Mad, Bad and often Sad!
Donald Trump can be compared to King Lear on many levels, writes Elaine Dobbyn
Google ‘Trump’ and ‘King Lear’ and you will find article after article drawing parallels between the unorthodox White House administration and a 400-year old play you’re being made to study for your Leaving Cert. King Lear recounts the tale of a vain, reckless, unaccountable ruler, addicted to false flattery, who progressively loses his mind as his former allies conspire against him. Hard to see where they saw the similarities!
In June 2017 journalists were invited by Donald Trump to attend a cabinet meeting and there witnessed ‘a surreal backslapping session in which cabinet members seemed to compete with each other to praise their president.’ (Laurence Dodds, The Telegraph) If the scene reminds you of Lear’s ‘love test’ moment: ‘Which of you shall we say doth love us most?’ you are not alone. Each member of cabinet raved about what an honour and ‘blessing’ it was to serve Trump. Lear’s vanity and need for flattery is one of his key flaws and the consequences of this weakness are far reaching throughout the play.
Lear is slow to realise and admit his grave error and lashes out blaming everyone around him for his woes but not himself: ‘I am a man more sinned against than sinning.’ Trump has definitely mirrored this sentiment in some of his famous statements including: “no politician in history, and I say this with great surety, has been treated worse or more unfairly.” Towards the end of the play Lear grows in self-awareness enough to see he was the architect of his own downfall and feels remorse for his treatment of Cordelia and Kent. Personally I doubt we will ever live to see Trump admit to a mistake or personal weakness of any kind. Sad!
Since Trump has come to office he has already fired fifteen high-profile members of his administration, including two different Communications directors, his Chief of Staff and National Security Advisor. Generally the victims of these firings are those who speak up against his decisions, not unlike Cordelia and Kent in Lear. Cordelia refuses to flatter and fawn as Goneril and Regan do and is subsequently disinherited and shunned. Kent dares to question Lear’s rash actions: ‘Answer my life my judgement, Thy youngest daughter does not love thee least’ and for his troubles, despite a lifetime of service to Lear, is banished from the kingdom. Again, we await to see if Trump, like Lear grows to see the error of his ways.
Trump’s use of language too reflects Lear’s loss of coherence as he rages against the storm on the heath. Here’s an extract from one of Trump’s famously rambling speeches delivered in South Carolina:
Look, having nuclear—my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart —you know, if you’re a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I’m one of the smartest people anywhere in the world—it’s true!—but when you’re a conservative Republican they try— oh, do they do a number…
His speech jumps from one thought to the next with little fluidity, his language is fragmented and his stream of consciousness is difficult to follow. Lear, too, speaks in greatly altered fashion as he rants out on the heath. Gone is his elegant iambic pentameter that suited his authority as king and instead he speaks in furious fragments reflecting a mind on the verge of collapse: Rumble thy bellyful! Spit, fire! Spout, rain!
Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire are my daughters.
I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness.
Perhaps I’m being too hard on Shakespeare – even at Lear’s most incoherent he speaks better than Trump!
Throughout the year the world has held its breath watching the Trump administration lurch from calamity to calamity. Is it true that “The worst is not, so long as we can say, ‘This is the worst.’ ”?! Let’s hope that, like Lear, sanity will eventually be restored for: ‘Time shall unfold what plighted cunning hides...’