SHAKESPEARE SNEAKS BEHIND THE HEADLINES: How a Universal Genius Sheds Light on the Current Scene

WAS SHAKESPEARE PRO-DEMOCRACY?

By Tom McBride

In exit polls after the 2024 election, many people said they’d voted for Trump though they don’t like him; but someone has to get prices down. Trump may be a corrupt liar, but there’s the price of bacon to worry about. 

Can Shakespeare help us understand what’s going on? 

Shakespeare had no idea of today’s mass democracy with political parties, rhetoric, debates, lobbies, and advertisements. Lucky him! He missed the 2024 election in the United States.  But he did display a sense of the issues entailed by democracy–in his great play Julius Caesar. 

Caesar himself doesn’t appear that often, but he is the title subject and, in the end, the historical winner. A number of Roman senators fear Caesar wants to be a king, a dictator, and they want to keep power in the Senate. They are so scared of impending one-man rule that they murder Caesar. 

In effect, they are saying, no one person has all the answers, and while we Senators make mistakes, at least we debate the answers, and there are no perfect or final answers anyhow. Get used to it. 

Marc Antony, however, a great ally of Caesar’s, tells the gathered crowd that Caesar was a sublime figure, a great warrior, a winner who gave his personal property so that the people, whom he loved, could have their own parks. He was a giant, whom the pygmies had killed. What are you going to do about it? 

The crowd vows revenge, and they get it. Caesar is dead, but his ghost is not. 

No one killed Trump in 2020. They just voted him out. But now, like Caesar, he decides to die. He’s back. Everyone says, “it’s the economy, stupid.” 

But is it? Or is it that, like the crowd in Shakespeare’s play, people have a strong urge for a charismatic leader. Trump has yet to admit that he has ever made a mistake. Do many of us unconsciously wish to be ruled and loved by such charismatic perfection? The unblemished parent we never had, and the one who loves us without condition? 

Even some of Trump’s most ardent supporters say he may not be a good man, but this is politics, not morality, ethics, or religion. Others say they don’t like him; they just want to get prices down. Is it possible that they may not like him but secretly love him? Is he the Big Daddy we’ve long missed? 

After all, we don’t always like our parents, but we may still ache for their love and protection. Who wants a parent who says, “no certain answers. You’re on your own in the debatable, democratic cold.” When the plotters in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar went up against Big Daddy, they found out, the hard way, the answer to that question.