In all but one of the five plays we have studied so far, governmental power and the people who hold it play a crucial role. Ruling figures often appear in Shakespeare because they have authority. In a pre-modern society, the political (or "this-worldly") authority exerted a firm grip on society. Shakespeare, writing before modern forms of government were even imagined, uses people who hold power to provide a means by which the plot lines of several of his plays can continue or evolve in some new way.
People of pre-Enlightenment Europe were largely not concerned with the events of this world, but rather dedicated much of their time, energy, and resources to assuring themselves a pleasant (for lack of a better word) fate in the next world. Thus, they would not concern themselves with political leaders, but with a much more powerful entity: God. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Shakespeare concerned himself with those who hold power "here and now." Shakespeare writes about kings and counts, dukes and thanes. These characters, invariably male owing to the times in which he wrote, are crucial to moving the plot forward in many cases.
While Shakespeare often explores the private lives of noble or royal families, probably, because they tend to lead more interesting lives, I am referring here to those characters who appear in the play purely in their official capacities, particularly the Duke of Venice in The Merchant of Venice and the Duke of Venice in Othello. Like Pontius Pilate, Roman Governor of Judaea in the Christian gospels, these Dukes of Venice appear from on high, listen to opposing narratives or opinions, render judgment, and leave, without generally exposing the audience or reader to their own thoughts or emotions and without staying in the spotlight any longer than necessary. They are formal functionaries acting out an assigned but highly-valued role in society and in Shakespeare. Shakespeare was familiar with the gospels.1 Perhaps they or other works served as a model for this archetype; but probably all he needed was to draw from his personal knowledge of the workings of government. The forces of order in a chaotic world have been manifest since the dawn of civilization until the present, and Shakespeare's time being no exception.
In Merchant the Duke's scene (4.1) comes near the end, serving as the play's climax. The Duke's scene in Othello (1.3) falls near the beginning, serving as a climax only to the earlier minor plot sequence that deals with the tribulations Othello faces in order to wed Desdemona. There are many similarities between these scenes, besides the fact that both include the duke of the same city. In both of these plays men who possess authority provide the platform, and serve as conduits for debate. By supervising the platform on which the various antagonists debate they become part of that platform. Their duties overshadow their human qualities, while many other characters are free to speak from the heart. Also, both scenes allow serious conflicts to be resolved, both cases in favor of the person who the audience wants to win, so that the play can continue.
Shakespeare is able to use the detached governor-judge as a plot device only provided all people obey his decision, which is the case in both plays, though sometimes not without considerable grumbling. People had incredible amounts of reverence for their political leaders when Shakespeare wrote. "It is frequently made apparent that they [rulers] blur the distinctions between the realms of political and religious faith" (Hiscock, 229). In the very religious times before our own people would be very reluctant to go against the express wishes of the king or his agents, it would be tantamount to disobeying the command of God.
[I]n Shakespeare's time the king was supposed to guide by [r]evelation as well as reason. He was often thought of as a type of figure of Christ, revealing the true way in his generation: often thought of as a redeeming the time, making sense of his moment of history. Shakespeare has very little to say about the explicit theology of all this, but it underlies his notion of the symbolic figure of the king (Fergusson, 12).
Though people generally abide by laws today as well, one cannot overstate the role of rulers in an age before modern technology had degraded them to fully human status.
There is considerably more involvement by governmental officials in Macbeth and All's Well That Ends Well than in either Othello or Merchant, though their roles are still mainly limited to official duties. Instead of brief appearances, the officials in these plays, Duncan the King in Macbeth and the King of France and the Duke of Florence in All's Well assume more substantial, but never protagonistic roles. The case of Duncan illustrates the fact that these jobs, while taxing and dangerous, are prestigious and desirable. Macbeth is so convinced that he wants the job (by internal and external forces) that he goes against his moral constitution to get it. While the no-private-life rule is almost broken by the detailed look we get at the King in All's Well, he too is not a figure we get to probe psychologically. He is a purely rational actor. He has a disease and wants to be rid of it — anybody would feel this way about a fistula. The only difference is that the king can use his political authority to find a way to be rid of the fistula, while his subjects would more likely be stuck with it. This makes the king a interesting person to use in a play: He can do things that most people cannot.
Besides just being an interesting person, the king is useful for another reason, namely, his power is a plot tool. The only thing that could get Helen and Bertram together is an act of God, or an act of the King, and it would be difficult (though not impossible) for the other characters to talk to God in a stage drama. This vast reservoir of power that rulers had is one reason, perhaps, why Shakespeare seems so obsessed with them, including them in so many of his plays. Back then kings and other magistrates, or "mortal gods," to borrow a term from Thomas Hobbes, even had enough power to intervene in the private affairs of individuals. In All's Well, the king tells Bertram to marry Helen because he owed her a favor. For a playwright writing today using an authority-holder in our democracy, somebody like the president, a senator, or a Supreme Court justice to do something like that would be absurd. Today, such an abuse of power would cause a media circus of mammoth proportions. Of course, the king may have been overstepping his bounds even then. "[A]ccording to the expectations of Elizabethan wardship the king in All's Well legally abuses his position by compelling Bertram into ... the miseries of an enforced marriage" (Cox, 136).
As mentioned above, Shakespeare also used kings and dukes because people envied them. After all, why would the average citizen want to watch a play about people just like him or her? Today we see movies and mini-series about movie stars and psychos, and the news is filled with stories about guys like Marv Albert. Shakespeare wrote about the politically powerful. In both cases, people's ever-present thirst for stories about the extraordinary were being quenched. "These exalted figures become objects of collective desire and a complex symbol of the society they fracture and re-invent" (Hiscock, 229). According to this thesis, society becomes defined by its famous elements. Indeed, we refer to the period in which Shakespeare wrote by the name of the woman who was in charge. Thus we have Elizabethan England and Albertan America.
When they played major roles or minor ones, rulers wielding their power form the underlying backbone of Shakespearean drama. Whether for their own private gain, as in All's Well, or simply as exercising their judicial duties as in Othello and Merchant, Shakespeare's rulers are never far from the important events in a play. There are two main reasons for this. First, rulers have the power that makes their own lives more interesting, and makes other people desire that power. These "other people" are usually the audience who can live as rulers vicariously through the play, but can also be characters in the play, like Macbeth, whose drive for political power constitutes the action of the play. Second, and more to the point, rulers commands were taken very seriously by the people, thus Shakespeare frequently uses them as conflict-resolution tools. Whether he was himself a fan of the state, Shakespeare was not hesitant to use authority figures for the advantage of his plays.
1Evidence for this comes from The Merchant of Venice: "I have a daughter: / Would any of the stock of Barabas / Had been her hustand rather than a Christian!" (4.1.292-4)
Cox, John D. Shakespeare and the Dramaturgy of Power. Princeton: Princeton U. P., 1989.
Fergusson, Francis, ed. Shakespeare's Tragedies of Monarchy. New York: Delta/Dell Publishing Co., 1962.
Hiscock, Andrew. Authority and Desire: Crises of Interpretation in Shakespeare and Racine. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 1996.
Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. New York: Macmillian Publishing Co., 1986.
Shakespeare, William. All's Well That Ends Well. Ed. Susan Snyder. New York: Oxford U. P., 1994.
Shakespeare, William. Macbeth. Ed. Nicholas Brooke. New York: Oxford U. P., 1994.
Shakespeare, William. The Merchant of Venice. Ed. Jay L. Halio. New York: Oxford U. P., 1994.
Shakespeare, William. Othello. Ed. Norman Sanders. New York: Cambridge U. P., 1984.