Harvard University Department of Political Science Hansong Lee
Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Genealogy of TIRANT
At first, the "tirant" had nothing to do with tyranny. The Old French tirant is derived from the Latin word tyrannus, which inherits the Greek τύραννος, and was first introduced from the political language of Asia Minor. There are several archonymous terms in the Hittite (tarawanaš), séren, and Etruscan (turon) that refer to rulers in general rather than to the genus of the ruler. The shift to a negative connotation of "tyrant" as a neutral word can be glimpsed in Greek literature. Before Plato and Aristotle criticized tyrants and tyranny, "tyrants" referred to people who had taken the throne without hereditary succession—whether benevolent or cruel after coming to power. After all, Herodotus's Giant Gigis was not a dimwitted monarch, and even made a slight act after ascending the throne, only because he was coerced by the king to spy on the queen, and then obeyed the queen's orders to kill the king, so in the legal sense, the ironclad nail is a "tyrant".
Mr. Greenblatt, who is politically immersed in the Chinese of the United States and intellectually immersed in the study of Shassa, naturally pays attention to the republican concept of "tyrant" in ancient Rome to early modern Britain. For nearly four decades, historians of political thought have delved into the "New Rome" rhetoric of Milton and Shakespeare's era, forming an almost formulaic republican view of tyranny. However, "tyranny" in modern thought is a multi-dimensional concept, not just an individual monarch who abuses his dictatorship and erodes constitutionalism. "Tyranny" applies to different types of government: individual tyranny, minority tyranny, majority tyranny. Injustice, illiberality and inequality are not necessarily intuitively cruel. From Tocqueville to Mill, liberal thought never ceased to doubt the seemingly innocuous but highly dominant social ethos and public opinion. Thus, not only individuals, private parties, and groups can exercise tyranny, but ideas, cultures, and even emotions can also be "violent." It is true that the violence of the spirit of sex is also deep.
Viewed in a global dimension, "tyranny" is not limited to the city. Traditional republicanism, paranoid about finding rational institutions within a clear political spectrum, often omits the broader realm of justice. Minos sought justice from Zeus the Father, but imposed tyranny in the Aegean Sea. The citizens of Athens were deliberate and put shackles on the exotic states. Rome's constitutional government flourished, but it placed its political life on conquest. Elizabethan England also found itself the political identity of "ocean domination" in the waves of the Atlantic Ocean. In Shakespeare's plays, the field of justice and injustice is not only a land border, but also a water of unclear political authority— from The Comedy of Error, Timon of Athens, Pericles and Twelve Nights to Othello and The Tempest. Exploring the "international tyranny" of the early age of navigation is bound to write a thought-provoking prelude to the history of imperial thought, colonial and anti-colonial thought, and global injustice in later generations.
Tyrant's mind
The strangeness of the book "The Tyrant" lies in the political psychological analysis. Shakespeare's stage plays, like Plato's "dialogue plays", go beyond institutional analysis and seek the form of the soul. Tyrants, who are tyrannical, originate from tyrannical souls, such as Leontis, "superimpose the whole nation into the self" (p. 108). In the turbulent soul of the tyrant, excessive inferiority and overconfidence coexist to the point of achieving "but not at all satisfied" (pp. 92, 87; Macbeth, 3.2.4-7). Although it is harder for a tyrant to repent than for a statue to live, a tyrant will also murmur in his confession, "I actually hate myself." (pp. 116, 79; Richard III, 5.3.182–89)
The more narcissistic and narcissistic, the more he lusts for discontent, which is the motive of the tyrant and his burden. Either out of frustrated sexual psychology or stemming from distorted family relationships, tyrants long for authoritarian power to prove themselves. This pathological self-relation inevitably projects into social relations until it rings the death knell for itself. The tyrant was ambiguous, uncertain in love and hatred, and drummed his hands to figure out the holy will, but he crossed the river and demolished the bridge one after another, made enemies in his own backyard, and was frightened by the illusion of the enemy and showed his original form. At Macbeth's dinner, the crowd not only discovered that "His Majesty is ill" (Macbeth, 3.4.53), but also perceived that the king was guilty. The dim-witted King Lear, after his capture, also fantasized about it, revealing his deliberately frustrated subconscious desire to raise his life under the care of his youngest daughter (King Lear, 1.1.121) – making this last wish, and he was also mourning the faithful soul.
Greenblatt hinted that there was a knot between tyrant psychology and social psychology, but did not point the way. Admittedly, Richard's rise to power also "depended on the self-destructive reactions of those around him," which ultimately led to the "collective failure of the whole nation" (p. 57), but what was the joint in it? Is it tyranny that "strikes directly into the hearts and minds of men" (p. 62), or even, like Thucydides's war, a "tyrannical teacher" (III.82.2), inverting all meanings and "tyrantizing" the populace? Or is it that the general public is "too dim to understand what their true interests lie" (p. 162) and is therefore stupid enough to be deceived? Why do people support tyrants? The author acknowledges that in the folio Richard III, published seven years after Shakespeare's death, it is no longer just the mayor who shouts "Amen" but "the whole" (p. 68; Richard III, folio 3.7.238-219, folio 3.7. 238-239）。 In fact, although Shakespeare depicts numerous heroic commoners—obscure messengers, servants, soldiers, guards, craftsmen, peasants, nameless citizens of ancient Rome and modern London (pp. 11 and 30)—he does not trust civilians because they are "too easily manipulated by slogans, threatened and intimidated, or bought off by petty favors" (p. 124). To rebel against tyranny, it is also necessary to fall on the elite.
Like other left-wing liberal scholars in the United States, Greenblatt faced a thorny problem: his reluctance to be self-righteous and to reconsider his countrymen for their stupidity and ignorance of their true interests; on the other hand, he hoped that "ordinary citizens would take active political action" to maintain a "popular spirit that can be suppressed but never completely disappeared." When his day-and-night "political action" and "popular spirit" chose trump, whom he hated, the author of "Tyrant" was so confused — so confused that he took concrete action: he wrote the book. He thought about it and came to the conclusion that it was not the people who were ignorant, but that the tyrants were too cunning to deceive them. Because of the disparity between rich and poor, York "exploited the resentment in the hearts of the poorest" to unleash a bloody storm (p. 31; Henry VI, 3.1.349–357). In general, "societies mired in deep partisan politics are particularly vulnerable to deceptive populism" (p. 160). But where does the fragility of society come from — unjust distribution of resources, partisan and conceptual differences, weak common perceptions? What are the pretentious progressive establishment elites doing on the eve of the tyrant's advent? In addition to acknowledging that Shakespeare's Roman "protectors" were also "calculating" (p. 147), Greenblatt's spearhead was aimed at tyrants, not at the hotbeds that gave birth to tyrants; at illnesses, not roots; at the so-called "right-wing populism" rather than the global neoliberal order that single-handedly gave birth to "populism."
Tyrant's time and space
The temporal and spatial dimension is the subtlety of Shakespeare's plays. In Shakespeare's play, tyrants rise up, but not for long. Once in power, the tyrant's grand ambitions degenerated into a rat's eye, full of pride and prejudice. He was caught between the opposition, so he quickly collapsed and social order was re-established. But the tyrant was full of thought that once he sat on the throne, he would be able to gain more, not less. Once he has enough time, he can retract the concessions he made when he plotted and usurped power, and return to his selfish desires and original intentions. In reality, politicians' mouths are like a Christmas tree during a campaign, full of promises that are left behind once elected. Time can fulfill justice, but it can also discard justice.
The expansion and compression of the timeline is the greatest tension and hidden danger within tyranny. In Montesquieu's Persian Letters, tyranny is not ruled by one person, but by a mixture of currents, an instantaneous regime that floats between the ebb and flow of passion and power. Shakespeare's tyrants are also rapidly changing monsters. In this totally unpredictable collective life (p. 161), "time is no longer his friend." Delays are dangerous" (p. 76). The tyrant is suspicious of the ghost, afraid of the past, and half-hearted, and the future is uncertain. The tyrant wishes to "destroy both the future and the past," but this is fraught with difficulties (p. 90). Eventually the tyrant was destroyed, but the wounds were hard to heal and the damage irreparable (p. 121), forever in the memory of history.
Shakespeare is rooted in, but not limited to, his context. He didn't need to be silent, but he was cautious. Temporally, he returned to antiquity; geographically, he traveled far and wide because it was easier to tell the truth by keeping his distance from current politics (pp. 3-4, 19). But because of this, Shakespeare also introduced a vast space for land administration. Inside the city-state, Sisines shouted out," Without the people, what other city?" Citizens echoed: "The people are the city." (pp. 148-49; Coriolanus, 3.1.177-94) This is Shakespeare's return to the spatial concept of "city" and the legal concept of "citizen" (cives, civitas). He describes how foreign powers return home to plot subversive activities, how domestic elites come into clandestine contact with foreign agents, and how tyrants transfer domestic tensions to international wars (pp. 6, 40). Significantly, Shakespeare personally seems to have fainted, thinking that launching a foreign war would ease the domestic situation. Greenblatt points out but does not criticize this, perhaps because he has a "warm respect" for his subjects! But in order to whitewash Shakespeare, the author speculates that the patron instigated Shakespeare, not the literary hero's intention. This speculation is not entirely impossible, but it also deprives the funded writers of their own flexibility in political thinking. Blaming the writer's political motives on his "patrons" is a clumsy practice of contextualism rooted in the "economic basis theory" that intellectual historians have always suspected. Given Shakespeare's education, class, and socialization, his conditional support for foreign wars is entirely justified, perhaps even on intent.
"The Tyrant" in the United States
If Shakespeare is a "master of knocking on the side", especially "flower transfer", "method of avoidance", and "technique of speaking with code" (pp. 3, 12, 158), then Mr. Greenblatt does not hide the American political context of Tyrant (p. 163). Not only does the author repeatedly use the term "populism" that contemporary political theorists have been talking about but cannot define to apply to early modern England (pp. 31, 143, 146, 160), but also the insinuation of Trump personally runs through the book. In his writing, rebel leader Cade became a Trump scarecrow: he "promised to make Britain great again," "promised to drain the swamp," "absurdity is obvious, but the laughter it evokes does not diminish its menace" (p. 36), no doubt satirizing Trump's presidential campaign. Speaking of Macbeth, the author analyzes that tyrants, driven by sexual anxiety, pay special attention to sexually suggestive taunts (pp. 83-84) appear to taunt Trump for over-responding to Marco Rubio's taunts at the time of the primary that his palms are too small. Greenblatt then turned to Richard III to innuendo Trump: "He's always been rich," "He likes to talk about success," "His appropriation of power includes domination of women, but his contempt for them far outweighs his desire for them" (p. 46), and the indecent logo that Sven's American elite has labeled Trump. Readers who read about the resentment of American scholars against American politicians do not necessarily resonate. Or perhaps the reader can recall that Trump's human shortcomings, such as advocating the concept of materialization of "success", are keen to be loved by the world — as willy fell in Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman" — is the product of excessive commercialization in the United States since the 1960s, not Trump's own disease. This politician, who was denounced as "not American" by his own establishment, is precisely the confirmation of the American social atmosphere and the irony of American political psychology.
However, such comparisons across time and space are often inaccurate. Cade aspires to be a wealthy tyrant (p. 40), but Trump is a rich man. In fact, the main mechanism of Trump's self-rationalization is to ask my fellow Americans: I already have everything, but now I am willing to give up leisure to serve you. This was also the usual routine of the Athenian aristocracy when they entered politics. Moreover, Greenblatt satirizes politicians who wear hard hats to construction site rallies (p. 146) – a satire at best for Boris Johnson, who, after all, is from a real estate background and deserves to wear a hard hat that Harvard professors have never worn. The author angrily denounces populist leaders as "bold and shameless", venting his melancholy, but shelving more meaningful contrasts. For example, Cade was used by York, and Trump was also overshadowed by the Republican establishment in economic and foreign policy after taking office. This is perhaps more constructive than comparing the British crown to the U.S. Federation "with enough adults" in order to satirize that Trump is not an "adult" (p. 58).
In order to draw a distance from American readers, Greenblatt makes extensive use of popular expressions in the American press, such as "helpers" and "normalizing abnormal things" (p. 57). In many cases, it is harmless to borrow ancient irony, such as Brutos's own "press release" (129 pages), and Shakespeare's trickery to a talk show actor in an American late-night show (100 pages). But sometimes, this technique of replanting words is more clumsy, such as comparing York and Somerset to "Afghan warlords" (p. 23) and comparing the killing of bin Laden with the beheading of Queen Mary (p. 9). Another example is to incite the British peasants to invade France, which is an expansionism and militarism, not a "nativism" that is obsessed with local interests and does not want to involve foreign countries. In order to satirize the fleeting pleasure of Trump's "nativism", the author does not hesitate to use inaccurate words. In fact, the creative tension between the past and the present can be seen everywhere. For example, the "counter-terrorism" of the United States abroad has spawned internal "islamophobia" and triggered widespread Muslim discrimination, which can be corroborated with anti-Catholic radicalism in England. All of these are "contemporary" issues that can be explored by the author.
Grinblatt's antipathy to the American right is both strong and vague. Speaking of the aristocratic party of ancient Rome, the author calls it a "right-wing party"—a "fiscal policy" whose core interests are not equally distributed. Miniñez Agriba, on the other hand, was a "conservative politician" (pp. 136-137). The American public reads it, such as the New York Times. Even for readability, this application of the concept of the "left" and "right" after the French Revolution to define the political blocs of ancient Rome is debatable. For example, the author speaks of Cade's unrealistic economic promises, slamming the so-called "voodoo economics" – a negative term for Reagan-style neoliberal economic policy in the American press. In fact, "Reagan economics" is very different from what Cade called a utopian vision of both anarcho-libertarianism and utopian socialism (Henry VI, 4.7.16). What's more, Trump changed the Republican "Reagan economics" rhetoric in the early campaign and turned to derogatory free trade. The author cannot resist the temptation to ridicule the right wing, but his taunts often hit the wrong target, even time and space. It can be seen that the literary critics of the elite are not necessarily political theorists with great insights.
The author makes no secret of disdain for Trump, mocking his lack of "adult self-control" and showing "the narcissism, insecurities, cruelty, and stupidity of an older child" (p. 142). While acknowledging Trump's appeal to the American people, "we are drawn again and again to the unscrupulousness of villains" (p. 69), he avoids addressing the structural causes of this attraction. Greenblatt proposed only one mysterious and mysterious mechanism of psychoanalytic interpretation: ordinary people are attracted to deformity and ugliness (p. 71). Yes, in the Republic, Leontius is also tempted to look at the disgusting dead body (4.440a). But to say that Trump won the election is disgusting is absurd. Literary critics argue without argument, so we have no way of knowing his speculative process. Whether it is "deceiving the masses" or "attracting the masses to say", Greenblatt cannot explain the results of the US election, but refuses to admit that the popular support for what he considers a "tyrant" is a realistic decision driven by systemic factors and carefully considered. Thus, Greenblatt's unapologetic assessment of Julius Caesar—"an in-depth exploration of psychological and political dilemmas, but no solution to it" (p. 132) undoubtedly applies to his Tyrant.
The Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics, by Stephen Greenblatt, translated by Tang Jianqing, Social Sciences Academic Press, June 2021, 182 pp. 52.00
Shakespeare's Chinese translation
The translation of "The Tyrant" is clear and commendable, but it is not without room for improvement. If necessary, the translator's notes should include more information to help readers understand the original work across time and space and context. Taking "Midas's wife" as an example, the translator only explains that Midas is a golden stone (p. 12), but has nothing to do with "wife". In fact, the author is referring to one of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales: a pair of donkey ears lurking under Midas's thick hair, urging his beloved wife to keep it a secret, and the wife can't stand it, and trotting all the way to the stream, spitting out the water waves quickly (958-988)—rewritten from a narrative of Midas's servants in Ovid's Metamorphosis (11.172-193). If the reader is not familiar with the classics, he will probably be as ignorant as Mr. Greenblatt read "Silver Pewter Gun Head". In addition, the translator refers to Midas as the "King of Lydia", but in fact "King of Phrygia". The Donkey Ear Midas was supposed to precede the Trojan War, while Phrygia was not included in Lydia until after 695 BC. Herodotus records in his Historia that Adratus killed his brother by mistake and fled to Lydia to seek refuge in Chloessus (1.35.3), claiming that his grandfather was "Midas". This "Midas" is not the other "Midas" also.
The translation includes many original Shakespearean texts. Among them, the translation of noun names and sentences is roughly the same, but there is no lack of errors. Saturainus should be Saturninus. As far as the translation of personal names is concerned, the translator relies on Mr. Zhu Shenghao's Chinese translation. Mr. Zhu is a famous scholar of modern translation, but due to the limitations of the times, he does not understand classical languages and European languages, and his translated names are mostly debatable. For example, Julius Caesar and Caius Martius Coriolanus, the English and Latin pronunciation within the same translation is mixed and inconsistent. The translation quotes Mr. Zhu's original translation, which is also sometimes inconsistent. Macbeth argues that Madame's fearless spirit "should only cast" males, not "should cast some" males (pp. 84-85; Macbeth, 1.7.72-74): The exclusivity of "Nothing but males" is the key to this sentence. "Thou troublest me" (Richard III, 4.2.99) is "you bother me," not "I'm really troubled" (p. 75). "Considerate eyes" (Richard III, 4.2.29-30) are "perceptive eyes" rather than "bulging eyeballs". Richard was "complacent" in his pursuit of Anne: "What woman is so courtable?" / Where did a woman ask for it that way? (p. 69; Richard III, 1.2.228-229), where "in this humour" does not refer to the manner of pursuit, but to physical and psychological emotions—Richard is surprised to see that Anne, in addition to her indignation, has accepted courtship.
In addition, the interpretation of the concept of "schoolboy" has also deviated. The term appears in As You Like It (2.7.139), where it is best known as "All the world's a stage," and the book quotes a quote from Henry VI: "Be at your mercy like a schoolboy." (Henry VI, 1.1.36) Mr. Zhu knows little about the context of British cultural history. Shakespeare's "school" does not refer to "elementary school", but to a grammar school that has a long history and has survived to this day. Shakespeare's own "schoolboy" career in Stratford is almost the entire accumulation of his theatrical creation, a complete educational experience and an important stage of life.
In short, when translating contemporary works such as Tyrant, it is certainly a virtue for a new generation of translators to respect the old and the wise, but there is no need to shelve the opportunity to proofread the version, refine the translation, or even deliberately consider it carefully. After all, the efforts of future generations are aimed at surpassing their predecessors, not following in the footsteps of authority.
After Tyrant?
The poem yun: "Many will be drunk, irredeemable", warning tyrants that tyranny cannot end well. "The sun is accustomed and simmering, and the crowd is full of min and sorrow", Mr. Greenblatt's book "Tyrant" is full of "Min" and "melancholy", but there is no "great advice". The "tyrant" of the United States today is not Richard III or Macbeth, but an agent of interests who dominates the vast nation-state and international order. Without systematic change, the Shen Gluttony would not have been able to help.
Just as antigone and Creon, who died conceitedly, and York and Somerset, who were divided into opinions, people in society were obsessed with partial truths. Mr. Greenblatt adheres to the liberal ideology of the United States, criticizing what he sees as a right-wing populist tyrant and a consul recognized by nearly half of the electorate in the United States. Tyrants are not tyrants, just a mirage before the abyss of decay. Abandoning the tyrannical aspects of modern society and erecting a pre-modern tyrant scarecrow and beating him fiercely is both intuitive justice and intellectual laziness. After being sick for a long time, the disease cannot be eradicated, and I am afraid that even the patient is numb to the disease.
As with all unrecognizable resentment, perhaps a return to Shakespeare's theory of tyranny is a fleeting thought. Is the re-excavation of Shakespeare's critique of tyrants a self-proclaimed prophet, or the vanguard clarion call before radical change erupts? Is it a spontaneous dissatisfaction, or a deliberate criticism? Is it a reaction, or a revolution? This is an inevitable question for people who read "The Tyrant", and there is a tyrant lurking in the depths of all souls, but they resist the tyrant between sentient beings.
Editor-in-Charge: Zheng Shiliang
Proofreader: Shi Gong