How Shakespeare Explains Joe Biden

A Tragedy

Can Shakespeare help explain the dynamics we're seeing around Biden today?

To discuss, ChinaTalk interviewed a superstar cast to bring Shakespeare’s writing to life. Eliot Cohen is an SAIS professor, military historian, and counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. He is also the author of The Hollow Crown: Shakespeare on How Leaders Rise, Rule, and Fall. Drew Lichtenberg is a longtime dramaturge for DC’s Shakespeare Theatre Company. Kate Pitt is a freelance dramaturge and author of the excellent Shakespeare News substack.

Finally, Phil Schneider, my little brother, helped us act out some scenes. He recently graduated from Yale where he starred in a production of Hamlet. He’s played Romeo, Hamlet, Richard II, and Leontes. He’s also still looking for an agent + advice about showbusiness — please reach out at jordan@chinatalk.media to connect!

We discuss:

• What Shakespeare’s play Richard II can tell us about the best of bad outcomes for Biden;

• How to cast Democratic leaders like Jill Biden, Bill Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, and Barack Obama within the Shakespeare canon;

• Historical case studies of presidents who have declined to run for an additional term;

• Strategies for dying peacefully.

Have a listen via the links below! This is one better suited to audio if you listen to podcasts

The Hollow Crown

Eliot Cohen: It's a tragedy.

This is not one of those fun Shakespearean stories where everybody gets married and there's a happy ending. It's a story of a very distinguished old man who is showing the infirmities of age. 

Of course, Shakespeare's great play on that subject is King Lear. There's a wonderful moment in the first scene of the first act. Lear’s two daughters Goneril and Regan, are delighting in the King’s decision to expel their sister Cordelia from the kingdom – even though Cordelia is the daughter who loves King Lear most deeply. 

Goneril:

You see how full of changes his age is; the
observation we have made of it hath not been
little: he always loved our sister most; and
with what poor judgment he hath now cast her off
appears too grossly.

Reagan:

‘Tis the infirmity of his age: yet he hath ever
but slenderly known himself.

Goneril:

The best and soundest of his time hath been but
rash; then must we look to receive from his age,
not alone the imperfections of long-engraffed
condition, but therewithal the unruly waywardness
that infirm and choleric years bring with them.

Eliot Cohen: The sisters — who are terrible people, by the way — see that their father’s erratic behavior is actually rooted in who he was to begin with. There's an insight here with Biden. It’s not that we're seeing a very different Joe Biden who is refusing to acknowledge reality — as people age, they just become intense versions of themselves. As Shakespeare put it — they become choleric, they get angry a little bit more easily.

The question is — does Joe Biden only but slenderly know himself? That is to say, Joe Biden has been in the public eye for over half a century. Do people who spend their lives that way actually know themselves?

In many plays, people figure out who they really are and how they really fit into the world, but by then it’s usually too late. Unfortunately, that may happen here too.

Drew Lichtenberg: What’s interesting about this passage is that this is early in the play, after Lear has dissolved his kingdom. The rest of the play, the next four and a half acts, are kind of a wild ride in which we follow this aging King’s journey towards a very hard won self-knowledge.

The question for America is, what are we in store for over the next four months? Will there be a similarly arduous path to self-knowledge, or will there be a moment of clarity and wisdom? Will there be a happy ending to this story?

Eliot Cohen: I'm not sure there can be a happy ending. I mean, there can be really bad endings, which in this case would be if Biden stuck it out and got thoroughly destroyed by Trump and faced resentment and recrimination from people who have had a great deal of affection for him.

The less bad ending is that he walks off the stage, but he doesn’t get to walk off of his own volition — which is the way that any of us would want to go out. He won’t get to end things on his own terms the way Prospero ends things at Tempest. But this can happen with more or less dignity.

Jordan Schneider: I think I'm going to close with the one last time Washington song. And there are sort of glorious examples in American history of people not running for a second term. But because talking about self-knowledge – he was so unaware that he was willing to put himself in such a humiliating position on the debate stage. He had not priced in the possibility of his age being a problem at all. 

That makes me think you’re right, Eliot – Biden has closed himself off from the most heroic and honorable way out of this situation, because if he ends up leaving at this point, history is not going to forget the pushing that had to happen in order for it to happen.

Drew Lichtenberg: One thing that makes this agonizing is the fact that he prefaced his run in 2020 by calling himself a transitional candidate and by saying that he was going to step aside and make room for the next generation of Democratic leadership. 

Yet, here we are four years later and that has not happened. There's an untold drama that has unfolded within Joe Biden himself, where clearly either he was lying four years ago or he had a change of heart. 

Being in power is so appealing that it makes one want to stay in power – this is also a classic Shakespearean trope. How many tragedies are there from Richard III to Macbeth or Claudius reaching for the throne? And then you get a string of crimes or a string of mistakes that are all in pursuit of power. 

That’s another way of reading this kind of drama of Joe Biden – the corrupting nature of the throne itself. The hollow crown, maybe. You reach for this thing, and then you find it to be something that is not only hollow, but also hollows you out as a human being.

Kate Pitt: That also speaks to the question of what someone in power does in retirement. Lear says he’s going to crawl unburdened toward death. But what he really imagines doing once he gives up power is retaining all of his knights and other privileges of power without any of the responsibilities.

If one is persuaded to give up power, the question of what happens next is an important one. Most of Shakespeare’s kings die pretty soon after that happens.

Eliot Cohen: I remember a conversation I had with a very senior government official, where I was asking why someone even more senior was still clinging to office. He said, “Well, remember, for these guys, the next big job is death.”

The truth is, Lear says that he’s crawling his way to death. Prospero also says, at the end, every third thought will be of the grave. These guys know that they're coming to the end, but theyre not approaching it with the kind of tranquility that Cicero recommended in his wonderful little book for appreciating old age.

It’s different for people who've been powerful. There are examples of people who have managed it, but in some ways, the hunger never goes away. That's something I've seen quite a bit in Washington. People never fell out of love with power, even after they’d lost it. 

When Fritz Mondale famously lost the 1984 presidential election in a landslide, he went to visit Senator George McGovern, since McGovern had been similarly defeated in the 1972 election. Mondale asked, “Do you often think about that presidential campaign?” and McGovern apparently looked at him and just said, “Only every day.”

Drew Lichtenberg: You know, it was LBJ withdrawing his candidacy that led to McGovern getting the nomination, and just as you said, that resulted in a historic blowout. The other example was Truman not running, which led to Eisenhower handily defeating the Democrat who ran in Truman’s place. In the history of the Democratic Party, at least, when the incumbent doesn't run and there's a contested primary or convention, it does not auger well for the upcoming election. 

There's also a tragic nature to the decision Biden is faced with, because who knows what kind of chaos or severely damaging loss would happen if he abdicated. 

It's easy to see how you can succumb to a narrative of success, which, again, is a very Shakespearean theme – “I have to keep on doing this because too much will fail if I get out of power.”

Kate Pitt: That makes me think of a play that Drew's worked on quite recently of Macbeth, where he talks about being steeped in blood so far, and it's just easier to keep going rather than go back. At what point do you just keep going? And it also bears on that point of sort of what happens after power. There's a quote when Macbeth is thinking about the old age that he's not going to have, where he says: 

I have lived long enough: my way of life
Is fall'n into the sear, the yellow leaf;
And that which should accompany old age,
As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends,
I must not look to have; but, in their stead,
Curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honour, breath,
Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not.

Eliot Cohen: Ouch. 

Drew Lichtenberg: A speech by a lifelong politician looking at his encroaching obsolescence.

Eliot Cohen: Some politicians leave and are okay, but if you look at, say, LBJ, who made a decision not to run for another term — he declined very, very quickly and died shortly thereafter. If you've read Robert Caro’s biography of him, which is just magnificent, you can understand why. This was a guy whose whole life was spent obsessed with political power. He had it, and he chose to walk away from it, but it left him shattered.

Jordan Schneider: We have more examples in American history of very old, sick people running for that extra term, than we have examples of people walking away. With that, let’s talk about Richard II.

Kate Pitt: This is a very short passage, but it’s when Richard II has been deposed, he’s in prison, and he’s thinking about all of the choices that he made in his life and how his timing was a little bit off. He hears music being played offstage, and he says:

How sour sweet music is
When time is broke and no proportion kept.
So is it in the music of men’s lives.
And here have I the daintiness of ear
To check time broke in a disordered string;
But for the concord of my state and time
Had not an ear to hear my true time broke.
I wasted time, and now doth time waste me;

Drew Lichtenberg: What you hear in that cape is the sound of profligacy. Right. Richard II is not historically considered a strong king, and Shakespeare shows him as someone who is holding on to power. He’s sort of the opposite of King Lear – King Lear abdicates power and then expects to act like a king. Richard II doesn't act in ways befitting a king, but he holds onto power, which creates a huge political dilemma for everyone else in the kingdom, especially for Henry IV, who is charged with deposing him. 

We're in a situation now where the question is – who is going to step forth and be Henry IV? Who can marshal all the forces of the state to depose someone who is acting in ways that seemingly are unfit? 

With Biden, it’s a relative thing – is he unfit to be president? Is he unfit to be running? That’s ambiguous and we don’t have a lot of inside knowledge, which is itself a very unsettling state of affairs to be in. There are questions over his fitness, but that’s so much of the intrigue. 

Eliot Cohen: Richard really believes that he is backed by all these angels and he cannot be deposed. 

King Richard: 

Not all the water in the rough rude sea
Can wash the balm off from an anointed king.
The breath of worldly men cannot depose
The deputy elected by the Lord.
For every man that Bolingbroke hath pressed
To lift shrewd steel against our golden crown,
God for His Richard hath in heavenly pay
A glorious angel. Then, if angels fight,
Weak men must fall, for heaven still guards the right.

Eliot Cohen: I mean, the feeble word that we use these days is entitlement. But there's something much deeper than that. Biden probably doesn’t think that angels are protecting him, but I think he thinks that the legitimacy of his position is so strong, so overwhelming, that nobody can possibly question it. 

Like Richard II, Biden’s sense of reality, I would argue, is pretty severely impaired. For example, he’s said that the polls indicate he and Trump are neck-and-neck. The polls aren’t saying that. But he’s convinced himself that that’s the case. 

But above all, the sense that he has this coming to him makes it even more tragic when the end comes.

Richard suddenly cracks when he realizes that the angels are not going to show up. That’s why part of me thinks that this crisis might end up getting resolved pretty suddenly. We may, in fact, be right in the middle of that at this moment.

Drew Lichtenberg: Here’s a historical fun fact about Richard II – there’s a scene in the play in which Richard is deposed by Henry Bolingbroke and the other lords of the realm. The play was published four times in quarto form during Shakespeare’s life, but that scene was considered so controversial that it was omitted from all four editions.

It’s only after Shakespeare’s death that we get the full deposition scene. That’s how controversial it was, specifically, to show all the lords of England deposing an anointed king. 

As Eliot mentioned, that may be a scene that is playing out right now, offstage, behind closed doors somewhere in the Capitol. It's a scene that will never be published, but we can imagine what it's like, and you can just go read Richard II if you want to get a sense of it.

Kate Pitt: Historically, that scene took place in Westminster Hall, which is still the entrance to the Houses of Parliament in England.

Source.

One of the last things Richard did as king was renovate that hall and put his badges and his actual angels carrying his coat of arms in the ceiling. Then the first thing they did in that space was depose him in it. When he’s being deposed, he can look up because his angels are there, but they’re not watching the scene he wants them to be watching.

An angel in Westminster Hall. Source.

King Richard:

Alack, why am I sent for to a king
Before I have shook off the regal thoughts
Wherewith I reigned? I hardly yet have learned
To insinuate, flatter, bow, and bend my knee.
Give sorrow leave awhile to tutor me
To this submission. Yet I well remember
The favors of these men. Were they not mine?
Did they not sometime cry “All hail” to me?
So Judas did to Christ, but He in twelve
Found truth in all but one; I, in twelve thousand, none.
God save the King! Will no man say “amen”?
Am I both priest and clerk? Well, then, amen.
God save the King, although I be not he,
And yet amen, if heaven do think him me.
To do what service am I sent for hither?

The Duke of York:

To do that office of thine own goodwill
Which tired majesty did make thee offer:
The resignation of thy state and crown
To Henry Bolingbroke.

King Richard:

Give me the crown.—Here, cousin, seize the crown.
Here, cousin.
On this side my hand, on that side thine.
Now is this golden crown like a deep well
That owes two buckets, filling one another,
The emptier ever dancing in the air,
The other down, unseen, and full of water.
That bucket down and full of tears am I,
Drinking my griefs, whilst you mount up on high.

Henry Bolingbroke:

I thought you had been willing to resign.

King Richard:

My crown I am, but still my griefs are mine.
You may my glories and my state depose
But not my griefs; still am I king of those.

Henry Bolingbroke:

Part of your cares you give me with your crown.

King Richard:

Your cares set up do not pluck my cares down.
My care is loss of care, by old care done;
Your care is gain of care, by new care won.
The cares I give I have, though given away.
They ’tend the crown, yet still with me they stay.

Henry Bolingbroke:

Are you contented to resign the crown?

King Richard:

Ay, no; no, ay; for I must nothing be.
Therefore no “no,” for I resign to thee.
Now, mark me how I will undo myself.
I give this heavy weight from off my head
And this unwieldy scepter from my hand,
The pride of kingly sway from out my heart.
With mine own tears I wash away my balm,
With mine own hands I give away my crown,
With mine own tongue deny my sacred state,
With mine own breath release all duteous oaths.
All pomp and majesty I do forswear.
My manors, rents, revenues I forgo;
My acts, decrees, and statutes I deny.
God pardon all oaths that are broke to me.
God keep all vows unbroke are made to thee.
Make me, that nothing have, with nothing grieved,
And thou with all pleased that hast all achieved.
Long mayst thou live in Richard’s seat to sit,
And soon lie Richard in an earthy pit.
God save King Henry, unkinged Richard says,
And send him many years of sunshine days.
What more remains?

Drew Lichtenberg: You hear a cluster of classic Shakespearean themes in this speech. The repetition of the word “nothing,” as in, “If I’m not king then I am nothing,” echoes a conversation between Cordelia and King Lear in the first scene. 

To paraphrase that exchange, Lear asks his daughter, “How much do you love me? What do you owe to me?” and she says, “Nothing. I don't owe you any of my love. I choose to love.” 

This is a theme Shakespeare comes back to again and again: What does power mean to a politician versus what does love mean to a human being? What is earthly status in comparison to the human connections that really make life worth living? 

Part of the tragedy of Richard’s character is that he's unable to imagine a useful life outside of being king. As soon as he gives the crown to Henry, he might as well be dead. He might as well be nothing.

Eliot Cohen: This absolutely applies to a lot of powerful people that I've known. They no longer know who they are outside of office. Now, in Biden’s case, family matters a lot to him, although his family has rocked by tragedy on numerous occasions. 

But it's not like these guys tend to have hobbies, they don't have other avocations. Their avocation is power. 

I can easily imagine a conversation inside the Democratic National Committe by one of Biden's advocates that sounds a lot like this speech by the Bishop of Carlisle, who is arguing that Richard should not be deposed: 

The Bishop of Carlisle:

And if you crown him, let me prophesy
The blood of English shall manure the ground
And future ages groan for this foul act,
Peace shall go sleep with Turks and infidels,
And in this seat of peace tumultuous wars
Shall kin with kin and kind with kind confound.
Disorder, horror, fear, and mutiny
Shall here inhabit, and this land be called
The field of Golgotha and dead men’s skulls.
O, if you raise this house against this house,
It will the woefullest division prove
That ever fell upon this cursèd earth!
Prevent it, resist it, let it not be so,
Lest child, child’s children, cry against you woe!

Eliot Cohen: You can imagine Ron Klain saying that, though maybe his words wouldn’t be quite as punchy. But he makes an important point – if we get rid of the legitimate king, we could end up tearing ourselves to pieces.

Even apart from Trump winning – when a legitimate leader gets overthrown in a putsch, people fear total implosion. 

The conservative party didn't go through anything quite as grim when Thatcher was deposed by the men in gray suits. But party implosion is not unprecedented, and people are probably right to be worried about it. 

However this ends, there will be a huge amount of recriminations within the Democratic Party.

Drew Lichtenberg: There's also a kind of Last Supper theme being woven throughout this speech – the field of Golgotha is where Jesus was crucified. Richard later compares them all to Judas.

But the imagery of civil war is so remarkable. Shakespeare was in the middle of writing a series of plays that culminated in bloody civil wars, so his audience hearing this play would have seen this speech as a kind of prophecy. 

I don't want to be hyperbolic, but I'm a little bit afraid of violence in the streets. I remember what it was like on January 6, 2021, and in the months leading up to that day. There were helicopters and army vehicles in the streets of Washington DC. There was tear gas being used against citizen protesters.

Hearing the speech awakens all of those feelings that I’m sure were present in the minds of Shakespeare's audience when they thought about Richard being deposed. It’s a terrible thing to contemplate.

Eliot Cohen:  Legitimacy is a very powerful thing. In a system of monarchy by descent, if you break the rules of succession then you pay a price for it. 

In our democratic system with elections and primaries – there's no question that Biden is the legitimate nominee. It’s just that it would be an utter disaster for the Democratic Party — not to mention the rest of us — if he went through with it. I don’t know any analyst who expects an outcome other than a decisive victory for Donald Trump. 

Kate Pitt: Examining this scene makes it clear that it’s really important to choose our language carefully when people step off the stage. This is known as the deposition scene, but it’s supposed to be a resignation scene. 

Richard knows exactly what he's there to do, and yet he essentially asks York, “Why am I here?” York answers, “The resignation of thy state and crown to Henry Bolingbroke,” and the next thing Richard says is, “Here, cousin, seize the crown.” 

He makes it very clear that he thinks of it as a seizing, not a resignation. He's not stepping off the stage. He wants everyone to know he's being pushed.

Eliot Cohen: That’s a wonderful point. I was just thinking about Nancy Pelosi’s remarks on television where she said, “Well, the president really needs to make a decision.” Because the president already decided that he's running! What Pelosi is really doing is saying, “No, we’d like you to make a different decision.”

But she is softening the blow as much as she possibly can by calling it a decision. As you put it, she’s saying “This is a resignation, it’s not a deposition.”

But Joe Biden will unquestionably see this as a deposition, and there will be long-term consequences within the Democratic Party. 

Drew Lichtenberg: One of the fascinating structural things about the play Richard II, is the way that Shakespeare controls sympathy for these two kings. 

Richard has spent the first half of the play acting totally unsympathetic. He’s raiding the taxes of the people in order to fight these terrible overseas wars. He’s surrounded by corrupt cronies who use their positions to enrich themselves. But as soon as he's deposed, he starts acting and sounding a lot like a king. All of a sudden, everyone starts saying, “Hold on, this is wrong. This is a terrible thing we are doing.” Eventually, he is murdered in the Tower of London in the final act. 

Similarly, King Lear begins the play acting unsympathetically. He’s angry, he’s irrational, and he goes to Goneril’s house with all of his knights and trashes the place.

But then he’s cast out onto the heath, and we realize this is an aging man who is losing his mental faculties. There’s something about the stripping away of kingliness and the revelation of the human being underneath that fascinated Shakespeare. 

If Biden is deposed or resigns or the crown is seized by these Democratic Party figures, I wonder if people will start to sympathize with him. Will the public see  Joe Biden as a frail human being who is being victimized? 

That will also be part of the tragedy of this story – the sympathy he garners in stepping down will then be held against his successor.

Eliot Cohen: One aspect of Shakespeare that I love is he never lets the audience off the hook. Whether it’s Lear or Richard, at the beginning of the play you feel, “Yeah this guy really has it coming to him.” But by the end of the play, you do have this sympathy and you think to yourself, maybe I was too harsh. But at the same time, you don’t feel good about this. You feel a little guilty for being sympathizing and being entertained by this monster. 

If this does happen, and Biden is either deposed or resigned – I will not be surprised in the slightest if he goes into a very sudden decline and possibly even passes.  Apparently his father passed away pretty shortly after he stopped working. I can imagine this may be why Jill Biden is not particularly keen to see him quit. 

But after this kind of blow, it would not be surprising if there were a very rapid decline.

King Richard:

For God’s sake let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings:  
How some have been depos’d, some slain in war,  
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed,  
Some poisoned by their wives, some sleeping kill’d,  
All murthered—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 fear’d, and kill with looks;
Infusing him with self and vain conceit  
As if this flesh which walls about our life
Were brass impregnable; and, humour’d thus
Comes at the last, and with a little pin
Bores thorough his castle wall, and farewell king!

Drew Lichtenberg:  It is not just Richard's vision of his own death and obsolescence, but also his realization of the hollowness of the pursuit of power – the emptiness of the human being after power is taken away from them.

It’s this moment in the play where Richard II is almost cosmic in his consciousness. He’s completely transcended the mortal planet. He just sees the whole cycle of power and deposition and death as a kind of eternal play within a play. 

Kate Pitt: Richard became king when he was a boy. He has only known kingship as joy and frolicking with his courtiers. But when he takes off the crown that had been sitting on his head for years, he realizes that death has been inside him the whole time. 

After he’s been deposed, he holds up a mirror and sort of looks at himself without his crown. He looks exactly the same, but he's confused by that. Even though he's no longer anointed, his face remains the same – and that's so heartbreakingly baffling to him. 

When the brains are out, the man should die and there the end. Things should be what they look like, and yet they're not. Power changes people.

Drew Lichtenberg: One of Biden’s refrains is, “When I get knocked down, I get back up. I keep fighting.” But if there's no more fighting to participate in, then what is the reason for getting back up? He's almost defined his very existence in terms of the political cycle.

Kate Pitt: Exactly. Who's going to be the fool who says, “See better?”

Eliot Cohen: Richard gives a speech in act five, scene five. He’s in prison and he knows he’s going to be killed. And he says, “I have been studying how I may compare / This prison where I live unto the world,”

 I mean, he's kind of going crazy. But then he says: 

Thus play I in one person many people,
And none contented. Sometimes am I king
Then treasons make me wish myself a beggar,
And so I am; then crushing penury
Persuades me I was better when a king.
Then am I kinged again, and by and by
Think that I am unkinged by Bolingbroke,
And straight am nothing. But whate’er I be,
Nor I nor any man that but man is
With nothing shall be pleased till he be eased
With being nothing. 

There will be a cauldron of emotions if this happens to Biden. There will be a sense of humiliation, which is very painful to think about for a very proud guy who has surmounted so much. 

But the only thing I would say is, and I think Shakespeare is aware of this as well – you don't let somebody be king out of sympathy.

Drew Lichtenberg: There's no shame in stepping down. Joe Biden, you've had a wonderful career. You've had a remarkable career. Your legacy is secure, that you don't need to do more. You've done a lot. You've exceeded anybody's wildest expectations for what your political career could be. 

Richard II is a self-pitying, vain, pompous character – very good at turning a phrase –  but he's an irresponsible guy. Joe Biden, you don't want to be compared to Richard II. 

This play is a portrait by Shakespeare of somebody who is born into power and privilege and is unable to fathom their life without that power and privilege. This is the problem with kings, and we have a democratic system so that we can elect the best candidate to be president. We don't need to be replaying these Shakespearean dramas, and yet, here we are. Is it just human nature? Isn't there something so wise and penetrating about these plays that they still remain true in their observation of character so many years later?

Jordan Schneider: We've talked about the staffers who want to keep the king in charge, scared of civil war. Let's talk about some staffers who are a little more excited to put the knife in. 

Kate Pitt: This speech is from Richard II as he's being deposed. He's talking to Northumberland, who is one of the lords deposing him, and warning him of what may come in the future. 

King Richard:

Northumberland, thou ladder wherewithal
The mounting Bolingbroke ascends my throne,
The time shall not be many hours of age
More than it is ere foul sin, gathering head,
Shall break into corruption. Thou shalt think,
Though he divide the realm and give thee half,
It is too little, helping him to all.
He shall think that thou, which knowest the way
To plant unrightful kings, wilt know again,
Being ne’er so little urged another way,
To pluck him headlong from the usurped throne.
The love of wicked men converts to fear,
That fear to hate, and hate turns one or both
To worthy danger and deservèd death.

Eliot Cohen: Beautiful. Boy, is that ever going to be true. 

The easiest choice will be Kamala Harris, who will be more or less a more legitimate heir than if there’s just a free-for-all to select the nominee.

It's one dimension of Shakespeare that maybe we don't talk about enough – he does have all these sort of secondary actors out there who are the manipulating and conniving, never get into the top position, but play a somewhat nefarious role – say, the tribunes and Coriolanus. There's a whole slew of aristocrats in Henry VI, all of whom are really problematic one way or another, and they're pursuing their own agendas, as happens in politics.

Drew Lichtenberg: Maybe the ultimate example of that is Falstaff in Henry IV – he thinks that his friendship with Prince Hal means that he's got it made as soon as he becomes king. 

Falstaff is a lot like Roger Clinton, Bill Clinton's younger brother. 

Or maybe he's like a Hunter Biden figure – somebody with a disreputable past but thinks they are protected because of their personal relationship with the Prince. 

Prince Hal has an extraordinary speech at the end of Henry IV, part two, where he does the un-Biden-ish thing of divesting himself of these relationships.

Prince Hal: 
I know you all, and will awhile uphold
The unyoked humor of your idleness.
Yet herein will I imitate the sun,
Who doth permit the base contagious clouds
To smother up his beauty from the world,
That, when he please again to be himself,
Being wanted, he may be more wondered at
By breaking through the foul and ugly mists
Of vapors that did seem to strangle him.
If all the year were playing holidays,
To sport would be as tedious as to work,
But when they seldom come, they wished-for come
And nothing pleaseth but rare accidents.
So when this loose behavior I throw off
And pay the debt I never promisèd,
By how much better than my word I am,
By so much shall I falsify men’s hopes;
And, like bright metal on a sullen ground,
My reformation, glitt’ring o’er my fault,
Shall show more goodly and attract more eyes
Than that which hath no foil to set it off.
I’ll so offend to make offense a skill,
Redeeming time when men think least I will.

Drew Lichtenberg: Right. So Richard II says, I've wasted time and time will waste me. Here we get the opposite – “I will redeem time by doing the ruthless thing that all politicians should do, which is break their word, go back on their promises to their friends, and do the right thing for the state.”

Eliot writes about this in his book – Shakespeare shows us good politicians like Malcolm and Macbeth, like Fortinbras in Hamlet, like Octavian and Antony and Cleopatra. They tend to be men without a lot of friends. They tend to be cold, machiavellian, ruthless, and even deceptive when they need to be. That’s because you need to make a lot of promises in order to become a leader, and then decide on the right course of action later. 

This is Shakespeare writing about a good politician who is not beholden to sentiment or to personal relationships when they are in a position of power.

Eliot Cohen: Of course, Joe Biden is in that way very different. Although he can be difficult to work for – he reportedly throws tantrums and yells at people and so on – but he's also tremendously loyal to the people around him. He does not fire people, by and large.  He has kept a number of people close to him, including Hunter, which is a big mistake.

You're right, Hal is utterly ruthless. The most chilling line is for me is the moment when Falstaff shows up looking for a job. Henry just looks at him and says, I know thee not, old man.

It's just ice-cold. Biden is a hot politician. He's not a cold politician. He's someone who thrives on human contact and chumming around with people. That’s part of the tragedy. 

The people who succeed in climbing their way to the top are those like Bolingbroke or Henry. By contrast, people who are tied up with a lot of meaningful human relationships, alas, often don’t do so well.

Jill and Lady Macbeth?

Drew Lichtenberg: Macbeth is a play about two brilliant people who are married to one another, who together do something more monstrous than either one of them individually is capable of. Macbeth is a killing machine, but he has compunction about killing. Lady Macbeth is not herself a great warrior, but she has a desire for power and she can see the present in the instant as soon as she gets letters from him. 

You have to wonder, is there something Macbeth-like going on between Joe and Jill Biden? Both of them are, by most accounts really good, decent people who individually are more than capable and often do do the right thing, but are in this kind of dynamic where the two of them together are making a tremendous mistake. 

Eliot Cohen: It's clear that Jill and Joe Biden are deeply in love and a great match. Jill Biden is not nearly as sinister as Lady Macbeth, but her overwhelming loyalty to her husband has to mean making him succeed in worldly terms. That dynamic is completely different than the kind of marriage that I've had for 47 years. The best thing about my wife is that she isn’t afraid to say, “You're really being an idiot. You need to stop that.” 

That was closer to the dynamic between Winston Churchill and Clementine Churchill – one of the things that made her such a formidable spouse was her ability to look her husband squarely in the eye and rebuke him in order to steer him away from things. 

Whereas Lady Macbeth is enabling her husband. She's not reinforcing his best instincts, she’s reinforcing his worst ones. 

Alas, I think that's part of what's going on here too. By all accounts, Jill isn’t the one saying, “You know what? Maybe it is time to hang it up.”

Ian McKellen and Judy Dench did this scene!!

Macbeth:

How now, what news?

Lady Macbeth:

He has almost supped. Why have you left the
chamber?

Macbeth:

Hath he asked for me?

Lady Macbeth:

Know you not he has?

Macbeth:

We will proceed no further in this business.
He hath honored me of late, and I have bought
Golden opinions from all sorts of people,
Which would be worn now in their newest gloss,
Not cast aside so soon.

Lady Macbeth:

Was the hope drunk
Wherein you dressed yourself? Hath it slept since?
And wakes it now, to look so green and pale
At what it did so freely? From this time
Such I account thy love. Art thou afeard
To be the same in thine own act and valor
As thou art in desire? Wouldst thou have that
Which thou esteem’st the ornament of life
And live a coward in thine own esteem,
Letting “I dare not” wait upon “I would,”
Like the poor cat i’ th’ adage?

Macbeth:

Prithee, peace.
I dare do all that may become a man.
Who dares ⌜do⌝ more is none.

Lady Macbeth:

What beast was ’t, then,
That made you break this enterprise to me?
When you durst do it, then you were a man;
And to be more than what you were, you would
Be so much more the man. Nor time nor place
Did then adhere, and yet you would make both.
They have made themselves, and that their fitness
now
Does unmake you. I have given suck, and know
How tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me.
I would, while it was smiling in my face,
Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums
And dashed the brains out, had I so sworn as you
Have done to this.

Macbeth:

If we should fail—

Lady Macbeth:

We fail?
But screw your courage to the sticking place
And we’ll not fail. 

Eliot Cohen: Can I just warn the three of you about something? So, about a year ago, I wrote an article in the Atlantic entitled, “Step Aside, Joe Biden.” I got a tremendous outpouring of hate in response. Really, it was stunning.

So I just… we're all on the record here, kind of comparing Jill Biden to Lady Macbeth. I don’t know if there's a podcast participant protection program out there, Jordan, but if there is, I'd appreciate it if you let us know about it.

Jordan Schneider: Eliot, no one listens to the show anyway. Don’t worry about it. 

Drew Lichtenberg: I should also say that there's a long-standing criticism of associating Lady Macbeth with political figures like Hillary Clinton, for example. It is almost a cliche at this point, and it's considered a misogynistic cliche. 

But my understanding of the play is, again, it’s about two really charismatic, brilliant, likable people who together do something terrible. There is no Lady Macbeth without Macbeth, and vice versa — they’re equally culpable. But yes, I’m comparing her to Lady Macbeth in a specific context. I’m not saying she is the dragon lady or the iron will behind the throne or whatever. These various ideas that have clustered around Lady Macbeth don’t really apply to the character if you read the play closely.

Eliot Cohen: Of course, you’re absolutely right. But I think the positive side, I mean, this is clearly an exceptionally close marriage. They’ve been through tremendous sorrows and hardships together, and it’s a deep love match. That makes it more tragic, frankly, if she really is playing an important role in persuading him not to step down.

Drew Lichtenberg:  The last lines of that speech – we will not fail – communicate this incredibly seductive idea that, “You and me together can do anything.” 

But that notion that having a partner who stands by you makes you capable of anything is just not true. It's what couples tell themselves as a way of avoiding reality, and that's borne out in many, many unhappy marriages. 

Romeo and Juliet have a plan. Antony and Cleopatra have a plan. Claudius and Gertrude have a plan. But it almost never works out for these couples. 

Mother Goose, 1791. Source.

Kate Pitt: Macbeth really goes off the rails when he starts parting from her. 

She says, “What's to be done?” and he replies with the unbelievably condescending, “Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck.” Which always makes me want to sock him. He’s saying, “Don't worry your pretty little head about it. I have plans. They're terrible plans.”

In contrast, the Bidens seem very united. 

Drew Lichtenberg: Well, anyone who saw our production of Macbeth, with Indira Varma playing Lady Macbeth, would agree that she's far from being a gothic dragon lady in popular received opinion. She's a vivacious socialite host, chatty, and personable. She has all of these different and complex colors. 

Ralph Fiennes and Indira Varma in Macbeth. Photo by Marc Brenner

There is an intimate complexity to their relationship. But they’re essentially entering a mutual delusion pact with one another.

Eliot Cohen: I think the role of delusion is quite important, including Macbeth’s self-induced delusions about his invulnerability, right down to the very end when Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane

Drew Lichtenberg: Reality will arrive sooner or later. The question is, what is the reality that is coming for Joe Biden? Will he accept that reality? That remains to be seen.

Eliot Cohen: I have this sneaking sympathy for Henry IV, who most people just think was kind of a curmudgeonly character. He is somebody thoroughly grounded in reality. He has a great line, “If these be necessities, let us meet them like necessities.” 

That seems to me to be one of the great political gifts. If you have that, the ability to say, “Okay, this is what it is and I've got to act accordingly. I may not have a whole lot of choice. That is why they are called necessities, after all. But I'm going to confront it head-on.”

That seems to me to be the most tragic part of this, that there are necessities, there are realities, and you have somebody who's had a magnificent career struggling to dodge them.

Drew Lichtenberg: He dies in the Jerusalem room, called as such because Henry IV dreamed of leading a crusade to Jerusalem. But that room is as close as he got to Jerusalem. 

Henry IV is not considered a great king historically, but he was able to accept that at the end of the day. His philosophy is – well, it's a mixed bag being alive. You can't do everything the right way. Maybe that's because he forcefully deposed a king. He knows what it means to seize power. He knows what power can do to somebody. 

There’s a lesson to be learned from Henry IV. He was not the exemplar. He’s not even the main character in the plays that are named after him – and yet he is such a deeply admirable figure because he accepts his own limitations as a king and as a person.

Eliot Cohen: You know, his great blind spot is he doesn't understand that his son Hal will be just as good of a king, if not better. This is also a very common phenomenon where CEOs, deans, provosts, and politicians alike think, “Only I can do it, I'm completely indispensable. My designated successor is just not up to the job.” 

That is Henry’s great weak point. He can’t see that the next generation coming to power may be just as competent or actually more competent than he was. He thinks he’s got a troubled kingdom and it needs a strong hand, but his heir is not the one who’s going to be able to manage it.

Drew Lichtenberg: There are also a few artistic directors who have remained artistic directors at theaters into their 70s and 80s. There are a lot of stories that have been written about the fact that there was a whole generation of artistic directors who didn't think that they didn't cultivate any successors. That's also true if you look at most of the New York, Broadway, and off-Broadway theaters. This gerontocracy is not just a story of politics, but it's the story of many industries, including the arts.

Casting Obama and Pelosi

Jordan Schneider: Who’s Obama in this arc? Is he Cassius? Brutus?

Drew Lichtenberg: Well, Obama is very much, in my mind, a Fortinbras, or Malcolm, or an Octavian. He is the cold politician. Even though he has an extraordinary ability to communicate rhetorically, he also showed capacity to make ruthless decisions, including by choosing to elevate Hillary Clinton over Biden in 2016. 

He's sort of like the kingmaker in Henry VI – an older, experienced hand who’s behind the scenes pulling the strings in the Democratic Party in sort of the same way Bill Clinton used to. Though that's more Elliot’s field than mine.

Eliot Cohen: The Democratic politician who I think is actually pulling the strings is Nancy Pelosi. She’s an incredibly talented politician. If you read John Boehner’s memoir, he has enormous respect for her political skills and her absolute ruthlessness. I think she's the one who's moving things along, literally as we speak.

But I agree, Obama is a cold politician in the kind of Octavian line. Octavian also was very young.

Jordan Schneider: Who is Nancy Pelosi then? 

Drew Lichtenberg: Maybe she’s Volumnia in Coriolanus – a behind-the-scenes machiavellian.

Drew Lichtenberg: Volumnia, for those who don't know Coriolanus well, is kind of like the ultimate political stage mother. She's groomed her son from childhood to be a great warrior and then to be the tribune, which is basically the president of the Roman Republic. 

In the end, she has to betray her son and she is his undoing. She both builds up this great Macho figure, she makes his political career, and then kills him after he turns against Rome. So she's extremely formidable character and one of the few mothers in the entire Shakespeare canon and just a kind of unforgettable. She's the person that people think of as being Lady Macbeth. She is the real lady Macbeth in the Shakespeare canon.

Kate Pitt: Here’s the speech where Volumnia is convincing her son not to attack Rome:

Volumnia:

Say my request’s unjust
And spurn me back; but if it be not so,
Thou art not honest, and the gods will plague thee
That thou restrain’st from me the duty which
To a mother’s part belongs.—He turns away.—
Down, ladies! Let us shame him with our knees.
To his surname Coriolanus ’longs more pride
Than pity to our prayers. Down! An end.
They kneel.
This is the last. So, we will home to Rome
And die among our neighbors.—Nay, behold ’s.
This boy that cannot tell what he would have,
But kneels and holds up hands for fellowship,
Does reason our petition with more strength
Than thou hast to deny ’t.—Come, let us go.
They rise.
This fellow had a Volscian to his mother,
His wife is in Corioles, and his child
Like him by chance.—Yet give us our dispatch.
I am hushed until our city be afire,
And then I’ll speak a little.

Drew Lichtenberg: Then in response, her son says, “You have undone me, Mother.”

What Volumnia is doing is depriving Coriolanus, her own son, of his Roman-ness. She’s saying, “You’re not a citizen of Rome. You belong to this other city. Your wife is not a Roman, your children are not Romans, and I am not your mother. Your mother is not a Roman.”

If Nancy Pelosi is the Volumnia of our story today, it's a similar excommunication that’s happening to Joe Biden right now.

“You are nothing of Washington DC. You call yourself a creature of Capitol Hill, but you are the enemy, and we are going to strip you of all of these titles and even of your name if you don’t do what we say.”

Eliot Cohen: Pelosi isn’t yet at that point –  it’s more, “Well, we could do this the easy way or we could do it the hard way,” and she's hoping that he'll pick the easy way. But she does have the tenacity that would be required to see this through. 

I’m sure all the Democrats who know Biden have a great deal of human affection for him. But as I said at the very beginning of this, Jordan, this is a tragedy.