Shakespeare loves his political commentary but he took it a step farther this time. Rather than just critiquing certain government systems, he seems to be taking aim at certain institutions we have built into our personal and legal lives. Specifically with legitimacy in “A Winter’s Tale”. This is less of an issue in modern times, but parentage was much more critical in the past. It was not just a moralizing issue. It was an issue that determined legal rights, protections, and inheritance. In our post sexual-revolution world, it’s sometimes hard for us to conceive of just how devastating implying that your child was a bastard could be. The stakes were beyond our ability to relate to now. Especially because paternity can be determined by DNA testing now for everyone, at relatively low expense. The people of Shakespeare’s time had no such assurance. If your child didn’t look like the father you could be in huge trouble. Even if you were totally innocent of any wrongdoing, there wasn’t much you could do. Shakespeare was probably aware of how flawed basing a system on heredity when heredity was hard to determine with certainty was. He had an eye for human folly and this is one situation that is ripe with the possibility of mayhem.

I feel that Shakespeare is again using this play to show just how fragile the systems we set up for ourselves can be. We believe in them as concrete and generally dependable. But Shakespeare loves to take our preconceived notions and turn them on their heads. All it takes for tragedy to strike is a errant thought for Leontes to completely derail his view of his family. Reading the first act made me incredibly anxious. It illustrates just how deadly a mix of paranoia and power can be.

Leontes spirals into self-destruction the more he obsesses over his wife’s supposed infidelity. It eventually drives his family into pieces. Shakespeare shows us again how easily the systems was adhered to can cave in on us. Especially when you a a member of society whose existence hinges largely on the goodwill of those you are attached to, such as the women and children who are largely at the mercy of the patriarchs whims. Here we can also see a feminist reading of this play come in. Hermione, despite the support of all other characters, is still imprisoned for her “crimes”. Even having an oracle on her side doesn’t help. he can only be absolved by her husband in death. The audience is probably on her side for the duration of the play, so when she suffers we feel the injustice she faces. Making us more likely to feel frustration at the institutional power she lacks, making it impossible for her to defend herself. It’s always easier to hammer home a feeling of unfairness in a system when a character you like suffers under it.

Having read just the first act of Winter’s Tale, I already see it’s going to be an intense play. We already saw someone ordered to be assassinated but then they run away before the end of the first act. Just in this act, there’s already a lot of similarities between WT and the other plays by Shakespeare we’ve read in class.

From what I gathered in class, this play was written in Shakespeare’s later years and thus contains much of the same elements from his other plays. It also cuts straight to the heart of the matter immediately:

Hamlet is a character who mulls over things: to be or not to be, when to kill Claudius, etc. . But his contemplations are not without good reason, or so they seem; i.e. when Hamlet was about to kill Claudius during his prayers but stopped himself because he didn’t want to send him straight to heaven. This could also just be Hamlet convincing himself out of it (extending his own and Claudius’ time alive) for he knows that to kill a king is a suicide mission.

Othello was ever so slowly convinced by Iago to believe that Desdemona was cheating on him. Over time we watched Othello break down more and more until he just snapped:  lost his mind and killed his faithful wife. We watched Iago’s motives morph from one thing to another as the story progressed and as his goals were accomplished.

Midsummer talks all about love and relationships. A girl is sentenced to death in the beginning of the play if she does not marry the man her father chose for her. The wrong couples get mixed up in the forest.

(This is a stretch but): In Twelfth Night, people pretend to be who they are not — identity (and gender) is confused.

How does all this relate to Winter’s Tale? 

King Leontes suspects his son could possibly be Polixenes’ — which he assures himself, his son is indeed his because they look so much alike (12fth Night)

Leontes immediately suspects that Polixenes is cheating on him with Hermione and orders him to be killed (Othello).

Polixenes ran away when he was ordered to be assassinated (Julius Caesar).

Leontes is a combination of Othello, Iago, and Hamlet in a way: he has an internalized Iago that works on his own mind immediately — nothing needs to work on him ( or nothing that we could read/see in him). He is unlike Hamlet because he acts immediately.

His relationship with Polixenes is like that of Hermia and Helena — childhood best friends torn apart by a member of the opposite sex. But not literally: Leontes wants to kill Polixenes when he suspects him of cheating with Hermione. Hermia and Helena want to fight each other over Lysander and Demetrius. Hermia, Helena, and Leontes ruin their own childhood friendships. There is like a poison working from the inside out on all these characters. And we remember what happened after Hamlet declared: there is something rotten in the state of Denmark.

I really look forward to reading the subsequent chapters of Winter’s Tale. If the first act escalated so quickly I can only imagine what’s going to happen next.

Not only did Shakespeare combine characters but he also combined genres in Winter’s Tale.

Within the first three acts of “The Winter’s Tale,” a prevalent construct of infidelity becomes a topic of discussion when Leontes initially accuses his wife, Hermione, of adultery. Ironically, considering the fact that Leontes himself asked Hermione to try and persuade Polixenes to stay in Sicilia for an extra week, Leontes initially meets her persuasion with pleasure, saying the following: “Hermione, my dearest, thou never spok’st/To better purpose” (ln. 88, pg. 3,137). When the stage direction “Hermione and Polixenes stand apart, holding hands” appears, this simple, informal gesture– one that, to me, doesn’t sound romantic at all considering they’re physically spaced apart– Leontes reacts with exaggerated jealousy. This is represented where he says:

“But to be paddling palms and pinching fingers,/As now they are, and making practiced smiles/ As in a looking glass; and then to sigh, as ’twere/ The mort o’th’ deer…” (lns. 115-118, pg. 3,137)

Do these simple gestures necessarily suggest infidelity? According to Hermione later at her trial in Act 3.2, she was nothing but cordial and following orders of her husband. This is represented where she says: “For Polixenes,/With whom I am accused, I do confess/I loved him as in honor he required [for his ranking as a king],/With such a kind of love as might become/A lady like me; with a love, even such,/So, and no other, as yourself commanded…” (lns. 59-64, pg. 3,160). However, the reactions don’t vary much between the gaps in scenes. In Act 1.2, instead of outright confronting Hermione about his concerns, he instead takes the infidelity concept further and starts questioning the legitimacy of his children, starting with Mamillius. In lines 129-135, Leontes says the following to his son: “Yet they say we are/Almost as like as eggs– women say so,/That will say anything. But were they false/As o’er-dyed blacks, as wind, as waters, false/ As dice are to be wished by one that fixes/No bourn twixt his and mine, yet were it true/To say this boy were like me” (3,138).  Although he acknowledges that Mamillius looks physically like him, he projects his perceived notions of Hermione’s infidelity onto his son, who he considers almost like a bastard child.

However, Mamillius isn’t as severely punished as Perdita, the baby girl born to Hermione while she’s in prison. Paulina, Antigonus’ wife, attempts to convince the baby as legitimately Leontes’ child by saying the following in Act 2.3: “Behold, my lords,/Although the print be little, the whole matter/ And copy of the father: eye, nose, lip,/The trick of’s frown, his forehead, nay, the valley,/The pretty dimples of his chin and cheek, his smiles,/The very mold and frame of hand, nail, finger” (lns. 97-102, pg. 3,155). Despite this physical evidence, however, Leontes outright denies the legitimacy of the supposed “bastard” and/or “the brat,” even going as far as ordering Antigonus to defy his wife and bring the baby into exile. Through Leontes’ inability to reason, he projects his allegations onto two innocent children, people who are characterized as being innocent at birth.

There is a lot more than I initially thought to this play. At first I thought it was just about Julius Caesar… then he died pretty quickly. Then it became all about Brutus and Cassius (then why is it called The Tragedie of Julius Caesar?) But the little part of it I want to focus on is the mentions of fate, destiny, prophecy, portends, and free will.

Cassius is a character who, at the start of the play, does not believe in destiny/chance. Because of this, he is my favorite character in the play. Iago is my first favorite character however and it is very coincidental that Cassius should say something that sounds very similar to Iago.

Cassius says (I, 2, 230): “Men at some time are masters of their fates: the fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.”

Iago says: “‘Tis in ourselves that we are thus or thus. Our bodies are our gardens to which our wills are gardeners … the power and corrigible authority of this lies in our wills.”

They are both saying that if you want something done or do not like one’s station, then it is up to you to do something about it. Destiny will not swoop down and award you with what you desire — if it does, you are lucky, but you cannot bet on your luck.

Another character/event Cassius reminds me of is Maria and Malvolio with the letter. Cassius writes a letter and throws it in Brutus’ house so he can read it. Cassius is Maria in this case, taking fate into his own hands and manipulating how people react to things to put a different future into motion.

Maria was tired of always having to deal with Malvolio and if she did nothing, she would never get revenge or relief from him. Same as Cassius; if he did nothing to overthrow Caesar he would never have something better and he’d be forced to deal with Caesar’s rule. Same as Iago, (assuming his main goal was to gain higher rank) he knew he had to take matters into his own hands in order to become lieutenant.

Even though Cassius prates on about free will, there are numerous mentions of prophecy and bad omens. The majority of the play seems dominated with superstition. And in the end, even Cassius succumbs to these beliefs that maybe, everything is fated after all.

Superstition, omens, and prophecy probably were common beliefs in Shakespeare’s time but what is Shakespeare really saying about those who are ambitious and believe in free will?

Iago does not have a happy ending and neither does Cassius and these were two characters who strongly believed that they could take fate into their own hands. And when Caesar was killed, the call: “cry havoc and let loose the dogs of war” was announced. Is Shakespeare trying to tell the audience that fate does not look well on those who attempt to change it?

Was he trying to keep people in their place by scaring them into obeying the laws of their stations?

I wonder what Shakespeare would think of the capitalistic American dream…

Shakespeare loves his irony, and there is almost nothing more ironic than politicians stabbing a man to death for the sake of “preserving democracy”. Especially when the final result of that assignation is the exact opposite of the intended goal. The republic fell anyway. The historical account already feels like a Shakespeare play at the start, it just needed his dramatic flair. But beyond the opportunity for drama, this seems like yet another cautionary tale from Shakespeare. He uses the assassination of Julius Caesar as a teaching moment. Although it becomes clear that the senate is mostly driven by jealousy, with Brutus being the only one with relatively pure intentions, they were all still foolish for thinking that killing Caesar will solve their problems. The conspirators were wrong because they failed to understand that a new man would rise up to fill the power vacuum Caesar left and Brutus because he failed to see past Caesar in his attempt to save the republic and affirm his own honor. The Roman republic was already threatened from the inside, before Caesar got there. Years of bribery and corruption were eating away at the core of Roman politics. Caesar was simply taking advantage of weaknesses that were already present. He didn’t create those weakness all by himself. By addressing only the symptoms, they all failed to treat the sickness. Corruption in the empire, and in themselves.

This, I think, is Shakespeare’s “argument” in the play. That you must look past your own ego and preserve the stability of your government long term. Not just “solve” the problem once it arises as a tyrant. He is less concerned about defending one type of governing system over another than he is about pointing out the self-destructive way the Liberators chose to deal with Caesar. They meant to preserve their own power or the republic by brute force. The intent was to continue the republic as it was, rather than comb it of internal issues. Brutus and the other conspirators fail because of this. If they had just paid more attention and kept each other accountable in this democracy, maybe things would have been different. Instead, they let their egos and and envy take over. Shakespeare deals with the jealousy of the liberators simply, by dismissing them the same way the victors do. Only slightly noted and without funeral. Their actions are selfish and short sighted, so Shakespeare addresses them harshly. He seems to only have sympathy for Brutus, because even if he was ultimately wrong in his actions, he did them out of honor and for the republic. But Brutus falls into a similar trap, he is thinking at least partially of himself. After all, Cassius baits Brutus into the conspiracy by referencing an ancestor of his. There is a touch of ego in Brutus, even if it is small.

In Shakespeare’s play “Julius Caesar,” a common theme prevalent is the conceptualization of rewards and punishments, especially with the characters of Cassius and Brutus.

Cassius is typically regarded negatively by many of the characters, which is represented initially where Cassius himself says: “Cassius from bondage will deliver Cassius” (ln. 90, pg. 1,705). Believing Caesar to be a tyrant, a leader of “feeble temper” (ln. 129, pg. 1,699), Cassius is a character that struggles to be held in a subordinate position. When Cassius relates the story of how he saved Caesar from drowning, for example, Cassius is boastful about him being more capable of leading the people of Rome than Caesar is. This is ironically referenced later in the same scene where Caesar himself relates to Antony:

“He reads much,/He is a great observer, and he looks/Quite through the deeds of men. He loves no plays,/As thou dost, Antony; he hears no music./Seldom he smiles, and smiles in such a sort/ As if he mocked himself and scorned his spirit/That could be moved to smile at anything” (lns. 201-207, pg. 1,701).

After this, Caesar relates that people like Cassius are “never at heart’s ease/Whiles they behold a greater than themselves,” meaning that he won’t ever be content with being placed in a subordinate position and/or ranking (lns. 208-09). This quote foreshadows both Caesar’s death in Act 3.1, and also foreshadows this concept of rewards and punishments.

Although Cassius and Brutus, in the end, die by suicide (ironically considering Brutus considered suicide to be a “cowardly and vile,” ln. 106, pg. 1,744), Brutus is the one rewarded in his death. Considering the fact that Antony, during his persuasive speech to the plebeians, showed the crowd specifically Brutus’ stab wound in Caesar’s body, I was shocked by the fact that he wound up being the one that honors him in the conclusion of the play. This is represented by the following lines in Act 5.5:

“This was the noblest Roman of them all./All the conspirators save only he/ Did that they did in envy of great Caesar;/He only in a general honest thought/And common good to all made one of them” (lns. 68-72, pg. 1,749).

Antony, through calling Brutus a true Roman and the only honest conspirator, he’s already placing Brutus on the pedestal of the “honest man” that he was projected to be. It also condemns all of the other conspirators, punishing them as dishonest and envious characters. Octavius says the following in terms of Brutus’s burial:

“According to his virtue, let us use him/With all respect and rites of burial./Within my tent his bones tonight shall lie,/Most like a soldier, ordered honorably” (lns. 76-79, pg. 1,749).

Unlike the other conspirators, Brutus is the only character being honored with a proper burial. There is no mention of their burial rites, but in terms of rewards and punishments, it can be inferred that they won’t be receiving the proper burials that Brutus is receiving.

One of the most heartbreaking moments in the play so far, is Clarence’s assassination. In the brief glimpses we get of him, Clarence seems like a kind, trusting (to a fault) man with a conscience ,that loves his brothers. He even denies Richard’s involvement at first. He clings to his belief that Richard loves him back and that the assassins are mistaken when they claim that Richard sent them. He dies saying “they” who sent you, rather than he. Implying that, even at the insistence of the assassins, he still doesn’t believe that his brother took part in his murder. This scene is upsetting on two levels. One, because Clarence is dead despite being so kind and trusting. Two, because Richard, in his thirst for power and violence, has murdered quite possibly the only person that truly loves him. This is the first in a long line of self-inflicted wounds Richard makes in the course of the play. His patterns of self-destruction continue until he is dead, dethroned, and unmourned. His motivations for his behavior are plainly connected to the nature of his birth and his reaction to his unlucky station in life. Chance chewed up an unlucky boy and spat out a monster. The anger that results from his unlucky birth inform his actions in the play. Richard chooses to inflict cruelty and coldness onto others, the way the randomness of the world coldly inflicted pain onto his own life. He is very much a creature created by nurture, rather than nature. 

Richard is such a ball of anger and bitterness, and to certain degree that’s understandable. From the beginning, Richard was dealt an awful hand. He was born into the world with physical deformities and he is the last born son in a line of royal brothers While this doesn’t excuse his behavior by any means, it does contextualize his actions. His paranoia makes sense when we consider how much misfortune seems to follow his every step. Growing up, he must have been a person heavily aware how unfair the system is to people by chance alone. Any person, through no fault of their own and by birth alone, could find themselves at the bottom of the social pecking order. Such an understanding from a young age likely manifested as intense anger and feelings of helplessness. Sometimes people who feel helpless and bitter lash out. That is what Richard does.  He is a sad, self-destructive man who ruins his own life in response to the unfairness present in it.

Rather than rising up and using his intelligence to possibly earn love and respect, Richard uses his intelligence to gain power by any means necessary. Even if that means stomping out one of the only positive relationships in your life. Even if it means crushing the remainder of your family. He radiates resentment and inflicts his pain onto others, causing his own eventual downfall. Despite being a terrible person, it’s hard not to feel a tug of sympathy for him at times. If the dice roll of his physicality or birth order were different, we might have been dealing with an intelligent, and well-love first born king. Rather than a conniving little brother, who would burn down his own house, if it meant holding on to power. Instead, bad luck and an emotionally painful life created an uncaring villain of Richard.

The dictionary definition of Machiavellian is as follows: “cunning, scheming, and unscrupulous, especially in politics or in advancing one’s career.”

In Shakespeare’s historical play Richard III, an important theme prevalent in this play is the idea of prophesy, and how prophesies predetermine future events and are inevitable. This is demonstrated through curses, which begins with the character of Queen Margaret, significant because her character’s curses bring about the many actions conducted by Richard– including his murders and his eventual demise.

Of course, the laments are most significant with Richard’s prophecy, which is initiated in Act 1.1 where Richard says: “This day should Clarence closely be mewed up/About a prophecy, which says that ‘G’/Of Edward’s heirs the murderer shall be” (lns. 38-39, pg. 567). In this prophecy, it’s predetermined that Gloucester– the actual “G”– is going to kill King Edward IV’s sons as a means of inheriting the throne. However, Richard knew of his prophecy, and decided to become the “homicide,” or murderer, of the play. Although this play is a prime example of “in media res,” Queen Margaret relates in an aside the following: “Out, devil! I remember them too/well:/Thou slewest my husband Henry in the Tower,/And Edward, my poor son, at Tewkesbury,” stating that, prior to the events of the play, Gloucester murdered her husband, Henry the Sixth, and her son, Edward, Prince of Wales (lns. 117-119, pg. 579).

However, Queen Margaret curses Gloucester in Act 1.3 by saying the following: “The worm of conscience still begnaw thy soul./Thy friends suspect for traitors while thou livest,/And take deep traitors for thy dearest friends./No sleep close up that deadly eye of thine,/Unless it be whilst some tormenting dream/Affrights thee with a hell of ugly devils” (lns. 218-223, pg. 581). Despite the fact that Margaret also curses Queen Elizabeth, Dorset, and Rivers, the curse brought upon Richard specifically, foreshadows the events at Bosworth Field in Act 5. The “hell of ugly devils” is represented by the ghosts– ghosts of Richard’s victims– that come to curse Richard with death and Richmond with victory, and this is significant to his speech in Act 5.3 where he says:

“O coward conscience, how dost thou afflict me./The lights burn blue. It is now dead midnight./Cold fearful drops stand on my trembling flesh./What do I fear? Myself? There’s none else by./Richard loves Richard: that is I and I./Is there a murderer here? No. Yes, I am” (lns. 177-182, pg. 641)

Part of Richard’s hubris, or character flaw, which is constantly emphasized by other characters throughout, is his pride, which is represented in his speech where he says that he loves only himself. However, this is the beginnings of Richard’s moral center, which came about by his supposed “dream.” To Richard, the ghosts are nothing but a nightmare, but it seems to affect his ability to regain his mental clarity. Not having the support from his victims has left Richard worrying as to if his men will abandon him in favor of Richmond on the battlefield (“Under our tents I’ll play the eavesdropper,/To see if any mean to shrink from me,” lns. 219-20, pg. 642), and he is unintentionally bringing about his prophecy foretold by Queen Margaret. This prophesying also inevitably–whether intentional or not– brings about Richard’s demise on the battlefield, his fears of defeat overriding his former, destructive mental state.

I’m trying not to conduct armchair psychiatry here. I’m no expert and I acknowledge the gaps in my understanding of mental illness compared to a trained professional. However, when I began formulating my thoughts on this post I was initially planning on discussing him as a man struck by toxic masculinity, but I realized that there may be more than just a fractured sense of masculinity plaguing Iago. Again, I just find the correlation between this mental illness and Iago’s behavior fascinating. I am by no means arguing that this is precisely what Shakespeare intended or that this fits perfectly as a case for NPD in Iago. Just that the correlation is strong in some places. I wanted to get a pulse on how everyone else felt about it.

A few weeks ago, I went on a bit of a wikipedia journey and ended up on the page for narcissism. It was a fascinating read but I mostly put it out of my mind until a few hours ago. Now that I look at Iago’s behavior I see a strong connection between him and the symptoms of a person suffering from NPD. From what I can tell, Iago fits many of the qualifications. He is entitled, envious, manipulative, and lacks remorse in any capacity. Obviously, we see Iago exhibit many of these traits throughout the play. His first conversation in the play is an envious diatribe. His lack of empathy is consistent with everyone. He shows no concern for anyone he hurts, not even for a moment. He manipulates good people, such as Desdemona, and people that trust him with absolutely no hint of guilt. He never interacts with any character without an ulterior motive and disposes of them the moment they stop being useful or “betray him” (read: expose him).

However, what stuck out to me most was a reaction known as “narcissistic rage”. Apparently, this is a state where the narcissist feels that their own sense of identity or ego is being threatened and they react aggressively to the source of their shame. The source of the shame being Othello and the perceived slight is Iago being “overlooked” for a job he assumes he is more qualified for. He doesn’t stop to consider the Cassio may have other skill sets that make him a better choice. He assumes that the choice was motivated by favoritism.  I believe this might be an example of narcissistic rage for two reasons. One, I don’t believe Iago is a reliable source of information on himself.He is likely over-blowing his qualifications to a certain degree. We see him fail to notice aspects of himself later in the play to prove that he is somewhat unreliable when it comes to representing himself and others.  In Act 2. Scene 1 he makes this comment about women, “You are pictures out of door, bells in your parlors, wild-cats in your kitchens, saints in your injuries, devils being offended” (897-898, I apologize for the line numbers, I am using a different text) but fails to recognize that all of these traits as things he himself has. This is obviously used ironically by Shakespeare but it seems doubtful that Iago notices this in himself, even if he genuinely sees these as characters flaws worthy of scorn. He is certainly smart, but I’m not sure if I can believe Iago when he makes positive observations about himself beyond his intelligence. Two, Iago’s reaction is completely out of proportion to the “slight”, even if he was the genuinely more qualified man.

But I keep asking myself something, am I trying to make sense out of senseless behavior? Humans are great at pattern recognition, so good in fact that we often imagine patterns where none exist. How do you guys feel about this? Is there a case to be made that Iago is aware of all of his faults, fully, and just enjoys to “watch the world burn”?