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.
Elsewhere, it’s Macbeth that provides the script for a misogynistic story in which the leader’s strong-minded wife pulls the strings. Carrie has some work to do on her ambition, though: Shakespeare’s heroine at least has the king and national domination in her sights, rather than some overweening spads and international pet rescue. As No 10 empties, Johnson, a man who seems more at home in the convivial oblivion of sociability – the world of comedy, as well as of parties – wears the aspect of isolation and abandonment. He is a Macbeth holed up in his castle, a Coriolanus deserted by his allies. A politician who likened himself to Brutus during his own long leadership campaign has, like Caesar’s assassin, now seen fortune’s wheel spin away from him.
The PM’s Friday “pep talk” to his remaining staff drew not on Shakespeare directly, but on a Hamlet spin-off, Disney’s The Lion King. Quoting Rafiki, a version of the play’s good-natured but ineffectual buddy Horatio, Johnson observed “change is good, and change is necessary, even when it’s tough”. It’s not quite the swan of Avon. Many more apposite quotations present themselves. Perhaps, from The Tempest, “Canst thou bring me to the party?”, or the reassurance in Titus Andronicus that “the ambush of our friends be strong”. Or even, in response to Sue Gray’s report, “Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?” (Twelfth Night). There’s plenty more Shakespearean advice for any political leader on the ropes, from Henry V’s war with France diverting attention from domestic woes, to Richard III flanked by Catholic bishops and holding a Bible in a performance of piety (surely we must be due a christening?).
Johnson is certainly no Othello: that soldier of firm principle, dignity and fatal uxoriousness is a distant comparison. Nothing would get Othello on to a zip wire, and his take on “watermelon smiles” would be worth hearing. An indulgent Shakespearean analogy might rather cast Johnson as Falstaff, the cheerful, carnal and pragmatic companion to the young Prince Hal in the two parts of Henry IV.
Falstaff might well – if he could be bothered – have written two columns advocating opposite views. He might well have refused to divulge the number of his children. He would certainly cadge off wealthier friends. Johnson’s repetition at a press conference of the myth that The Merry Wives of Windsor was commissioned by a Queen Elizabeth in love with Falstaff doesn’t augur well for his book’s accuracy, but does tell us something about his identification with this degenerate. In Windsor, Falstaff tries to present himself as a ladies’ man. The wives are immune to his perjured romance, and instead of getting his end away, he is thrown out in a basket of soiled laundry.
Comparisons between the braggart PM and Falstaff are commonplace. But few trace that character arc as Shakespeare himself does. Over the course of his Falstaffiad, Shakespeare makes clear that beneath the buffoon lies something disturbingly venal. His bonhomie is only skin deep. Turning his relationships into transactions – a loan here, a kickback there – he is loyal only to himself.
Falstaff’s ultimate degradation is his casual willingness to send his men “poor and bare” into battle, in the second part of Henry IV. His bleak dismissal of them as “food for powder. They’ll fill a pit as well as better” echoes the equivalent: “Let the bodies pile high.” Shakespeare reveals Falstaff to be a dangerous, narcissistic populist. Let’s hope Johnson is researching that for his book.
• Emma Smith is professor of Shakespeare studies at Oxford University and author of This is Shakespeare: How to Read the World’s Greatest Playwright
