cry 'Havoc!' and let slip the dogs of war."
At least his downfall has given Mr Johnson more time to work on a long-promised Shakespeare biography, which he was first commissioned to write in 2015.
Dominic Cummings - arguably Mr Johnson’s very own Iago - alleged last week at the Covid inquiry that his former boss “wanted to work on his Shakespeare book” in February 2020 instead of working on the looming Covid pandemic. Friends of the former PM have hotly denied that.
In “Boris The Third”, Mr Johnson’s own life story was adapted for the stage at the Edinburgh Fringe, when he was depicted having failed to learn any of his lines for a school performance of Richard III.
As under the scheming Richard, some warn that the kingdom faces dangerous divisions if Johnson and his band, or Liz Truss, ever return.
If Richard III is a how-to guide for cynics on the political rise, King Lear remains the ultimate cautionary tale. Convinced early on that he is “a man more sinned against than sinning”, by the end the aged ruler is howling in the wind, tortured by grief as he realises his errors, too late.
Ahead of meeting on 650 constituency battlefields next year, Sir Keir Starmer and his Labour “band of brothers” (and sisters) are hoping to consign Mr Sunak and the Tories to the electoral winds.
