Tyrant: Shakespeare on Power by Stephen Greenblatt, (Bodley Head)

Tyrant: Shakespeare on Power by Stephen Greenblatt, review: What Shakespeare's plays can tell us about Trump

The founder of new historicism illuminates our present political situation by analysing the traits of Shakespearean tyrants – and their mobs




What would Shakespeare have made of Trump? It’s one of the impish and fascinating questions at the heart of this nimble and intriguing study of the Bard’s lurid gallery of vicious despots.

Greenblatt is the Harvard Shakespeare expert who co-founded new historicism, the lit-crit practice that seeks to place works in their historical context. The 45th president is not mentioned anywhere by name in Tyrant, but the analogies are clear.

Shakespeare, Greenblatt explains, had to speak of authoritarianism in code, lest he lose his head on charges of treason. The Elizabethan period was a “fragile” era politically, haunted by the shadow of Roman Catholic terrorism. Greenblatt’s strategies, though, are transparently forthright, perhaps to the point of being a little forced, but they are never less than illuminating.

Tyrant was borne out of a New York Times article Greenblatt wrote just before the 2016 US election; he confesses to having been moved to extend it into a book after the election result confirmed his “worst fears”.

The ogres Greenblatt focuses on – Macbeth, Richard III, Lear, Coriolanus and Leontes from A Winter’s Tale – unsurprisingly exhibit a checklist of the obvious Trumpian traits: narcissism, impulsiveness, indecency, incompetence. They peddle in lies and, in the case of Coriolanus, collusion with foreign powers.

These parallels, though, while playfully toothsome, are less striking than Greenblatt’s other preoccupations. These include the role of the masses in the tyrant’s rise, the opportunistic and self-deceiving “enablers” in his court (who are invariably swiftly dispensed with), and how for the despot there is “remarkably little satisfaction”, or serenity, once the throne is taken.

In a passage that could equally be applied to the Brexit vote, Greenblatt hones in on the complicity of the masses, those who “take vicarious pleasure in the release of pent-up aggression, in the black humour of it all, in the open speaking of the unspeakable”. The masses for a period share the tyrant’s “gleeful contempt” for the common good. “Something in us enjoys every minute of his horrible ascent to power,” Greenblatt argues.

The spectre of ex-Trump honcho Steve Bannon hovers over Greenblatt’s musings on the figure of the real-life populist demagogue Jack Cade, a character from Henry VI: part 2. Cade foments anarchy with the promise of destroying the elite. ““The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers,” one of his co-conspirators declaims, conjuring up Bannon’s alt-right vision of bringing the establishment “crashing down”. Cade sees himself as the “besom [broom)] that must sweep the court clean of ... filth”.

Shakespeare was, though, a wealthy member of the ruling class, Greenblatt asserts, a conservative with democratic leanings, with little taste for disorder. He expresses his ultimate faith in the elemental virtue of the citizenry over revolution. It’s a belief that chimes with the contentions of some key Trump analysts, not least ex-FBI director James Comey, who has argued that the most restorative way of toppling Trump is through the will of the people over the trauma of impeachment.

In Tyrant, Greenblatt demonstrates the enduring relevance of Shakespeare’s outlook as much as providing a commentary on the vices of Trumpism. Shakespeare’s voice rings down the ages, and, as with innumerable other human matters, we would do well to listen to it.

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf (Albatross Publishers), a review by Stephen Darori, The Bard Of Bat Yam, Poet Laureate Of Zion

Virginia Woolf Explores an English Country Home,To The Lighthouse" Is a Brilliantly Ambitious Analysis of Domestic Psychology

It was with "Mrs. Dalloway" that Virginia Woolf, achieved a novel of first-rate importance rather than of great promise and talent, and as a method in fiction, "Mrs. Dalloway" has begun already to make its influence keenly felt. Two novels of the present season seem to pay it the tribute of imitation. It is written all over Nathalie S. Colby's highly successful "Green Forest" and just a faint flavor of it creeps into Babette Deutsch's much less successful "In Such a Night." The method of "Mrs. Dalloway" is substantially retained by Mrs. Woolf in this new novel, "To the Lighthouse," but though one encounters again her strikingly individual mingling of inward though with outward action in which the "stream of consciousness" style is liberated from its usual chaos and by means of selection and a sense of order, made formally compact--one finds the method applied to somewhat different aims.

"Mrs. Dalloway," of course, is Clarissa Dalloway from cover to cover, and for that reason it has a magnificently concentrated clarity. It is Clarissa in relation to herself, her family, her friends, her servants, her milieu; it is her servants, her family, her friends, in relation to her "To the Lighthouse," on the other hand, is a book of interrelationships among people, and though there are major and minor characters, the major ones are not, as Clarissa Dalloway was, the alpha and omega of the story, but more truly the means for giving to the story its harmony and unity, its focal points. Those who reject "To the Lighthouse" as inferior to "Mrs. Dalloway" because it offers no one with half the memorable lucidity of Clarissa Dalloway must fail to perceive its larger and, artistically, more difficult aims. They must fail to notice the richer qualities of mind and imagination and emotion which Mrs. Woolf, perhaps not wanting them, omitted from "Mrs. Dalloway." They must fail to appreciate that as an author develops he will always break down the perfection he has achieved in an earlier stage of his writing in order to reach new objectives.

"To the Lighthouse" is a book in three parts, in three movements. All of it is laid at the Summer home of an English family named Ramsay in the Hebrides, the first portion occupying an afternoon and evening, the second portion constituting an interlude of ten years during which the house remains unoccupied, the third portion occupying a morning at the end of these ten years. The Ramsays are a middle-aged couple, when the book opens, with eight children, who have with them at their Summer place about half a dozen friends. Husband and wife, though very different, are in love with each other. Mrs. Ramsay, who though fifty is beautiful, has charm, intelligence, understanding; also she is a little anxious to have a hand in things, a little anxious to be liked, a little anxious to keep her illusions and have others keep theirs. Her children love her; they do not love their father--she works harder to hold their love. The best minds about her seemingly mistrust her a little, dislike her a little, for her charm is persuasive rather than compelling. She watches those about her without mingling too much; both because she chooses a vantage point--symbolized by the window--and because of her personality she becomes the dominant and focal figure of the group.

Ramsay is less easy to understand, possibly because he is given less attention. In many ways he is a more interesting as well as original character: brilliant no doubt, but introverted, lacking those immediate graces which win for his wife the greater love of their children, lacking warmth, too, and a sense of social compromise--rigid in his truthfulness, a man, a thinker, where his wife is a woman, a psychologist. He lacks sensitiveness, one feels, either that or his sensitiveness is a very deep and hidden one. He loves his wife, they have a fundamental understanding, yet he is not a "help" to her in their relationships with others.

And around them are their children and their friends, the fumbling Lily Briscoe, the one-sided and arrogant yet somehow pathetic Tansley; a true product of early environment: the serene Mr. Carmichael, somehow about the clash of personalities; the unimportant couple who become engaged. They are an assortment of lives, most of them moving in different directions, yet moving, at least intermittently, under the influence of Mrs. Ramsay, who, beneath the stress of their presence, cannot quite find the chance to live her own inner life.

Then ten years pass, Mrs. Ramsay and two of her children die, the house remains uninhabited, and finally some of those who were together ten years before come to the Summer house again. It is a different house without Mr. Ramsay, and to Lily Briscoe, at least, it must always compare itself with the house of ten years before, and Mrs. Ramsay's existence in it must go on in the spirit. And Mr. Ramsay and two of his children do what ten years before remained undone because of bad weather--they row across the bay to the lighthouse. Reaching it, they achieve a climax, the end of a period.

It is the final portion of the book which is most perplexing. It seems to sound in the minor what the long first portion sounded in the major, to persist as an ironical mood, to re-establish a scene with the sorry changes time has wrought, to reduce a symbolical achievement when it is finally made to the level of negation. The long opening portion seems to be carrying you ahead toward something which will be magnificently expressive, and then this final portion becomes obscure, a matter of arcs, of fractions, of uncoordinated notes. By comparison with the rest this final portion seems pale and weak. Perhaps there is a reason for this, perhaps Mrs. Woolf meant to show that with Mrs. Ramsay's death things fall apart, get beyond correlation. Mr. Ramsay is no longer interesting--can it be because he is no longer counterpoised against his wife? Life seems drifting, as the Ramsays drift over the bay in their boat, and all their physical vigor and all their reaching of the lighthouse at last conveys no significance.

The truth is that this final portion of the book strikes a minor note, not an intentional minor note which might still in the artistic sense be major, but a meaningless minor note which conveys the feeling that one has not quite arrived somewhere, that the story which opens brilliantly and carries on through a magnificent interlude ends with too little force and expressiveness.

At any rate the rest of the book has its excellencies. Like "Mrs. Dalloway" it is underlaid with Mrs. Woolf's ironic feeling toward life, though here character is not pitted against manners, but against other character. Once again Mrs. Woolf makes use of her remarkable method of characterization, a method not based on observation or personal experience, but purely synthetic, purely creational. Clarissa Dalloway is a marvelous synthesis, and it is just for that reason that "Mrs. Dalloway," which has been identified because of its modernity with the "Ulysses" school, differs from it in character fundamentals, for it is as objective as "Ulysses" is autobiographical and observational. There is nothing "photographic" about Mrs. Woolf's characters, here or in "Mrs. Dalloway." Neither Clarissa nor Mrs. Ramsay has anything autobiographical about her; both are complete creations and both, for all their charm and graces, must suffer a little beneath the searchlight of Mrs. Woolf's independently used mind and sense of irony.

In "To the Lighthouse" there is nobody who even approaches Clarissa Dalloway in completeness and memorability, but on a smaller and perhaps more persuasive scale Mrs. Ramsay achieves powerful reality. The other characters are not fully alive because they are not whole enough. Most of them are one-dimensional fragments that have been created with great insight but insufficient vitality. They have minds, moods, emotions--but they get all three through creative intellect. For passion Mrs. Woolf has no gift--her people never invade the field of elementary emotions: they are hardly animal at all.

It is, I think, in the superb interlude called "Time Passes" that Mrs. Woolf reaches the most impressive height of the book, and there one can find a new note in her work, something beyond the ironic sophistication and civilized human values of "Mrs. Dalloway." In this description of the unused house in the Hebrides, entered for ten years only by old and forlorn women caretakers and the wind and the sea air and the light of the lighthouse lamp, she has told the story of all life passing on, of change and destruction and solitude and waste--the story which more than a little embodies the plot action of the rest of the book, but above all the story which has for man the profoundest human values of all, though for ten years the house itself never received a human guest. The great beauty of these eighteen pages of prose carries in it an emotional and ironical undertone that is superior to anything else that the first-class technician, the expert stylist, the deft student of human life in Mrs. Woolf ever has done. Here in prose of extraordinary distinction in our time: here is poetry:

But what after all is one night? A short space, especially when the darkness dims so soon, and so soon a bird sings, a cock crows, or a faint green quickens, like a turning leaf, in the hollow of the wave. Night, however, succeeds to night. The Winter holds a pack of them in store and deals them equally, evenly, with indefatigable fingers. They lengthen; they darken. Some of them hold aloft clear planets, plates of brightness. * * *

"To the Lighthouse" has not the formal perfection, the cohesiveness, the intense vividness of characterization that belong to "Mrs. Dalloway." It has particles of failure in it. It is inferior to "Mrs. Dalloway" in the degree to which its aims are achieved; it is superior in the magnitude of the aims themselves. For in its portrayal of life that is less orderly, more complex and so much doomed to frustration, it strikes a more important note, and it gives us an interlude of vision that must stand at the head of all Virginia Woolf's work.

The Waves (Vintage Classics Woolf Series) by Virginia Woolf (Author) (Vintage classics)

Meditative, with a wavelike rhythm



Seven friends are together since nursery. Bernard, Jinny, Louis, Neville, Rhoda, Susan and Percival. Nursery is located in a house with a garden right by the sea. Just like Virginia’s childhood summer house in St Ives. The sound of the waves is tattooed on the skin of their memories. “Chained beast stumps on the beach. It stamps and stamps.”

Meditative, rhythmic. Paragraph after paragraph. Head gets a bit dizzy, but soon I fall in love with the wavelike rhythm. Poetic novel “The Waves” by Virginia Woolf, the most experimental of her works, is woven entirely of soliloquies spoken by the book’s six characters.

Also important is Percival, the seventh character, though readers never hear him speak in his own voice. Everyone loves Percival. Unfortunately he falls from a horse and dies when young, just like Virginia’s brother Thoby, who contracted typhoid at the age of 26 while on holiday in Greece, and died shortly after. Percival remains as a mysterious hero, who is mentioned often but never says a word in this book. Mysterious and deeply loved.

Nursery, school, youth, family, job, aging. They all meet again and again. You hear how their thoughts change, but they themselves don’t.

Rhoda is afraid of everything. She finds her soothing escape during nights when dreaming the dreams. When awake, she has to touch something solid to not to dissolve into ungraspable reality. Rhoda thinks, she has no face.

Jinny is like a dancing flame, attractive, teasing, living in reality and celebrating it. Party diva, a playful flow. “Come,” is her golden key.

Susan has green eyes and she can take a deep breath only when in nature. Far away from school, far away from London, because in the city she suffocates and suffers. When grown-up, she has children, rough hands and a healthy attitude.

Louis senses all the lives, his soul has ever lived. He hears women singing by the Nile, although that was thousands of years ago. That is why he leads his present life as a business. Appointments in his daily planner anchors him to here and now. To clear away the prehistoric density, he becomes a successful businessman. Although he still is an attic dweller with an old and dusty soul.

Bernard is a story teller. He ignites when in people. Phrases fly like bubbles from his mouth, like rings of smoke. Everything is a story. Until his hair become gray and he becomes tired from all that and longs “for some little language such as lovers use, broken words, inarticulate words, like the shuffling of feet on the pavement.”

Neville wonders, how scarce is our knowledge about each other. How infinite we are in ourselves, and how finite and one-sided we become in the eyes of others. He grasps the moment, when the infinite Neville, who approaches the table at a restaurant, becomes Neville the friend of these five other people.

Virginia Woolf has X-ray eyes. She inflates readers with the kaleidoscope of life with such a beautiful intensity that you cry and laugh at the same time. The book is her magic funnel.

Life is not a solid ground, and Virginia Woolf teaches us how to walk on water.

Islamic State: The Digital Caliphate. Abdel Bari Atwan. Saqi Books. 2015.

Islamic State: The Digital Caliphate provides detailed answers to a number of pressing questions: What exactly is ISIS? Where did it come from? Who is behind it? How does it function? What are the reasons for its success? This is a welcome rich description and analysis and finds Abdel Bari Atwan does an admirable job of explaining the ways Islamic State exploits 21st century technology and cultural trends to attract, groom and direct new members across the globe.



In the West, at least, Islamic State has become synonymous with cruelty and barbarity. Horrifying tales of beheadings, crucifixions, live burials, sexual slavery and other acts of extreme violence dominate the popular media’s coverage of the group.

But while frequent reminders of the inhumanity of the conflict in Syria and Iraq help to highlight the burgeoning humanitarian crisis in the region — many historic Christian and Yazidi communities are now facing total annihilation — focusing public discourse too narrowly on the theatrical horrors of ISIS ultimately risks caricaturing the group. This is an outcome that should be strenuously avoided, given that it will likely hinder efforts to formulate effective policy responses to the problem.

Abdel Bari Atwan’s new book is very welcome in this respect, as it leads us away from the gory headlines towards a more holistic understanding of Islamic State. In engaging and jargon-free prose, Islamic State: The Digital Caliphate provides detailed answers to a number of pressing questions about this swiftly metastasising menace: What exactly is ISIS? Where did it come from? Who is behind it? How does it function? What are the reasons for its success?

Much of Atwan’s analysis focuses on the role that digital technology has played in the rise of Islamic State, and this is one of the most fascinating aspects of his book. From their prolific use of dark net, hacking and international cyber-attacks to the development of jihadist computer games and Islamist match-making apps, ISIS members have proven themselves to be, in Atwan’s words, “masters of the digital universe.”

Atwan does an admirable job of explaining the seeming paradox by which Islamic State exploits 21st century technology and cultural trends in pursuit of a society grounded in the mores of the Middle Ages. This is especially true of his account of Islamic State’s sophisticated propaganda wing, which not only keeps existing followers in the Middle East ‘on message’ but enables ISIS to attract, groom and direct new members across the globe. The group has been frighteningly successful in this regard; some 30,000 foreigners have already joined its ranks and, Atwan notes, “hundreds of new recruits turn up every day across the territories under Islamic State control.”

Islamic State group in Anbar, Iraq (Wikipedia Public Domain)

This points to another strength of the book, namely, its rich description of the manner in which ISIS territories are actually governed. Drawing on sources within Islamic State itself, Atwan provides the reader with vivid insights into the institutional structures of the fledgling caliphate and the means by which its leaders intend to build and consolidate state capacity. Uniformed police, efficient sharia courts, minted currency, health services, basic infrastructure, education (except in subjects such as evolutionary biology and philosophy) — ISIS is providing all of these, and doing so has helped it to win significant support from populations long exposed to war, corruption and chaos. The fact that Islamic State deliberately fosters such disorder, however, has been buried under the piles of cash generated by its capture and exploitation of key oilfields and refineries.

The only real weaknesses of Islamic State: The Digital Caliphate are the bias and hyperbole its author tends to display when discussing US foreign policy, Israel, or the West’s treatment of its Muslim citizens. When Atwan tosses about the term “conspiracy” in the context of falling oil prices, for example, or talks of multinational companies “prowling around” Iraq in search of “tantalising prey,” it becomes difficult to take his argument completely seriously.

Similarly, although the experience of Islamophobia very likely contributed to the decision of some Muslims to emigrate to Islamic State, Atwan’s evidence for this claim suggests that many such emigrants are as attracted to ISIS by its belligerence as by its status as a ‘safe haven’ from intolerance. He quotes one young Canadian preparing herself for hijra (migration), for example, who complained that “they call this a free country when they want us to walk, talk, do everything a way that pleases them,” before tweeting that she looked forward to receiving “an AK-47, a Steyr AUG and … tri dagger blade knife” on her arrival in Islamic State. ‘Jihadi-cool,’ it seems, has as much to do with the internalisation of gang subcultures and their fetishisation of weapons and violence as it does with Muslims’ perceptions of religious prejudice against them.

Policy-makers and the general public alike should be very concerned about Islamic State’s rapidly growing clout. The first step in dealing with this problem, however, is to build an accurate understanding of it. Reading Atwan’s book certainly helps to achieve this goal; its small flaws aside, Islamic State: The Digital Caliphate serves as a trustworthy and very accessible guide to one of the most frightening political developments of our times.

Becoming Israeli: The Hysterical, Inspiring and Challenging Sides of Making Aliyah Paperback – May 29, 2017 by Akiva Gersh (Rimonim Press )

This is a collection of short essays about various aspects of immigrating to Israel as an English-speaker. It's really very well done. Beyond the obvious audience of people planning or considering "making aliyah" — "going up" or moving to Israel — these stories at best have a lot of wisdom and thoughtful reflection in them about life in general: "the journey, not the destination." Of Israel, one essay says, "we are a work in progress." Isn't everything, and every place, in some sense? Several of the essays mention the idea that if the immigrants don't completely fit in as Israelis, or their Hebrew isn't perfect, their children will surpass them. This idea of hoping your children achieve what you have not, or exceed your own accomplishments, is also something that is certainly not limited to immigrants to Israel.

My favorite essay of the many excellent ones was by Dov Lipman, an immigrant who became a member of Israel's parliament. He writes, "We are all blessed to live in the best of times, in which nothing is impossible, and the land of Israel is ours and available for all Jews to settle raise their families, and contribute to its future and the future of the Jewish people." Perhaps some things are indeed impossible. But Lipman's phrase nicely captures the sense of boundless possibility that has inspired so many brave immigrants to begin new lives in Israel and for that matter in America, too.

About the author
Akiva Gersh first visited Israel in 1998 at the age of 22. Within days, he knew that he wanted to make Israel his future home; a dream he fulfilled when he made aliyah with his wife Tamar in 2004. Since 2007, he has been teaching Jewish History and Modern Israel at the Alexander Muss High School in Israel, where he guides visiting high school students through the story of the Jewish people, mainly through tiyulim (excursions) to historical, cultural, religious, and ecological sites around the country. He is also a contributing blogger at the Times of Israel as well as a musician. In 2010, Akiva created Holy Land Spirit, an uplifting and spiritual musical experience for Christian groups visiting Israel that fosters interfaith celebration, understanding, and dialogue. Akiva holds a BA in Religious Studies from Brown University and an MA in Jewish Education from Yeshiva University. He and his wife live in Pardes Hanna with their four children.

The Secret Diary of a Jewish Housewife: Move to the Golden City Paperback – May 15, 2017 by Rivka Levy (Matronita Press )

Rivka Levy's book gave me a glimpse into another life I otherwise would not get. Hers are the musings of an Orthodox Jewish woman, recorded over the course of the year 2015 as she grapples with life in Jerusalem, mothers two adolescent daughters, seeks spiritual fulfillment, and discusses religious quandaries with her lawyer/yeshiva student husband. Her British background brings a certain worldliness to her struggles with everyday life in Israel. She calls herself "frum," the Yiddish term for Orthodox Jews, but she's very conscious of the fact that she doesn't fit the regular mold of a "frum" Jewish woman. I learned a lot from her as that world is pretty alien to me--there was a plethora of Yiddish and Hebrew terms and religious concepts that meant a lot to her but not to me. I had to investigate! And I love it when an author makes me look stuff up and expands my horizons. And so I learned a bit about the Chasidic world she somewhat moves in--up until reading her book, for example, I had never heard about Jews making pilgrimages to Uman in the Ukraine. Rivka Levy's Secret Diary of a Jewish Housewife was so engaging, so personal and so upfront that I kept on reading and wished her book would go on and on. Thankfully, Rivka is an avid blogger, so I've been able to read on.

Little Women (Puffin in Bloom) Hardcover – August 28, 2014 by Louisa May Alcott (Puffin Books)

A very early reader, I received a copy of "Little Women" at age 7. From the very first time I read this lovely book, I fancied myself as Jo, and so thoroughly identified with her that even through all the succeeding decades and thousands of other books read, this book will remain one of my top five favourite books because of her. I read and reread this book sitting in a big apple tree in my parent's back yard, laying on the grass on a summer's day, and under the sheets with a flashlight I now suspect my parents knew I had stashed under my bed.

In an age of easily digested and mass-produced books with weak characters and plot, "Little Women" is a stand-out that resists the passage of time for its exemplary characters, theme of family unity, and love on so many different levels (friendship, familial, true love, and romantic love).

Readers today might find the writing and occasional chirpiness of the March sisters when faced with their poverty a bit difficult to relate to, but knowing stories of how my own mother and sisters faced the Depression and then WWII in the UK made me realise from an early age that trying to find things to rejoice in is essential to surviving tragedy and loss on a personal level.

The March sisters encapsulate female society in most countries even now, and are well-written individual characters, each with a different goal they wish to fulfil in life. The girls do not become career women, and their parents do preach the importance of family life and sacrifice, however, each one does what was expected of young girls at that time. Jo's daring in writing a sensationalist "man's" story and insisting on payment commensurate with a man was unheard of in those days and when one considers that women are still underpaid, it makes Jo's triumph still relative today. Amy's goal of being comfortably well-off is eventually tempered by her own personal sorrow at the poor health of her own little Beth, Meg wants to be a mother and wife, and she learns not to overachieve, and Beth who overcomes pathological shyness through her altruism and empathy for others and which leads to her death is still inspirational today.

My suggestion is that if you have a daughter, sister, granddaughter or friend, take turns reading it. It will improve your vocabulary, make you smile, and dear Beth's stoicism will bring a tear to your eye.