A pattern to all princes living with her / And all that shall succeed.
Last week, I wrote about Shakespeare’s Sir John Falstaff. Of all Shakespearean characters, Falstaff seemed among the most real, as though he had a life outside of the plays. The British Shakespeare scholar Emma Smith said that he had an “unkillable or immortal quality.” Falstaff’s death in Henry V even occurred off-stage, as though Shakespeare were worried that the play could not contain him if he appeared before the audience.
But despite his demise in Henry V, Falstaff survived. He also appeared in the domestic comedy, The Merry Wives of Windsor. Of course, for that play, his resurrection may have had a little help: According to legend, Queen Elizabeth I herself asked Shakespeare to write a new play in which Falstaff would fall in love.
Shakespeare and Queen Elizabeth are tied to each other. Although Shakespeare was also active and wrote some extraordinary plays during the early years of King James I, we generally say that he was an “Elizabethan” playwright. Shakespeare’s thoughts on leadership and, in particular, political leadership, were clearly shaped in part by his observations of the reign of the Virgin Queen.
Elizabeth reigned for over 44 years and shepherded England through war and religious upheaval, leaving it far stronger and more stable than at the time of her ascension. She ruled successfully despite being a woman during an especially patriarchal time. (Admittedly, she was the second female monarch in a row, following her half sister Mary, and part of a tradition of strong English women leaders that extends to the modern era.)
Elizabeth seemed interesting to Shakespeare not because of her sex but because of her attributes as a leader. For example, as the Spanish Armada bore down on the island in 1588, she addressed the English troops and the English people at Tilbury, telling them:
“I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and good-will of my subjects; and therefore I am come amongst you…being resolved, in the midst and heat of battle, to live and die amongst you all; to lay down for my God, and for my kingdom, and my people, my honor and my blood, even in the dust.
“I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too, and think foul scorn that … Spain, or any prince of Europe, should to invade the borders of my realm: to which, rather than any dishonor shall grow by me, I myself will take up arms…”
Shakespeare’s St. Crispin’s Day speech echoes this stirring language; it’s likely that he had Elizabeth’s speech in mind when he wrote Henry V. He clearly saw in Elizabeth the value of honor and the significance of poetry in summoning people to great things.
He also must have seen the importance of subtlety and wit. At Tilbury, Elizabeth uses language to turn her soldiers’ prejudice against her sex from a disadvantage to an asset, associating her “weak and feeble body” with “the heart and stomach of a king.” Shakespeare’s characters did the same: Henry V made similar use of his dissolute youth; Richard III turned his twisted body into an asset before his villainous ambition ended in his destruction.
But Elizabeth was far from a perfect ruler. Like Hamlet, she often dithered on important decisions. Like Caesar, she ran an authoritarian state. Like Lear, she never satisfactorily resolved the question of succession. All these less-than-glorious attributes also informed Shakespeare’s view of leadership.
Indeed, Shakespeare himself played a part in one of the darker moments of her reign. In 1601, the Earl of Exeter led a rebellion against her. He attempted to inspire his coconspirators by having Shakespeare’s company stage the deposition scene from Richard II for them before the plot unfolded. The coup failed, and Exeter lost his head. Shakespeare survived, but Elizabeth was aware of the performance, supposedly saying, “I am Richard II. Know ye not that?” We would not expect the great Elizabeth I to see herself, even ironically, in the shadow of the fragile and deposed Richard.
Elizabeth’s reign is called the Golden Age for her political accomplishments and, in no small part, because of the cultural contributions of artists like William Shakespeare. Yet she, like most leaders, was flawed and often uncertain. Shakespeare used both her virtues and her failings to explore the attributes of good leadership.
His method still works today: Most leaders fall short of the mark, sometimes spectacularly so. Even our greatest leader, Abraham Lincoln (who shares the stage with Shakespeare in A Memorable Honor), had his own failings. An understanding of the shortcomings of the leaders of history and the present can make each of us better leaders today.
Shakespeare was clear-eyed about Elizabeth, but he seems to have come to appreciate her more after her death. In perhaps his last play, Henry VIII, Shakespeare wrote about Henry VIII and his marriage to Anne Boleyn, Elizabeth’s mother. The play ends before Anne’s execution and Henry’s subsequent serial nuptials. Instead, it closes with a tribute to the infant Elizabeth, declaring that the baby “promises / Upon this land a thousand thousand blessings…”
But, then again, perhaps something else was going on. Shakespeare, on his way to retirement, cowrote this play with a young playwright, John Fletcher. Fletcher’s father Richard served as the chaplain at the execution of Elizabeth’s great rival, Mary Queen of Scots. Fletcher perhaps had familial reasons to see Elizabeth less as a great but often-flawed ruler and more as the Gloriana of English myth.
Shakespeare’s England seems indeed less like “the great globe itself” and more like a very small world.
But my book is a little world unto itself: A Memorable Honor: Shakespeare, Lincoln, and the Art of Leadership provides a detailed discussion of Shakespearean leadership. The book is now an Amazon bestseller and hot new release. It will be published on September 15. You can preorder today on Amazon.com and the Barnes and Noble website.
Until next time.
Frank
P. S. If you haven’t done so, please add your name to the “Who Art Thou” link below to receive updates as we get closer to the September 15 publication ofA Memorable Honor: Shakespeare, Lincoln and the Art of Leadership.
