Shakespeare knew men who knew how to sneer, how to bare their contempt like fangs at him, this scribbler, son of a glover, who sought out the seepage of their hatreds, the source of their thin, vile certainties.
Iago hates, the physics of a force he feels: Othello has the honor of the court, a white wife who loves him and a victory — this “thick lips”, escaped slave, a someone who must not exist.
Macbeth loves, the physics of a force he inverts when he takes those tentative steps into his guest room and cuts into pieces a man who has done him honor — the greasy, struggling mess of it.
Shakespeare understood the attraction of revenge. In his blood-soaked Titus Andronicus, the villain Aaron says, “Vengeance is in my heart, death in my hand, blood and revenge are hammering in my head.” Shakespeare knew that power often provides the longed for context in which to murder freely.
Some men do these things for a name and a few years of power. Released, they fill his plays with sighs of relief for burdens relieved — their fears of replacement and of having to bear the density of goodness. For them, it is the relief to to no longer have to pretend.
Have you noticed how many of them are now roaring out their desire for blood on the airwaves, on the web, in the halls of Congress?
