Boris Johnson’s book, Shakespeare: The Riddle of Genius, is now so late it’s embarrassing to mention it. But in the meantime, Shakespeare himself seems to have taken up residence as Whitehall’s writer-in-chief.
As so often in times of political upheaval, it’s to Shakespeare’s grasp of motive and policy, and human quirks and struggles, that we turn. Johnson’s current travails, like arguments around the English civil war, the battle for women’s suffrage, and Bush’s response to 9/11, are revealingly reframed by Shakespearean parallels. The PM has recently compared himself to Othello, nominating Dominic Cummings as his Iago. It’s an allusion that cannot turn out well – even in a Lulu Lytle bedchamber. Cummings himself has suggested Johnson is a shambolic Prospero, avoiding his political duties including chairing the Cobra committee, sequestering himself instead with his books. Perhaps Prospero was, indeed, exiled to his magical island after 54 letters of no confidence in his dukedom.
