On Power (Penguin) Read online

  PENGUIN BOOKS — GREAT IDEAS

  On Power

  William Shakespeare

  1564–1616

  William Shakespeare

  On Power

  PENGUIN BOOKS — GREAT IDEAS

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

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  This selection first published in Penguin Books 2009

  1

  All rights reserved

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  ISBN: 978-0-14-195660-2

  Contents

  Power in government

  Power in the family

  Power in war and violence

  Power of love, between men and women

  Power in government

  Hamlet, Act III, Scene 3

  ROSENCRANTZ:

  The single and peculiar life is bound

  With all the strength and armour of the mind

  To keep itself from noyance, but much more

  That spirit upon whose weal depends and rests

  The lives of many. The cease of majesty

  Dies not alone, but like a gulf doth draw

  What’s near it with it. It is a massy wheel

  Fixed on the summit of the highest mount,

  To whose huge spokes ten thousand lesser things

  Are mortised and adjoined, which when it falls

  Each small annexment, petty consequence,

  Attends the boist’rous ruin. Never alone

  Did the King sigh, but with a general groan.

  Richard II, Act III, Scene 2

  KING RICHARD:

  Of comfort no man speak.

  Let’s talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs,

  Make dust our paper and with rainy eyes

  Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth.

  Let’s choose executors and talk of wills,

  And yet not so, for what can we bequeath

  Save our deposed bodies to the ground?

  Our lands, our lives, and all are Bolingbroke’s,

  And nothing can we call our own but death,

  And that small model of the barren earth

  Which serves as paste and cover to our bones.

  For God’s sake, let us sit upon the ground

  And tell sad stories of the death of kings:

  How some have been deposed, some slain in war,

  Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed,

  Some poisoned by their wives, some sleeping killed,

  All murdered. For within the hollow crown

  That rounds the mortal temples of a king

  Keeps Death his court; and there the antic sits,

  Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp,

  Allowing him a breath, a little scene,

  To monarchize, be feared, and kill with looks,

  Infusing him with self and vain conceit,

  As if this flesh which walls about our life

  Were brass impregnable; and humoured thus,

  Comes at the last, and with a little pin

  Bores through his castle wall; and farewell, king.

  Cover your heads and mock not flesh and blood

  With solemn reverence. Throw away respect,

  Tradition, form, and ceremonious duty,

  For you have but mistook me all this while.

  I live with bread, like you; feel want,

  Taste grief, need friends. Subjected thus,

  How can you say to me I am a king?

  Timon of Athens, Act IV, Scene 3

  APEMANTUS:

  If thou didst put this sour cold habit on

  To castigate thy pride, ’twere well, but thou

  Dost it enforcedly. Thou’dst courtier be again

  Wert thou not beggar. Willing misery

  Outlives incertain pomp, is crowned before.

  The one is filling still, never complete,

  The other at high wish. Best state, contentless,

  Hath a distracted and most wretched being,

  Worse than the worst, content.

  Thou shouldst desire to die, being miserable.

  TIMON:

  Not by his breath that is more miserable.

  Thou art a slave whom fortune’s tender arm

  With favour never clasped, but bred a dog.

  Hadst thou like us from our first swathe proceeded

  The sweet degrees that this brief world affords

  To such as may the passive drudges of it

  Freely command, thou wouldst have plunged thyself

  In general riot, melted down thy youth

  In different beds of lust, and never learned

  The icy precepts of respect, but followed

  The sugared game before thee. But myself,

  Who had the world as my confectionary,

  The mouths, the tongues, the eyes and hearts of men

  At duty, more than I could frame employment,

  That numberless upon me stuck, as leaves

  Do on the oak, have with one winter’s brush

  Fell from their boughs, and left me open, bare

  For every storm that blows. I to bare this,

  That never knew but better, is some burden.

  Thy nature did commence in sufferance, time

  Hath made thee hard in’t. Why shouldst thou hate men?

  They never flattered thee. What hast thou given?

  If thou wilt curse, thy father, that poor rag,

  Must be thy subject, who in spite put stuff

  To some she-beggar and compounded thee

  Poor rogue hereditary. Hence, be gone.

  If thou hadst not been born the worst of men

  Thou hadst been a knave and flatterer.

  Henry V, Act I, Scene 2

  CANTERBURY:

  True. Therefore doth heaven divide

  The state of man in divers functions,

  Setting endeavour in continual motion;

  To which is fixed, as an aim or butt,

  Obedience. For so work the honey-bees,

  Creatures that by a rule in nature teach

  The act of order to a peopled kingdom.

  They have a king, and officers of sorts,

  Where some like magistrates correct at home;

  Others like merchants venture trade abroad;

  Others like soldiers, armed in their stings,

  Make boot upon the summer’s velvet buds,

  Which pillage they with merry march bring hom
e

  To the tent royal of their emperor,

  Who busied in his majesty surveys

  The singing masons building roofs of gold,

  The civil citizens lading up the honey,

  The poor mechanic porters crowding in

  Their heavy burdens at his narrow gate,

  The sad-eyed justice with his surly hum

  Delivering o’er to executors pale

  The lazy yawning drone. I this infer:

  That many things, having full reference

  To one consent, may work contrariously.

  As many arrows, loosed several ways,

  Fly to one mark, as many ways meet in one town,

  As many fresh streams meet in one salt sea,

  As many lines close in the dial’s centre,

  So may a thousand actions once afoot

  End in one purpose, and be all well borne

  Without defect. Therefore to France my liege.

  Divide your happy England into four,

  Whereof take you one quarter into France,

  And you withal shall make all Gallia shake.

  If we with thrice such powers left at home

  Cannot defend our own doors from the dog,

  Let us be worried, and our nation lose

  The name of hardiness and policy.

  Coriolanus, Act II, Scene 2

  SECOND OFFICER: There hath been many great men that have flattered the people who ne’er loved them; and there be many that they have loved they know not wherefore, so that if they love they know not why; they hate upon no better a ground. Therefore for Coriolanus neither to care whether they love or hate him manifests the true knowledge he has in their disposition, and out of his noble carelessness lets them plainly see it.

  FIRST OFFICER: If he did not care whether he had their love or no he waved indifferently ’twixt doing them neither good nor harm, but he seeks their hate with greater devotion than they can render it him, and leaves nothing undone that may fully discover him their opposite. Now to seem to affect the malice and displeasure of the people is as bad as that which he dislikes, to flatter them for their love.

  SECOND OFFICER: He hath deserved worthily of his country, and his ascent is not by such easy degrees as those who, having been supple and courteous to the people, bonneted, without any further deed to have them at all into their estimation and report. But he hath so planted his honours in their eyes and his actions in their hearts that for their tongues to be silent and not confess so much were a kind of in-grateful injury. To report otherwise were a malice that, giving itself the lie, would pluck reproof and rebuke from every ear that heard it.

  FIRST OFFICER: No more of him. He’s a worthy man.

  Henry V, Act IV, Scene 2

  KING HARRY:

  Upon the King:

  ‘Let us our lives, our souls, our debts, our care-full wives,

  Our children, and our sins, lay on the King.’

  We must bear all. O hard condition,

  Twin-born with greatness, subject to the breath of every fool,

  Whose sense no more can feel

  But his own wringing. What infinite heartsease

  Must kings neglect that private men enjoy?

  And what have kings that privates have not too,

  Save ceremony, save general ceremony?

  And what art thou, thou idol ceremony?

  What kind of god art thou, that suffer’st more

  Of mortal griefs than do thy worshippers?

  What are thy rents? What are thy comings-in?

  O ceremony, show me but thy worth.

  What is thy soul of adoration?

  Art thou aught else but place, degree, and form,

  Creating awe and fear in other men?

  Wherein thou art less happy, being feared,

  Than they in fearing.

  What drink’st thou oft, instead of homage sweet,

  But poisoned flattery? O be sick, great greatness,

  And bid thy ceremony give thee cure.

  Think’st thou the fiery fever will go out

  With titles blown from adulation?

  Will it give place to flexure and low bending?

  Canst thou, when thou command’st the beggar’s knee,

  Command the health of it? No, thou proud dream

  That play’st so subtly with a king’s repose.

  I am a king that find thee, and I know

  ’Tis not the balm, the sceptre, and the ball,

  The sword, the mace, the crown imperial,

  The intertissued robe of gold and pearl,

  The farced title running fore the king,

  The throne he sits on, nor the tide of pomp

  That beats upon the high shore of this world.

  No, not all these, thrice-gorgeous ceremony,

  Not all these, laid in bed majestical,

  Can sleep so soundly as the wretched slave

  Who with a body filled and vacant mind

  Gets him to rest, crammed with distressful bread;

  Never sees horrid night, the child of hell,

  But like a lackey from the rise to set

  Sweats in the eye of Phoebus, and all night

  Sleeps in Elysium; next day, after dawn

  Doth rise and help Hyperion to his horse,

  And follows so the ever-running year

  With profitable labour to his grave.

  And but for ceremony such a wretch,

  Winding up days with toil and nights with sleep

  Had the forehand and vantage of a king.

  The slave, a member of the country’s peace,

  Enjoys it, but in gross brain little wots

  What watch the King keeps to maintain the peace,

  Whose hours the peasant best advantages.

  Measure for Measure, Act I, Scene 1

  DUKE:

  Of government the properties to unfold

  Would seem in me t’affect speech and discourse,

  Since I am put to know that your own science

  Exceeds in that the lists of all advice

  My strength can give you. Then no more remains

  But this: to your sufficiency, as your worth is able,

  And let them work. The nature of our people,

  Our city’s institutions and the terms

  For common justice, you’re as pregnant in

  As art and practice hath enriched any

  That we remember.

  He gives Escalus papers.

  There is our commission,

  From which we would not have you warp.

  (To a lord)

  Call hither,

  I say bid come before us Angelo.

  (To Escalus)

  What figure of us think you he will bear?

  For you must know we have with special soul

  Elected him our absence to supply,

  Lent him our terror, dressed him with our love,

  And given his deputation all the organs

  Of our own power. What think you of it?

  ESCALUS:

  If any in Vienna be of worth

  To undergo such ample grace and honour

  It is Lord Angelo.

  Enter Angelo

  DUKE:

  Look where he comes.

  ANGELO:

  Always obedient to your grace’s will,

  I come to know your pleasure.

  DUKE:

  Angelo,

  There is a kind of character in thy life

  That to th’observer doth thy history

  Fully unfold. Thyself and thy belongings

  Are not thine own so proper as to waste

  Thyself upon thy virtues, they on thee.

  Heaven doth with us as we with torches do,

  Not light them for themselves; for if our virtues

  Did not go forth of us, ’twere all alike

  As if we had them not. Spirits are not finely touched

  But to fine issues, nor nature never lends

>   The smallest scruple of her excellence

  But, like a thrifty goddess, she determines

  Herself the glory of a creditor,

  Both thanks and use. But I do bend my speech

  To one that can my part in him advertise.

  Hold therefore, Angelo.

  In our remove be thou at full ourself:

  Mortality and mercy in Vienna

  Live in thy tongue and heart. Old Escalus,

  Though first in question, is thy secondary.

  Take thy commission.

  Richard II, Act V, Scene 5

  KING RICHARD:

  I have been studying how I may compare

  This prison where I live unto the world,

  And for because the world is populous,

  And here is not a creature but myself,

  I cannot do it. Yet I’ll hammer it out.

  My brain I’ll prove the female to my soul,

  My soul the father, and these two beget

  A generation of still-breeding thoughts,

  And these same thoughts people this little world

  In humours like the people of this world.

  For no thought is contented. The better sort,

  As thoughts of things divine, are intermixed

  With scruples, and do set the faith itself

  Against the faith, as thus: ‘Come, little ones’,

  And then again,

  ‘It is as hard to come as for a camel

  To thread the postern of a small needle’s eye.’

  Thoughts tending to ambition, they do plot

  Unlikely wonders: how these vain, weak nails

  May tear a passage through the flinty ribs

  Of this hard world, my ragged prison walls;

  And for they cannot, die in their own pride.

  Thoughts tending to content flatter themselves

  That they are not the first of fortune’s slaves,

  Nor shall not be the last, like seely beggars,

  Who, sitting in the stocks, refuge their shame

  That many have, and others must, set there;

  And in this thought they find a kind of ease,

  Bearing their own misfortunes on the back

  Of such as have before endured the like.

  Thus play I in one person many people,

  And none contented. Sometimes am I king,

  Then treason makes me wish myself a beggar,