To help us understand our most pressing contemporary dilemmas, William Shakespeare has no equal.
While the aging and stubborn Elizabeth I clung to power tooth and nail, a brilliant playwright explored the social causes, psychological roots, and twisted effects of tyranny. Analyzing the psyche (and psychoses) of characters such as Richard III, Macbeth, Lear, Coriolanus and the societies they ruled, Stephen Greenblatt reveals the ways in which Shakespeare delves into the desire for absolute power and the catastrophic consequences that its exercise entails.

Deep-rooted institutions seem fragile, politics and its representatives succumb to chaos, economic misery feeds populist anger, the population accepts being lied to, partisan rancor prevails, the most shameless indecency prevails: aspects like these of a society in Crises fascinated Shakespeare and are present in some of his most memorable plays. With astonishing insight, he was able to show the childish psychology and insatiably narcissistic appetites of the demagogues—as well as the cynicism and opportunism of the various accomplices and hangers-on who surrounded them—and figured out how to curb them. For this and many other reasons, Shakespeare's work, as Stephen Greenblatt masterfully demonstrates in this book, continues to be essential today.