Shakespeare's Political Realism: The English History Plays. (Reviews).

Tim Spiekerman. Shakespeare's Political Realism: The English History Plays

Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001. x + 208 pp. $16.95. ISBN: 0-7914-4868-1.

Tim Spiekerman's Shakespeare's Political Realism is not another application of New Historicist criticism. Spiekerman, a political scientist whose focus is on the exercise of power in King John, Richard II, land II Henry IV, and Henry V, articulates a view of "politics" that is informed by Machiavelli and certain theories of political necessity. There is little effort to examine Tudor history and its conflicts or prevailing ideas of law and justice, though some attention, albeit superficial, is given to the matter of the legitimacy of rule. It is a disturbing and cynical book. Some will find the work more illuminating as an exploration of modern theories of Realpolitik than of Shakespeare.

While Spiekerman does not portray Shakespeare as an admirer of Machiavelli, he nevertheless sees him as deeply influenced by the view of politics presented in The Prince. "Shakespeare," he writes, "is preoccupied with the acquisition and maintenance of political power," a political endeavor that "will almost always involve force and fraud" (157). He sees the playwright as a realist and not a "moral realist," for Shakespeare allegedly recognized that morality in a ruler is dangerous to his health and to the health of the nation state. In order to come to this conclusion, Spiekerman must set aside expressions of self-accusation and guilt on the part of Henry IV and Henry V as hypocritical posturing. These kings did what they had to do to obtain and retain power. Any expression of religious faith, as Machiavelli would have it, is said to be only useful hypocrisy or posturing since the public always wants to see its leaders as morally superior. If religion and morality are taken seriously they will lead to failur e because they will not allow sufficient attention to self-interest. We are here at the opposite pole from the older explanation of the Tudor view of history which stressed serious belief in the role of Providence and the divine punishment of the crimes of previous rulers by civil unrest and instability.

No doubt Shakespeare's understanding of "politics" was not a coherent political philosophy, but he would have been very aware of the political theology that was used both to support the monarchy in his time and, in the pope's bull Regnans in excelsis (1570), to claim its illegitimacy. In the light of his family connections with Catholic families -- and his own father's apparent preference for the Old Religion -- he could hardly have observed the severe religious repression of the regime without mixed feelings about royal power. The dynamic that emerges does not seem to be a rejection of royalism, but I do not believe that Shakespeare's vision of the political process favored ambition or that it foreshadowed the Hobbesian state. Spiekerman fails to take note of the centuries-old claim on individual rights made by many Englishmen, especially those living in towns and cities where royal charters were expected to protect people from arbitrary rule. Contrary to his assertions, constitutionalism was already a facto r as early as the reign of Richard II, a king who in spite of his claims to sacred kingship (sancta majestas) issued blank charters which were seen as an infamous violation of established law and justice. Spiekerman, discussing Shakespeare's failure to incorporate reference to the Magna Carta in King John, claims that the playwright implicitly dismissed constitutionalism as unwork-able; further, "he was right for a very long time concerning England and is still right for a good deal of the world" (170). One shudders at the implications of this line of thought.