One may smile, and smile, and be a villain.
A Memorable Honor is a book about Shakespeare and leadership. I wrote the book using the characters from Shakespeare’s plays as examples of some of the Bard’s leadership principles. If you haven’t read a lot of Shakespeare, you might think that each of these characters would be the noble embodiment of leadership in action, providing in their person and careers models for today’s leaders.
Well, let me disabuse you: many of Shakespeare’s characters were terrible leaders and frankly awful people. They are the opposite of role models. For example:
· Richard III murdered his way to the throne, killing his brother, his wife and two young boys, among others.
· Macbeth, prompted by an apparently supernatural prophesy, began his ascent to the throne by reluctantly killing his king and ended as a bloody tyrant with his head separated from his body.
· Brutus committed one of the first political assassinations, joining with his fellow Roman Senators to butcher his close friend, Julius Caesar.
· Richard II was a venal, corrupt, and ineffective king who was deposed by his cousin.
· Henry VI was timid and weak, and he lost his crown and his life (the latter to the man who would later become Richard III) during the bloody Wars of the Roses.
· Antony and Cleopatra acted more like the Kardashians than rulers of half the Roman world and lost their empire as a result.
· King Lear was an old man who wanted to retire and give up his crown while retaining the rights and privileges of kingship, leading to a catastrophe for his kingdom.
Get the picture? Many of Shakespeare’s kings and emperors tend to be bad leaders who make horrible, often evil, choices. That’s not universally true, of course. There are a number of “good” leaders in Shakespeare’s canon. For example, Henry V, who as a young man was the drinking buddy of Falstaff and as King became the conqueror of France, stands out as perhaps Shakespeare’s greatest leader, although even his record was ambiguous.
Shakespeare understood that the greatest lessons often come not from success, but from failure. He wrote plays about tragically flawed heroes and deeply imperfect human beings, even in his comedies. Shakespeare saw humanity, good and bad, for what it is.
His leadership lessons from these characters resonate today. While most of us are not monsters like Macbeth or broken and foolish like Lear, we usually fall short of the ideal. Shakespeare’s brilliance comes from his understanding of this fact. His plays depict the darkness and ambiguity of princes and rulers precisely because that is where he finds some of the greatest insights for ordinary men and women who are called to be leaders.
That is also what A Memorable Honor is about: discovering truths about leadership in the stories of Shakespeare’s complex characters, including, perhaps especially, in the stories of rot and ruin. These are cautionary tales, but sometimes it is those tales that lead to the greatest understanding.
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.
