“The oldest hath borne most; we that are young. Shall never see so much nor live so long.” It might be easy to believe that we’re beyond these challenges four centuries later, but how many times have you heard that the future is going to be worse than the past these days?
William Shakespeare’s King Lear is perhaps the world’s most fully realized and ingenious fable about the limitations of power, or more precisely how power is maintained given our limited lifespans. The setup is incredibly simple. Lear, nearing the end of his life, is forced to decide what will become of his kingdom after he’s gone, asking who will inherit his power and how will he know those he names as his inheritors can be trusted with it. Lear has no sons and therefore no direct heirs, only three daughters Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia, and he fears that his death will prompt a civil war among the nobles vying for the throne. Whether because he’s already going mad or a more general human foolishness, he settles upon a colossally stupid plan to divide his realm among all three of his daughters based on how much they love him. As he describes it early in the play, “Know that we have divided In three our kingdom, and ’tis our fast intent To shake all cares and business from our age, Conferring them on younger strengths, while we Unburdened crawl toward death…We have this hour a constant will to publish Our daughters’ several dowers, that future strife May be prevented now.” He understands that abdicating the throne puts him in a perilous position for the remaining time he has in this world, noting, ‘Since now we will divest us both of rule, Interest of territory, cares of state – Which of you shall we say doth love us most, That we our largest bounty may extend Where nature doth with merit challenge.” Needless to say, this doesn’t go well. Lear’s two unreliable, scheming, and ultimately treacherous daughters protest their love profusely. Goneril claims, “I love you more than word can wield the matter, Dearer than eyesight, space, and liberty, Beyond what can be valued, rich or rare, No less than life, with grace, health, beauty, honor; As much as child e’er loved, or father found; A love that makes breath poor, and speech unable. Beyond all manner of so much I love you.” Cordelia, however, his one truly trustworthy and loving daughter refuses to participate in the charade of false flattery. She replies with “Nothing, my lord,” and when Lear prompts her again, insists “Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave My heart into my mouth. I love your Majesty According to my bond, no more nor less.” Lear is enraged by this response, comparing himself to a dragon in his wrath, and immediately banishes the person who loves him most, “Here I disclaim all my paternal care, Propinquity, and property of blood, And as a stranger to my heart and me Hold thee from this forever.”
Because the outcome of this fateful decision is easily predictable, makes it no less gut-wrenching, like watching an accident before it occurs, knowing something terrible must occur and then continuing through to the bloody end. Goneril and Regan proceed to strip Lear of everything after he abdicates his power to them, his retinue, his wealth, his pride, driving him further into madness until he’s described as a “ruined piece of nature! This great world shall so wear out to naught.” Cordelia is executed, and Lear dies in a madness bordering on oblivion, a shell of his former self, even refusing to retake the throne. Before his death, however, he finally comes to the realization that Cordelia was his only trustworthy daughter. “Howl, howl, howl! O, you are men of stones! Had I your tongues and eyes, I’d use them so That heaven’s vault should crack. She’s gone forever,” he exclaims upon learning of Cordelia’s death. “I know when one is dead and when one lives. She’s dead as earth.” Lear passes onward from this life shortly thereafter with a teasingly rational outburst, “And my poor fool is hanged. No, no, no life? Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life, And thou no breath at all? Thou ’lt come no more, Never, never, never, never, never. Pray you undo this button. Thank you, sir. Do you see this? Look on her, look, her lips, Look there, look there!” While it might be easy to dismiss Lear as a fool who made an obviously tragic mistake in judgment, the challenge he was grappling with and which Shakespeare so mesmerizingly illuminates is fundamental to the human condition, a plague upon society even before there were societies. Humans are mortal creatures with limited lifespans. Even the greatest, most benevolent, most beloved ruler cannot live forever. What happens after they’re gone to preserve peace and stability? Every culture around the world has grappled with how best to manage this transfer of power, how best to mitigate power vacuums that occur upon a leader’s death, and how best to ensure the security of civilization itself. In Shakespeare’s England, they relied on a complex system of inheritance beginning with the first born male for both the throne, the nobility, and general wealth held by the populace to solve this challenge. To a large extent, King Lear can be seen as an affirmation of this approach by illuminating what happens without it.
This might seem antiquated by the standards of a modern democracy, but it was, in fact, a marked improvement upon earlier systems. The Romans, for example, had no rules of direct inheritance to the eldest male or female, either in the Republic or the Empire. If anything, they disdained the idea that anyone should be given anything they didn’t earn, fostering intense competition among the ruling classes that frequently led to bloodshed in the streets or outright war. In 450 BC, the Roman Republic crafted “The Laws of the Twelve Tables” that codified the rights of citizens. Table V detailed the rules of inheritance. Property was divided equally among the “sui heredes,” the deceased’s own male heirs that were still acknowledged as children (disowning or casting out as common), or via a will, but none of the heirs had an absolute right to inherit as they did in Shakespeare’s world. Female heirs, meanwhile, “should remain under guardianship even when they have attained the age of majority, but exception is made for the Vestal Virgins.” In some ways, we might describe this system as more egalitarian although far less stable than England’s over a millennium later. Of the Twelve Tables themselves, the great orator Cicero claimed, it “seems to me, assuredly to surpass the libraries of all the philosophers, both in weight of authority, and in plenitude of utility” hundreds of years after they were written. Considering that Cicero himself was brutally assassinated after the power struggle that ensued upon the death of Julius Caesar, he might well have rethought the wisdom of the inheritance portion had he known the lack of a clear system would lead to his own demise. Shakespeare himself wrote of this period in The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, concluding that Roman power, whether in the Republic or the Empire, was ultimately in the hands of the mob and whatever politician was wily enough to control them, promising the proverbial bread and circuses. The flaws in this system, however, should have been obvious even before Caesar. Contrary to the legend that has built up around the Emperor after his death as the first autocrat to rule with absolute power, Rome was rocked by civil war and strife resulting from their supposedly democratic electoral process and lack of clear inheritance for the decades leading up to his ascension. The problem was simple: Any noble could make a name for himself by accumulating wealth and waging war, meaning every noble tried to do so at the expense of every other.
Perhaps none were more successful than Sulla, a noble whose father lost all their money, leaving him to grow up in a literal whorehouse a generation before Caesar. Sulla, however, was charming and ambitious beyond comparison. Upon inheriting the wealth of a mistress who happened to be one of Rome’s most prominent madams and his aunt at around thirty years of age, he decided to take his shot at fame, power, and even greater fortune. During the Jugurthine War between 107 and 106 BC, he was instrumental in defeating the Numidian king and negotiating his capture. Less than three years later, he was in modern-day France, subduing the Gallic tribes and rising in prominence enough to become a governor, then a consulship when his troubles began. At issue was who to send to lead yet another war, this time in modern day Greece and regions East. A political rival attempted to take this honor from Sulla, and as Robin Seager described in his biography, “Sulla was presented with a choice. He could acknowledge the law as valid. To do so would mean total humiliation at the hands of his opponents, the end of his political career, and perhaps even further danger to his life. Or he could attempt to reverse it and regain his command. He can hardly have been in any doubt. Like Caesar, he was an outsider in politics, totally self-centred in pursuit of his ambitions, always ready to break the rules of the political game to achieve his objective… If Sulla hesitated it can only have been because he was not sure how his army would react.” The army ultimately supported him, however, killing the messengers and promptly marching on Rome to take command back, then return to the war, where Sulla was utterly victorious, only to find that he’d been the victim of political machinations once again. While he was away for five years, the Senate moved “senatus consultum ultimum” against him (final decree of the law) and effectively attempted to banish him from Rome, even raising armies for that purpose. Sulla responded as he had the last time. He marched back to Rome with his armies, and fought against his foes in the Battle of Colline Gate, where he was trapped and cornered, but somehow managed to prevail. In the aftermath, he summoned the Senate to a slaughter of some three or four thousand captives, proclaimed himself dictator and executed all of his enemies, such that Plutarch described it, “Sulla now began to make blood flow, and he filled the city with deaths without number or limit.” “Sulla immediately proscribed 80 persons without communicating with any magistrate. As this caused a general murmur, he let one day pass, and then proscribed 220 more, and again on the third day as many. In an harangue to the people, he said, with reference to these measures, that he had proscribed all he could think of, and as to those who now escaped his memory, he would proscribe them at some future time.” Incredibly, he changed direction yet again after this bloodshed, implemented a series of reforms and then resigned his dictatorship believing he’d saved the Republic, giving up absolutely power to write his memoirs in peace, living with his friends from the whorehouse including drag queens and actors for the rest of this life, the only people he was said to be truly comfortable with.
The British have certainly had their share of civil wars and strife, but no one ever described the streets of London as literally flowing with blood or experiencing a purge with deaths without limit, suggesting that their more formal system of inheritance had certain advantages. Ironically, the modern democratic system is closer to the ancient Romans than the British, though it would rarely be described that way. We too have scorned the idea that power is directly inheritable through any system, whether British or otherwise, replacing it with a variety of different electoral processes, some of which are similar to the Roman Republic even beyond the existence of a Senate. Many at the time of our Founding expressed grave concerns that rule by the mob was truly workable or sustainable, and we were recreating the problems of the past. In fact, Nathaniel Gortham, the President of the Continental Congress, is believed to have written a letter to Prince Henry, the younger brother of Prussian King Frederick the Great to become King of the United States. His response was found a century later, declining the position, writing as paraphrased by New York Senator Rufus King (the last name rather ironic in this context), “the Americans had shown so much determination [against] their old King, that they [would] not readily submit to a new one.” None other than Alexander Hamilton, who would become a champion of the Constitution, noted the pros and cons of monarchy during the Convention itself, mentioning Cicero even. “British constitution best form. Aristotle—Cicero—Montesquieu—Neckar. Society naturally divides itself into two political divisions—the few and the many, who have distinct interests. If government in the hands of the few, they will tyrannize over the many. If (in) the hands of the many, they will tyrannize over the few. It ought to be in the hands of both; and they should be separated. This separation must be permanent. Representation alone will not do. Demagogues will generally prevail. And if separated, they will need a mutual check. This check is a monarch. Each principle ought to exist in full force, or it will not answer its end. The democracy must be derived immediately from the people. The aristocracy ought to be entirely separated; their power should be permanent, and they should have the caritas liberorum [charity of children]. They should be so circumstanced that they can have no interest in a change—as to have an effectual weight in the constitution. Their duration should be the earnest of wisdom and stability. ’Tis essential there should be a permanent will in a community.” Even after George Washington became our first President, the debates over the monarchy continued. His Vice President, John Adams, wanted to call him “your majesty” and his few detractors insisted he wanted to be a king in truth. Indeed, before he became President, some wanted him to be king. Colonel Lewis Nicola wrote a letter in 1782. After admitting the title had a negative connotation in America, he concluded, “But if all other things were once adjusted I believe strong argument might be produced for admitting the title of king, Which I conceive would be attended with some material advantages.”
There are, of course, significant differences between the Roman Republic (or Empire) and our modern democracy that George Washington and others Founded, replacing kings with Presidents elected by some form of representative voting, namely Constitutional governance and the separation of powers, but the fundamental issues addressed in King Lear remain, haunting us to this day. In a sense, the Civil War can be seen as a fight over who had power and why. Slavery was the fundamental issue, but war did not break out until an anti-slavery President was elected and the Southern states feared Abraham Lincoln would use the power transferred to him to end or at least greatly curtail the heinous institution. Even today, many fear that the time will come when the United States will not have a peaceful transfer of power, some say it already has come, and a few have predicted another Civil War. More benignly, we no longer inherit power, but politicians are obsessed with endorsements from former leaders and the media has created a mini-industry covering who will endorse who and why. Endorsement is not inheritance, but the fundamental idea is that the power one person has can be transferred to another, at least partially. King Lear ends with something of a eulogy. Albany, Goneril’s husband who ultimately comes to resist her worst urges, remarks that “Our present business Is general woe.” Edgar, the half brother of the villain Edmund, bemoans that this woe is permanent in some sense, believing they live in a fundamentally diminished world. “The weight of this sad time we must obey, Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say. The oldest hath borne most; we that are young. Shall never see so much nor live so long.” Thus, the failure to secure a successful transfer of power has doomed the kingdom for the conceivable future. It might be easy to believe that we’re beyond these challenges four centuries later, but how many times have you heard that the future is going to be worse than the past these days?
Confessions of a Conservative Atheist 