Political Leadership in Macbeth and Coriolanus

Well, I can hardly begin to believe that we’re beginning early, but here we are.

I want to welcome Althea Osburn back. She’s a longtime supporter of British studies

and very glad to see her here. I also want to mention that we have all been shlaim

here just for the fun of it. But he will also, I’m sure, have views on Shakespeare.

Gwen Daniel is actually a family therapist,

clinical supervisor in the National Health Service.

She’s the co-founder of the Oxford Family Institute.

And perhaps she will be able to explain how someone in family therapy became so much

so interested in Shakespeare. She is the coauthor

of Gender and Family Therapy, published in 1994. And

her most recent book is Family Dreams, Intimacy, Dramas,

Intimacy, Power and Systems in Shakespeare’s Tragedies.

I’ll just add one word about a certain

encounter that Gwynne had some years ago. It was at St. Anthony’s

College at the time that Ralph Derren Dorff was the warden of

the college. This is Laura Dern Dorf, who at one time was the

warden director of the London School of Economics during a period

of great student protests and troubles. So when he was introduced to

Gwin, he looked at Gwinn and pointed his fingers and said, you were one of the troublemakers.

So from the troublemakers to Shakespeare.

Oh, I’m sorry, James. James, I will just have just

have another word of welcome to Gwinn, Daniel, and say how

much I’m looking forward to the talk. These are two players, two of Shakespeare’s

latest tragedies and two plays that I think are not often discussed in relation to

each other. But I’m eager to to hear

what you have to say, because they certainly are plays that deal with

family situations, as you’ve explored in your in your previous book, but

also very much powerful players about about politics and leadership.

And so that the confluence of those different ideas, I think makes

them excellent plays to be paired in such a discussion. And I really look

forward to hearing what you have to say. Welcome. Thank you, James. Thank

you, Roger. And it’s a huge pleasure for me to be here on my

very first visit to Texas. And I’m really grateful

to Roger and to British studies for inviting me.

So as James said, my lecture is going to be about Macbeth and

Coriolanus. And it will be focused more on political relationships

than family relationships, I thought. But I’m very happy to answer questions about

any of those particular dimensions of the play.

So just to start, it’s worth noting that at times of political crisis

and turmoil in the United Kingdom, of which we have had just debate recently,

commentators, we can be quite sure both from within and from without. We’ll turn

to Shakespeare. Now, here are just a few examples.

In an editorial entitled British Politics Shakespeare’s Authentic

Drama, the Spanish newspaper El Mundo commented, Amid the deep

turmoil that has engulfed the UK since the triumph for Brexit, its leaders

look more than ever like characters out of a Shakespeare play betrayals, passionate

hatred, envy, personal ambitions, all the ingredients so deftly

handled by the great playwright here. Also in 2016,

the German literary critic Banhart Schulz wrote a piece entitled

It to Michael Gove, lamenting the fact that Shakespeare’s

dramatization of Julius Caesar has now returned as farce.

The Japan Times No Less and also in 2016 read

it’s a bit like a Shakespeare play specifically. The final act

of Hamlet, where almost all were plays, major characters die

violently. And now we’re down to one. Her name is Theresa May,

of course, also met a violent political death. And as recently as September

Macbeth, Johnson is to stepped in blood to turn

back. Now, this tendency to leap for the Bard when political

life seems to be turning into tragedy. And when, of course, I see much tragedy,

it tips over into melodrama and farce. It reminds us

yet again of how deeply embedded in our cultural thinking is Shakespeare’s drama.

And it also reminds us of what the components of tragedy are a sense

of helplessly witnessing or participating in a seemingly inexorable

march towards catastrophe. Our own parliament has certainly at

times resembled a theater.

I’m sorry. Theresa May gave a famous party conference

speech when she spent the entire speech coughing. So I hope I won’t be like that.

And our parliament has at times resembled a theater in which we

are appalled, disgusted, frightened, and yet at the same

time fascinated. And let’s face it, mildly entertained.

So the problem is, when these comparisons are made it so often with an individual

Shakespearean tragic hero. And this, I think, reinforces a tendency

probably inevitable in our individualistic culture of focusing

on a single demonic figure rather than looking at the workings of power

that allow this miscreant to emerge. So the figures

of Boris Johnson, Dominic Cummings or Donald Trump

or Steve Bannon, individualized processes that do require a different level

of understanding. And this tendency to focus on the individual

is a temptation in drama criticism as much as in politics.

And the alternative, of course, is digging deeply into the power structures and the interactions

that maintain these political leaders in their positions. Now, in my book

family dramas, maybe my next one will be called Family Dreams.

Roger, Intimacy, Power and Systems. In Shakespeare’s

tragedies, I focus on the relationships and family relationships,

obviously, but also those between soldiers, between masters

mistresses and their servants, between political allies, between soldiers.

And I explore the ideological contexts that infuse

and give texture to these relationships, both personal

and political. So I think this focus on relationships, which of course

as a family therapist I have to do because relationships are what face me in

my consulting room. It means that we’ve become more interested in the interactions,

in the processes, in the patterns, as much as in the internal states.

So in the two plays I look at today, I’m focusing on politics as much as family

relations. But I aim to look beyond the eponymous heroes

to the context in which these political leaders or would be leaders

were able to thrive. And ultimately, of course, since these are tragedies to fail

now there is a saying that all political careers end in failure, but they don’t always

end quite as brutally as in Elizabethan and Jacobean tragedy.

Looking beyond the tragic hero or villain in Shakespeare’s tragedies

requires looking in-depth at dialogs that quite often seem peripheral

and including what we can call voices from below the perspectives

of minor characters who often provide a commentary at a completely different level

to the individual tragic failings of the main protagonists.

And these are popular. They considered to be ambition. In the case of black power

and pride in the case of Coriolanus, however powerfully

Shakespeare portrays a despot or a psychopath. He always provides

openings for new perspectives. So when we dig into the text, we learn about context

that enable these despots to thrive and thus we find and this is very important

in my reading of Shakespeare. Examples of interdependency

and inter-relationship. And these provide a texture and a Newell’s

to the most absolutist actions. So just to start

with Macbeth. A couple of words about the political issues at the time.

Shakespeare wrote the play, which have been beautifully and eloquently

outlined in James Ship Shapiro’s book 16 06

The Year of Lear. So James, the sixth

of Scotland, had just acceded to the English throne as James the first of England.

And the question of union was hotly debated and contested. Although the act

of union itself was not to be signed until a century later, but

questions of succession were still powerfully resonant. And in Macbeth,

Shakespeare made one of his very rare references to a living monarch.

When the witches showed Macbeth the long line of Banquo’s, as which ended in

James himself. Additionally, the gunpowder plot of

society, including, of course, the persecution of Catholics

and a lot of the crime of equivocation,

which is stating one thing while you actually believe another, which is probably

an early definition of a thought crime was

to be found in Macbeth. The word equivocation. So

when Macbeth says near the end of the play to doubt the equivocation of

the fiend, that lies like truth, he’s referring to that

context. So I’m going to make three reflections about

macbeth. that I hope will take us beyond the characteristics of the individual leader and more

into patterns and processes in political life.

So they’re the circular processes that follow a violent seizure of power,

the isolation and paranoia that accompanies an inability to maintain

a loyal following and the need at some level for consent

in carrying out the most brutal actions. So to begin with, the first

violent seizures of power, as we know from our experience

throughout the world, they generate their own unremittingly circular processes.

And I think Macbeth is a play that dramatizes that particularly well.

It highlights early on the dilemmas involved in maintaining power

that has been attained violently and which can thus only be sustained by

further acts of violence. Now, this is something Macbeth himself knows only too

well, even before he’s murdered Duncan, the King. And Lady

Macbeth expresses this dilemma very poignant

plea, if rather belatedly,

where I where our desire is got without content, tis safer

to be that which we destroy than by destruction, dwell

in doubtful joy. And I think that encapsulates

the dilemma of how you how you go on

in a context where you can only go on violently in the

English history plays. Shakespeare explored the whole matter

of whether or not violent seizure of power from an anointed

monarch can, with enough narrative effort, be sanitized

over time and transformed within a generation into what we can call

natural succession. So the English history plays Richard the second

Henry the fourth parts 1 and 2 and Henry the fifth.

Deal with in part with that theme. But in Macbeth, the same

themes are of usurpation and illegitimacy,

summed up in the imputation that Black Death was borrowed clothes.

He’s wearing royal robes that are not his that do not fit him. And this

intersects with the Conte’s constantly with the whole question of producing

as so violent actions in the present cannot

be justified if they can be in terms of the future security and

status they might produce for children. But Macbeth, of course,

has no children. He has no as a seizure of power

is not linked with founding and dynasty. Then there’s little to anchor it.

All to give it purpose and structure, thus justifying legitimate

as well, though Macbeth himself is clearly defined as a

usurped and a tyrant. His willingness to commit acts of brutality

which violate all Nauman normal human bonds raises

questions for the other protagonists. So it isn’t only Macbeth who is faced with

this question. And this is illustrated in a dialog between

Malcolm, who is the legitimate heir of Duncan and Macduff,

who has recently fled to England. And this is a fascinating dialog

that I think doesn’t get enough attention. Malcolm is warning

Macduff of his own capacity to be an even more terrible bear spot

than Macbeth. And when he does, it is usually considered to be testing

out Metcalf’s loyalty. So but

beneath the fear and the paranoia that result from violence, like other reflections about

how tyranny infiltrates all human relationships

so that, as Malcolm says, a good and virtuous

nature may recoil in an imperial charge.

So the result is that Malcolm mistrusts, but does survival

of loyalty. But his next speeches are so melodramatic and excessive,

even in the cause of testing his friend. And I think that he’s

testing his own capacity and testing the limitations

of power and its abuses, and he’s commenting on the

perpetuation and intensification of cycles of violence.

So this is his speech, I think has spare you my poor Shakespearean diction

and just let you read it. But he’s basically saying,

huh, Macbeth has got nothing on me. I’m going to be even worse.

And just watch this space.

So the idea is that he’s testing himself as well as Macduff

and the fantasy he creates of his own potential for tyrannical,

unjust and oppressive rule points to a deeper concern.

And that’s how the overthrow of a tyrant is just as likely to lead to an escalation

of violence as it is a peaceful restoration of order,

which is a conservative way of reading tragedies, of the Aristotelian

understanding of tragedy that it leads to. A

catharsis and a restoration of the status quo.

So he then challenges Macduff by saying if such a one

be fit to govern, speak I am as I have spoken

and as well as provoking Macbeth. He’s also, as I said,

addressing the question of are there any limits to human cruelty and avarice?

No. Macduff, first of all, indulges Malcolm. Scotland has voisins

to fill up your will, and then as he escalates his rhetoric, he

assures him that there are limits and he would never serve a king who behaves

as Malcolm claims he would. So it seems to me to be Malcolm’s

willingness to stay to limit that reassures Malcolm as much

as an acceptance of his loyalty. So after the trauma of Malcolm’s

father’s murder, he seems to be engaged in a kind of flashforward.

In which he forces himself to face the meaning of unfettered power

and its consequences. And then the firm reassuring voice of

Macduff reassures him and grounds him in the present.

So he says, what I truly am is fine and my poor countries

to command. Now, this takes me to the second point, which is about

political leaders and isolation. So there’s a contrast

between Malcolm, who has a mentor could say collaborator in the form

of Macduff, who acts as a counselor and where necessary, a break

on rash and violent action. And Macbeth, who has no such other

because he and Lady Beth collaborate in the murder of Duncan.

But neither of them acts as a restraint on the other. And

Lady Macbeth disappears altogether from Act 3 scene. For

now, Macbeth loses even those who initially supported him in his own

words. The thanes fly from me isolated leaders,

whether we call them tyrants or not. In my opinion, are unlikely

to function terribly well. Modern despots from Saddam

Hussein to Assad at least had trusted family members

thugs as they might be to rely upon. But my best has none of those.

And he himself knows that his inability to maintain a close cohort

of trusted advisers is the main source of his downfall.

And this speech, which I’ll

just let you read, is absolutely about saying

self-pitying. Possibly, but deeply reflective on the state

of what it means to end up on your own with no allies.

And also the fact that anybody who is around you is never going to speak

truth to power. It will be lip service only.

So I think what this speech highlights is the sterility of power that can

only be maintained by violence rather than through human bonds. Whether

these happened to be loyal or paid followers, fellow conspirators

or as know Stephen Greenblatt, who’s a very eminent

American Shakespeare scholar, recently written a book called Tyrant.

And he highlights the fact that while Macbeth has servants and some associates,

he’s completely essentially alone. And he writes, Institutional

restraints have failed the internal external sensors

that keep most ordinary mortals, let alone rulers of nations,

from sending irrational messages in the middle of the night or acting

on every crazed impulse are absent. Now, I do not know

who he could be. Possibly. I think up there and Macbeth

himself talks about how he’s left with behavior that’s entirely

impulsive. When he says from this moment, the very

first things of my heart shall be the first things

of my hand, I’ll go straight from thought to action. Nothing in between.

Then the third point is that Shakespeare challenges us to think in

a much more nuanced way about a top down nation nature of leadership.

However autocratic and even in feudal 11th century Scotland,

where Macbeth is based. So Macbeth orders

the death of Banquo and his son Flounce because he fears the

rivalry. But Shakespeare doesn’t pretend as straightforwardly

as he could have done. Instead, he does something very interesting. He treats

the audience to a relatively long scene in which

Beth is trying to persuade the two murderers to carry out his orders.

And it is evident that this is the second conversation he’s had with them and that the men

have not been convinced the first time round. He tries to convince

them of Banquo’s ill intentions towards them and his old deeds,

but it doesn’t seem to have much effect. And the thing that does have an effect on them

is their sense of utter desperation about their own life circumstances.

So the second murderer says, I am one my liege, whom the vile

blows and Buffetts at the world have so incensed that I am reckless,

what I do to spite the world. And the other one adds, and I another so weary

with disasters tugg to its fortune that I would set my life on

any chance to mend it or be rid on it. So rather

than just present these men as instruments of the tyrant,

Shakespeare shines a shaft of light onto their own lives, their own perceptions

and their own circumstances. And I must say, this speech came to mind

on June the 24th, 2016. Immediately after

the Brexit referendum, the idea perhaps for many people

it was just the chance to do anything to get out of a pretty awful,

miserable life. Now to

move on to Coriolanus in many ways.

As James says, these are two plays that present very different ideas

about political processes. So in Corey Elaina’s himself, we’ve almost

got the antithesis of Macbeth. If here is somebody who never particularly aspired

to political leadership and does his absolute best to ruin his chances

of ever attaining it, but precisely because of that, it’s

a really wonderful vehicle for illuminating those practices that

aspirant leaders were expected to engage in. And for me, it’s

almost Shakespeare’s perfect political play. Just a quick word about the

context, which I think is relevant. The play starts with hunger riots

in in Republican Rome and in England in 16

and a lot of debate about how they should be handled. There

were protests against protests against enclosure and the hoarding of grain,

and their vote eventually evoked an extremely harsh response by

landowners. Many of these took place in the Midlands, where Shakespeare

himself owned land, and Shakespeare himself apparently hoarded grain.

So. So a lot of interesting dimensions

there now, whereas Macbeth, of course, was part of a feudal society

where individual clan leaders are all powerful and there were very few

institutional structures. The political drama of Coriolanus,

written about a society over a millennia earlier,

focuses on conflicts about political representation within the relatively

stable institutions of republican Rome, institutions

that were created precisely to act as constraints on absolute

power. Now, to quote quote, Stephen Greenblatt

again in his book On Tyranny, where interestingly, Stephen

Greenblatt is doing exactly what Shakespeare did. He’s commenting on political events

from a safe distance of centuries. Somebody asked earlier about how

Shakespeare would have written, would have portrayed Boris Johnson. Well, you can be absolutely

sure that if they were contemporaries, Shakespeare would have placed Boris Johnson

that a few centuries safe distance. And Stephen Greenblatt

is doing exactly the same. So he

describes Coriolanus. We are dealing here

with an overgrown child’s narcissism, insecurity, cruelty,

folly, all unchecked by any adult supervision and restraint.

Now, while I don’t disagree with this, I still prefer to focus on the

surrounding context rather than Coriolanus himself,

obviously unsuited to political office, but whom nevertheless

the Senate wants to promote as a con. So three aspects to

Coriolanus about political processes. One is what it means to, quote, try

and co-opt a hard man to carry out your political desires.

The opinions of the ordinary citizens and the silence of those

with power and anger to follow this. With a short clip of a video

of a real Shakespeare Company production of Coriolanus,

so Coriolanus is corrupted by the senators as a hard man, he’ll do

the dirty work for them. The senators are in a dilemma in order to

stave off the popular unrest about the bread riots. They

have appointed tribunes to risk to represent the people.

Unfortunately, the tribunes take their role extremely seriously,

so they regret handing over this power and therefore they want Coriolanus, who

is always opposed to this move, to act as the enforcer. So

he’s a renowned soldier. All he has to do is play the game of observing the

constitutional niceties until he’s safely imposed. He’s an immensely

popular soldier because he had a stunning victory over the Volsky is a horror lie,

and the senators in turn tried to set him up as a superhero or

a demigod and cameleers.

Describes him in these terms almost

as if he’s a demigod. But what they

want of Coriolanus is that he should be iconic in this way,

but silent. So despite his reputation, they tend to treat him

as a rough, unsophisticated soldier who can be manipulated to their ends.

In other words, he’s old brawn and therefore ideally should have no words,

they say. Consider this he has been bready the wars since he could draw a sword,

and he’s ill schooled in bolted language. So he’s an instrument rather

than a thinking participant. Now, from Hitler to edema, Idi Amin

and many others. There’s a history of those with power making catastrophic

decisions by allowing thugs to get into positions of power on the

assumption that they can be co-opted to ward off a greater threat. But

in doing so, the threat that they themselves might pose is often

overlooked until it’s too late. So Coriolanus refuses

to comply with the niceties of acquiring political power

and the useful weapon that he was in fact

won by AC3 three has become a unguided missile that nobody

quite knows how to control. So second, the

dilemmas about political representation when the

angry and the hungry plebeians are appeased by being given tribunes highlights

the idea of interdependency in a very powerful way, which

I think surfaces less in Macbeth and Coriolanus. I would

say probably more than any other of Shakespeare’s plays, certainly more than in Julius Caesar.

The voices of the ordinary citizens are given salience, and they provide an incredibly

rich and perceptive commentary on the workings of power

and a very sophisticated understanding of the fiscal policy employed

by the senators, which depends on maintaining gross inequality

by hoarding grain and not releasing it to the to the

people. So here are just a couple of their views about how

we are accounted for citizens. The patricians good what authority surfeit

on would relieve us if they would yield us. But the city superfluity.

While it were wholesome, we might guess they relieved us humanely, but

they think we are too dear. The leanness that afflicts us, the object of

our misery is as an inventor to particularize their abundance.

Our sufferance is game to them. Let us revenge this with our pikes,

and we become rakes for the gods. No, I speak this in hunger for bread,

not in touch. Search of revenge. Thirst for revenge.

And then later on they make the same point.

So they’re naming the workings of power in a way

that the senators, of course, prefer to have hidden.

And Coriolanus, of course, has many right wing leaders, is much more likely to acknowledges

inequality because he approves of it. So by directly

challenging the citizens, he exposes the patricians and reveals the dishonesty

of their policy, which is a sort of trickle down economics. One could argue

the citizens are accorded the power to approve Coriolanus as consul.

But they know that this power has strict limits. So is a ritual

before you become consul that you have to display the wounds that you acquired

in war. And when he does, when Coriolanus, who’s very, very

reluctant to do this, is eventually persuaded to do it,

the citizens can’t approach him as a group where they could have a collective voice, but they

have to come by twos and threes and they know this. He’s to make his request

by particulars so that they never actually see the wounds, which are the symbolic

heart of the ritual. So they do give Coriolanus their assent.

But the tribunes who are so determined that Coriolanus will not be consul

immediately challenged them claim that they’ve been cowed

by the weight and status of Coriolanus is linage.

And there’s a wonderful quote about the limitations of power,

which is really about lip service representation. We have power in ourselves

to do it, but it’s a power that we have no power to do.

For he shows us his wounds and tells us his deeds. We are to put our tongues

into these wounds and speak for them. So if he tells us his noble deeds,

we must also tell him our noble acceptance of them.

Now, those who’ve got the most power in this case, the patricians, the senators are

the ones who least wished to have it named or indeed to allow any political

discussion whatsoever. And that’s one of the remarkable things in Coriolanus,

intense political discussions. But the people with power are mainly

silent and trying to control the narrative. So Coriolanus,

his views are pretty repugnant and the tribunes are fairly devious and dishonest.

But they also they all know what power is about. So at some level, you could

say that Coriolanus and the Tribune enemies as they are, are working in collaboration.

He is challenging the senator’s Coriolanus by refusing to

obey the niceties of political ritual and the tribunes challenge them by

taking seriously their duty to the people to represent them. And by

trying to have Coriolanus banned from public office. Stephen

Greenblatt again is what in what might just be a reference to

present times says. Shakespeare must have thought

that tyranny cannot be stopped if Democratic opposition

is so high minded that it is powerless to counter the political conniving

that leads up to a seizure of power. CORIOLANUS His allies urge him

to cloak his actual views in order to be elected. The tribunes

urged the people to cloak the role that they’re playing. Now, in the clip

that I’m going to show you. And a fairly short

clip. It’s from Act 3. Scene 1

immediately after Coriolanus thinks that he has the people’s consent, but

is unaware that a tribunes have persuaded them to change their minds.

To my mind, it demonstrates a series of displacement where the senators remain

silent. So attempt to cool tempers, but never once enter the fray.

While the major showdown is initially between Coriolanus and the Tribunes,

at a certain point he turns his ire on the senators for what he sees

as a disastrous handing over power to the tribunes.

And Shakespeare dramatizes this moment by at one point focusing

on one single word. And that word is qaÃ, which stands

for this momentous shifting of power. Now

I can.

I need to get to the.

Now.

These are the trillions of the people, tongues of common mouth.

I do despise them for. They do. Franklin in authority against

all noble sufferings.

Move further south, it would be dangerous to go on.

What makes this change, no matter how, you know, past the noble and the common convenience?

If I had children’s voices, tribute would give way reach out to the marketplace. But people are incensed

against the stop or for any ROI ideas your heard.

Must these have voices that can yield that now? One straight disclaim their tongues? What are your

offices? You being their mouths? Why rule? You will not their teeth. You will not set

them off. Be calm. Be calm. It is a purpose thing and grows

by plot to curb the will of unknowability somewhat and live with such as cannot rule.

There will be room for it. Not a plot. The people you mocked Moxham.

And of late, when corn was given them gratis, you replied scandal. The supplements to the people call

the timepieces flatterers first and nobleman’s like this was known before mostaghim. Had you informed

them? CNNSI informed them I like to do such business. I’d like you to wait. Better your wife and should I be

console by thunderclouds? Let me deserve some. He loves you. I make me a fellow. Trivium

shrewd too much of that for which the peoples stir. If you will pass

away, will Barton. You must enquire your way what you want out of. With a

generous. It will never be so noble as a console, nor you with you

tribute. Let’s be calm.

The people who are abused said this poetry becomes not growth. Nor

have Coriolanus deserved this. So the solid rock laid full say the plague wave is met. Tell me.

Of course, this was my speech. Well, I will speak it again. Enough now. Not now.

Not in this heat. Not now that I live. I will. My noble friends,

I crave a pardon for the mutable rank. Second may be. Let them regard me

as I do not flatter. And that in behoove themselves, I say again

insulting them. We can nourish against Senate kochel of rebellion in silence.

Sedition which we ourselves have plowed for so good and scattered by mingling

them with us. The almost no who lapping up that you know, no power. But that which fate you have

given to us. Well, no more. No more words. We beseech you how we know.

As for my country, I have shed my blood, not feeling upward force social when it comes

KOIN word still that decay against those measles which we disspain should take on us yet

sort of any way to catch up speaking to people as if you were God to punish a man of

integrity. Well, we let the people America walk. Well, all right.

Well, I ask a patient doesn’t get much sleep. By Jove, TOPY. Mighty, mighty. It is a mine

that shall remain a poison in waiting is not poisoned any further. Shall

me.

Yeah, you do this. Right.

Mark, who heads up some new shop clothes

from a candle shop. Oh.

Well, good, but most unwise patricians. Why you? Grave but reckless

senators. Have you lost given Hydra here to choose an officer, but with

his peremptorily and Shambaugh being about the horn, that noise of the monsters once

not spirit to say you’ll turn your current leppitsch and make your channel his.

If he have power, then feel more ignorance. You’ve mumm a weak, your dangerous

minutae while clappy unsafe Beeby senators, and they are no less. When

both your voices blended the greatest Paiste most palates theirs.

They choose their own magistrate, and such a one as he who puts his shall

is popular qaà against a grave, a bench that of a funding Greece. By

Jove himself, it makes no console’s base of my soul that aches to

went to authorities on many of us supreme. How soon confusion may enter

talks like Capek both. And take that one. Why bother? Well, under the market,

whoever gave back control to get forfor coal and other storehouse properties afterwards, it was some time in Greece.

Well, no more of that. There’ll be other people have more absolute power. I say they nourish disobedience

unfed through another state. Why is it that people give one good speech? Thus does

the voice. I’ll give my reasons

more worthy of their voices. They know the call. That’s not how a recompense

resting when a show where they now give service for it being pressed to the war, even when the naval

at the state was touched. They would not propagate this kind of service, did not serve corn

gratis either more than mutineers and revolts when they showed most ballots, but not

for them. Well, what then? How shall this bosom multiply digest facilites

courtesy? Let Deedes express what it’s like to be their words. We did requested.

We are the great OPO and in true fear they gave us our demand.

Thus we debase the nature of our seat and they all call our

fearless, which will in time break open locks of the Senate and bring in the Krogstad,

pick the people, and not enough with overt measure. Take more. What may be swallowed by

both divine and you see what I ate with all this double worship where one of those

disspain will cause the other insult without all reason, which entering your title

wisdom cannot conclude. But I think you know of General Ignorance. It must all meet

real necessities and give way a while to unstable slipped us purpose. So

but it follows time took purpose

to beseech you you there will be less fearful and discreet, but

fundamental part the state more than about the change and the prefer noble life before long

that wish to jump. A body with a dangerous physique cut short of death without it at once.

Pluck out the multitude last time. Not like the sweet. Would just that poison

your dishonor? My most true judgment. You think that I didn’t get my

day, which should account not having the power to do what he could for the ill, which just controlled

the said enough. I’m not going to try and pronounce it as traitors do down

vetch, despite all Wemba watching the people do with these bold tribunes

on whom, depending that obedience fails to manage and earn a billion well-watched not me by

what I see was more of them when they chosen. You know better than it is me to be said. It

must be meat and frebel that power that best manifests treason.

So, counsel. No, you don’t.

Go call up people whose name myself attached figures are on it.

It doesn’t get it goes downhill from there.

One of the things I always find fascinating about this scene

is the way that Coriolanus is voicing what

is obviously the position of the senators, but which they cannot both for themselves.

So once he finds his voice, which is not meant to find

his men, does to do the bidding until he is in power, he turns

to them. So he’s saying, come on, you agree with me? What is it, guys?

And I think that is a really interesting statement

about the process of power and how it works. So just to conclude

my argument really in each of these places that focusing too much on the personality

and the strengths and the failings of the individual leader can obscure

all those intricacies of how power seemed to work

and all the multiple perspectives and ambiguities and human dito

that Shakespeare brings to it. So we have time, I think, for questions

and debate and I’d be very interested to engage in.