Written round 1592, William Shakespeare’s play “Richard III” follows the reign of England’s notorious monarch and charts the trail of a charismatic, crafty determine.
As Shakespeare depicts the king’s reign from June 1483 to August 1485, Richard III’s kingdom was wrought with chaos, confusion and corruption that fueled civil battle in England.
As a scholar of Shakespeare, I first considered Richard III and his similarities with Donald Trump after the latter’s debate with President Joe Biden in June 2024. These similarities – and Shakespeare’s depictions – turned even clearer after Trump’s election in November 2024.
Shakespeare’s play highlights the flawed character of a person who wished to be, in trendy phrases, a dictator, somebody who may do no matter he happy with none penalties.
In his 1964 essay, “Why I Stopped Hating Shakespeare,” author James Baldwin concluded that Shakespeare discovered poetry “in the lives of people” by realizing “that whatever was happening to anyone was happening to him.”
“It is said that Shakespeare’s time was easier than ours, but I doubt it,” Baldwin wrote. “No time can be easy if one is living through it.”
An undated portrait of Richard III.
Common Historical past Archive/Getty Photographs
A villain?
In Act 2, Scene 3 of Shakespeare’s play, a standard citizen says Richard is “full of danger.”
“Woe to the land that’s govern’d by a child,” the citizen additional warned.
Past hiring murderers to kill his personal brother, Shakespeare’s Richard was eager on belittling and distancing himself from folks whom he considered as being not loyal or being in his means – together with his spouse, Anne.
Richard then poetically reveals her dying: “Anne my wife hath bid this world goodnight.”
But, earlier than her dying, Anne has a tragic realization: “Never yet one hour in Richard’s bed / Did I enjoy the golden dew of sleep.”
That sentiment is echoed by Richard’s mom, the Duchess of York, who regrets not strangling “damned” Richard whereas he was in her “accursed womb.”
As Shakespeare depicts him, Richard III was a self-centered political determine who first seems alone on stage, decided to show himself a villain.
In Richard’s opening speech, he even says that so as to grow to be king, he’ll manipulate his personal brothers George, the Duke of Clarence, and King Edward IV, “in deadly hate, the one against the other.”
However as his villainous crimes mount up, Richard shares a uncommon second of self-awareness: “But I am in / So far in blood that sin will pluck on sin.”
Shakespeare’s Richard III and Trump
Whereas the main points of Trump’s and Richard’s lives differ in some ways, there are some similarities.
Very similar to Trump throughout his first time period, Shakespeare’s Richard didn’t lead with morals, ethics or integrity.
Richard lied compulsively to everybody, as his soliloquys that include his innermost ideas clarify.
An illustration of English author William Shakespeare (circa 1600).
Rischgitz/Getty Photographs
Like Trump, Richard used empty rhetoric to steer folks with “sugared words” – he was not concerned with talking or selling reality.
Furthermore, Shakespeare’s Richard was a sexist and misogynist who verbally and bodily disrespected girls, together with his spouse and mom.
Within the play, for instance, Richard calls Queen Margaret, widow of King Henry VI, a “foul wrinkled witch” and a “hateful withered hag,” thus disparaging her older age.
He refers to Queen Elizabeth, spouse of Edward IV, as a “damned strumpet” or prostitute, which she wasn’t.
Moreover, so as to solid doubts on his nephews’ authentic claims to the throne, Richard unfold false rumors about his mom, claiming that she was untrue.
Kamala Harris shakes arms with Donald Trump earlier than their debate.
AP Picture/Alex Brandon
For his half, Trump has no scarcity of disparaging remarks about girls. He as soon as referred to as his Democratic presidential rival Hillary Clinton “the devil” and characterised former U.S. Home Speaker Nancy Pelosi as “crazy.”
Trump repeatedly peppered Vice President Kamala Harris in the course of the presidential marketing campaign with sexist and racists assaults.
He initially refused to pronounce her title accurately and overtly mocked her racial identification as a Black girl, even questioning her “Blackness.”
A brand new day?
Like Trump, Richard III used faith to control and confuse public notion of his amoral picture.
Within the play, Richard levels the equal of a modern-day picture op, standing between two “churchmen” with a “prayer-book” in his arms.
Very similar to Richard, Trump has courted evangelicals and used organized faith to his political benefit, most publicly by promoting a “God Bless the USA Bible.”
Trump’s 2020 picture op in entrance of St. John’s Church in Washington is one other instance. It occurred throughout protests over the homicide of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man killed by a white police officer. Police in riot gear used tear fuel to pressure protesters away from the White Home; then Trump was escorted to the close by church together with a number of administration officers.
As a political chief, Richard III left a legacy in English historical past as one among England’s worst monarchs.
That legacy contains his decisive defeat within the Battle of Bosworth Subject in 1485 that led to his dying and to a brand new period for England beneath King Henry VII.
After profitable the throne, the brand new king provided a message of hope that steered England would at some point emerge from its time of civil discord:
Allow them to not dwell to style this land’s enhance
That will with treason wound this truthful land’s peace!Now civil wounds are stopped, peace lives once more.
That she could lengthy dwell right here, God say amen.