What is't thou canst demand?… My liberty.
The 250th anniversary of our nation’s founding will be upon us in just a few days, and it seems a good time to think a bit about what it means to be an American. It will not surprise you to learn that I believe that the best way to think about what it means to be an American is to consult the wisdom of an Englishman who died 161 years before the nation’s founding.
William Shakespeare embodies the voice of the English people, but the United States has become his second home. As I mentioned in a previous post, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams together visited Stratford-upon-Avon during their time representing the new nation in Europe after the Revolution. Shakespearean plays were performed by travelling acting troupes throughout the country in the 19th Century, including performances in such out-of-the-way places as the California gold camps. Today, Shakespeare is on the screen and on the stage constantly in the United States, and the country boasts over 90 Shakespeare festivals or theaters.
Will is part of the fabric of the United States because his insights touch the unique democratic nature of our nation. Even though he lived and wrote in an authoritarian monarchy, he explored many of the questions important to a republic: the character and precariousness of republican government, the dangers of populism, the importance of courage, and the nature of freedom, to name a few.
Americans can also find truths about their country in Shakespeare’s insights on leadership. In A Memorable Honor, I explore how Shakespeare defined good leadership by its ability to tie people to a cause greater than themselves, connecting them to a form of honor that assures them that their work and commitment are of significance for a higher purpose. There’s much more to it than that (buy my book to find out what), but no leader – no nation - can be successful without a sense of that “higher honor.” That’s in part why the book is entitled A Memorable Honor.
For Shakespeare, the character who most embodied this kind of leadership was Henry V. In Shakespeare’s play, King Henry stands before his troops on St. Crispin’s Day on the morning of the Battle of Agincourt and delivers a speech of such poetry and magic that, in Shakespeare’s telling, it inspires his men to win a battle against a foe that outnumbered them five to one. Henry’s St. Crispin’s Day speech called his troops to persevere against these “fearful odds” by offering them a chance to join him as brothers in honor:
We few. We happy few. We band of brothers
For he today that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother…
This is the speech that opens the discussion of leadership in A Memorable Honor. As I hope you will see, the character of Henry V serves as the distillation of some of Shakespeare’s most significant leadership insights.
Abraham Lincoln, a life-long devotee of Shakespeare, understood Shakespearean insights at a deep level, especially Shakespeare’s insights regarding honor and leadership. They helped him lead the nation through the Civil War and seem to have helped teach him how the principles of our founding document were the key to the survival of the nation in its moment of greatest peril.
In Lincoln’s view, America is exceptional because it rests on the Declaration of Independence’s assertion of “self-evident” truths “that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of happiness.” He believed these words formed the American creed, the unifying philosophy that bound together a vast, diverse nation in a common understanding of freedom. He gave “All honor to Jefferson” for articulating in the Declaration “an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times … [T]o-day, and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of re-appearing tyranny and oppression.” In a way like Henry V on St. Crispin’s Day, Lincoln turned to the vision and honor of the Declaration in his own great speech, the Gettysburg Address, to define the nation’s “new birth of freedom” after the Civil War.
Lincoln was clear-eyed about the many ways in which the nation fell short of its creed; after all, he was President during a violent struggle to eradicate slavery. Yet, perhaps in part because of his understanding of Shakespeare, he saw that the Declaration of Independence represented the “higher honor” that could lead the nation through its trials. Lincoln perceived that the Declaration, not a single person or political movement, is the thing that binds the nation together as one people. As he said, it made America “the last best hope of earth.”
Lincoln believed that the principles of the Declaration of Independence, with their Shakespearean resonance, created an extraordinary and important nation, and history has confirmed his belief. The Founders foresaw the same thing; in the Declaration, they pledged “our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.” That is the sacred – and higher – honor we will celebrate this week.
Until next time, have a semiquincentennial hot dog on me, Will and Abe.
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 of A Memorable Honor: Shakespeare, Lincoln and the Art of Leadership.
