Sam Haas Power Play: Authority, Corruption, and the Psychology of Evil in Shakespeare s Work In a famously awful psychology experiment conducted at Stanford University in 1971, a group of male volunteers were divided into two groups and put into a fake prison environment constructed for the experiment. One group was assigned the role of prisoners; the other, prison guards. After that, the researchers left the student volunteers to their own devices for six days. What transpired led to a great deal of both controversy and scientific conclusions: as the experiment wore on, the guard group embodied more and more the stereotypical abusive prison guard present in bad T.V. movies, while the prisoners progressively internalized a cutthroat prison culture. By the end, the guards were beginning to employ psychological torture techniques. After witnessing the brutal behavior and borderline sadism of their subjects, the researchers forced the designer of the experiment, Dr. Phil Zimbardo, to bring it to an end. 40 years later, the Stanford Prison Experiment serves an important role in the understanding of several aspects of behavioral psychology. Chief among these aspects are the concept of situational attribution our actions are largely the results of particular situations, circumstances, choices, etc. as opposed to innate characteristics and our understanding of how authority and perceived legitimacy can have powerful effects on actions. In particular, the experiment (and subsequent talks given about it by Zimbardo) suggests that power and a sense of legitimacy allow people to justify performing actions they would otherwise judge to be unethical or immoral. Zimbardo s work is, in the minds of many psychologists, a groundbreaking contribution to the field. His basic question, however how does power and situation affect people? is nothing new. Shakespeare navigated this theme in many of plays, portraying kings who lose power, villains who take it, malcontents who want nothing to do with it, and external forces that exert an incomprehensible
amount of it on everyone in their plays. Through these works, Shakespeare outlines his own beliefs on the nature of power and its effect on humans. His explorations prompted me to consider another question: To what extent do Shakespeare s characters follow the patterns Zimbardo and other psychologists have found? The first Shakespeare play I read that heavily concerns issues of power is Macbeth. At the start of the play, Macbeth is portrayed as the perfect knight: brave, noble, valour s minion, unfazed by the attack of two great fighter (and victorious against them), humble, and by all accounts the ideal of feudal manhood. His accomplishments are so impressive and his disposition so honorable that Duncan, King of Scotland, rewards him after a rebellion has been put down: No more that thane of Cawdor shall deceive/ Our bosom interest: go pronounce his present death,/ And with his former title greet Macbeth./ [...] What he hath lost noble Macbeth hath won. (II.i.70 76) The juxtaposition of the cowardly, ingrateful, unsuccessfully rebellious Cawdor with the noble, loyal, strong Macbeth is an effective literary device as it seemingly throws Macbeth s unimpeachable character into more relief in and of himself he s good, but in comparison, he s superlative. Unlike Cawdor, Macbeth, these scenes tell us, has the disposition to lead. He deserves power. However, the play, and more importantly Macbeth s environment, is fundamentally changed in its next scene by three witches. As Macbeth and his best friend Banquo are walking through a forest, the witches descend and declare that Macbeth is destined to be Thane of Cawdor and then King. Initially, Macbeth is simultaneously excited by the potential benefits of their words and skeptical of their extreme unlikelihood. On a day of both fair and foul, their supernatural augury is just another strange event. But quickly, Macbeth is crowned Thane of Cawdor. Subsequently, we witness his precise moral compass and sterling reputation fall away:
Why do I yield to that suggestion Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair And make my seated heart knock at my ribs, Against the use of nature? Present fears Are less than horrible imaginings. (I.iii.138 142) Here, Macbeth s mental and psychological shift happens even more rapidly than that of the prison guards in the Stanford Prison study, and he finds himself contemplating the murder of Duncan, the man whose kingdom he has just happily risked his life to defend. To the reader, this sudden change feels almost surreal. It s tempting to view it in the manner Macbeth does, as if something inside of him a piece of himself over which he has no control or responsibility is rising up and threatening an internal rebellion. Zimbardo would argue, though, that the difference is due to Macbeth s exterior circumstances and new position of power. Before, he was such a good knight because his environment encouraged it: He was surrounded by other loyal lords, including Banquo; his country regularly faced threats from various sides; he received praise, social status, and career advancement for his success as a knight; and generally, in the context of being a warrior, what was good for him was also good for Duncan, and vice versa. Now, his environment includes a newly lower status Banquo, several rebellious lords, a wife who badly wants the crown (which is important in that it gives Macbeth a way to defer personal responsibility for his murderous impulses to her), a king whose interests are by definition at odds with some of Macbeth s, and an advancement through social and political ranks that seemingly has reached its ceiling. That worsened environment is coupled with a
degree of power as Thane of Cawdor that Macbeth hasn t had before. The net effect spurs Macbeth to eventually murder Duncan and take the throne for himself. The potential problem with this interpretation of Macbeth s actions is the argument that he has been selfishly ambitious all along, and we are merely discovering it now. Perhaps instead of being changed by his circumstances and assumption of power, he has simply been allowed to act as he has always wanted to? It s certainly possible. Maybe Macbeth is such a good agent of deception that he fools us into believing in a change that isn t actually a change. But I think this possibility is unlikely given the repeated emphasis Shakespeare places on the idea of change throughout the play. To me, the most striking example of this occurs when two lords, Macduff and Ross, are talking to an Old Man about the inexplicable events that have taken place following Macbeth s coronation: Ross: Duncan's horses a thing most strange and certain Beauteous and swift, the minions of their race, Turn'd wild in nature, broke their stalls, flung out, Contending 'gainst obedience, as they would make War with mankind. Old Man: 'Tis said they eat each other. [ ] Ross: 'Gainst nature still! Thriftless ambition, that wilt ravin up Thine own life's means! (II.iv.16 36)
This exchange is part of a larger pattern of the world outside of political Scotland functioning in a completely different way than it had been. Daytime is pitch dark, falcons are killed by owls, well trained horses run away and eat each other the clear implication is that power has corrupted not only Macbeth but also nature itself. In addition, Ross s last lines indicate that Shakespeare s views of power align with the findings of Zimbardo s study: a taste of power wilt ravin up the morals of even the most exemplary characters as they seek to bring their power to bear. Power serves a central role in a second great Shakespearean tragedy, King Lear. The play opens with a transfer of authority from an aging King Lear to his daughters Regan and Goneril in exchange for declarations of their love for him, while a third sister, Cordelia, is banished for refusing to talk about her love for Lear. From there, the plot quickly spirals out of control Lear is neglected by his daughters to the point of being kicked out into a raging storm, Regan and her husband Cornwall viciously blind the noble Gloucester, a war is fought with France, and the sisters die in a murder suicide at the end of the play over Edmund, with whom both of them wanted to have an affair. By and large, the sisters are held to be symbols of great evil whose unchecked wickedness dominates the play and the people around them. That s that, right? Well, no. It s not really that simple. Regan and Goneril don t begin the play as bastions of unfathomable evil. When they are introduced, they re actually something exceedingly normal: children with an imperfect relationship with their dad. The roughness of their relationship is indicated by a quick line towards the end of the first scene. When discussing Cordelia s banishment, Goneril mentions, He always loved our sister most. (I.i.315 316) This acknowledgment is not a big deal, but it s still noteworthy if the father daughter relationship has gotten to the point that Goneril and Regan know and accept that their father doesn t love them fully (as he loved Cordelia), then we can infer that Lear has at
least failed his two elder daughters, and at most badly mistreated them. Further, after Cordelia is exiled, they express concern over his decision: Regan: '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 ingraffed condition, but therewithal the unruly waywardness that infirm and choleric years bring with them. (I.i.317 322) Essentially, the sisters are as surprised by his sudden rage towards Cordelia as the reader is, and they fear it means he is losing control of his faculties, which worries them. Some readers may argue that the concern is false, that they are simply expressing cold self interest, that their show of worry is meant to hoodwink the audience. But that reading is improbable because when they have this conversation, Regan and Goneril are all alone. Additionally, they don t have anything to hide from one another. They have no reason to be anything other than genuine! Thus, the argument that they are evil from the start is unlikely. With this knowledge, the moment when Goneril and Regan take their first steps down the path of evil actions, although not a commendable moment, nonetheless appears justifiable. Lear arrives at Goneril and Albany s castle late at night, carousing with his train of 100 knights, and immediately seeks to continue his revelry inside the castle, responding arrogantly and rowdily to those he encounters outside. First Goneril s servant Oswald, then Goneril herself, confronts Lear about his behavior. As Goneril says to Lear, You strike my people; and your disorder'd rabble/ Make servants of their
betters. (I.iv.244) She then asks him to reduce the number of knights who will enter the castle that night so as to ensure some measure of peace, which causes Lear to viciously curse her out and depart for Regan s home instead, where, to his surprise, he receives similar treatment. There is a point at which the sisters actions cross a line, a point where their demands to reduce his followers stop being understandable and start looking cruel. But it is not immediate! When we consider the probable unhappiness of the sisters childhood and combine it with the fact that Lear, at least initially, is in the wrong with his behavior, the small act of asking him to cut his followers from 100 to 50 is okay to us as readers. However, it s also the first time Regan and Goneril assert their power, and that s a problem. Already, their environmental factors and the situation they are in is a potential powder keg the kingdom is in the middle of political change; the assumed heir, Cordelia, has been exiled; their father, who has likely mistreated them for years, is both still antagonizing them and now at their mercy; and one of their husbands, Cornwall, is himself a violent man. In other words, the societal pressures around Regan and Goneril aren t set up to (and indeed do not) condemn them for their first small actions against their father. So when they do take that first step, it sets them up to be corrupted by power exactly as Zimbardo describes: their initial immoral acts are sanctioned by their environment; they find themselves holding new amounts of power; and further immoral or evil actions only increase the amount of power they hold. In fact, the sisters actions become a self perpetuating stereotype the same way those of the fake prison guards did, because stereotypically evil behavior enhances their status, which affirms the effectiveness of that behavior, which encourages them to dive deeper into the stereotype, until they reach the point of putting an old man s eyes out and committing murder over a love interest. Again, Shakespeare s message is clear: power corrupts.
The corrupting nature of power even receives stage time in a play that has almost nothing to do with power, the comedy As You Like It. While the play delightfully explores themes of identity, deception, love, lost, nature, and modern civilization, it is the dynamic character of Duke Frederick on which I will focus. At the beginning, we witness an incredibly hateful man. He has usurped his brother s throne without justification; he banishes his brother s daughter, Rosalind; and he absolutely refuses to consider the pleas of his own daughter and Rosalind s best friend Celia to reverse his judgment: She is too subtle for thee; and her smoothness, Her very silence and her patience, Speak to the people, and they pity her. Thou art a fool. She robs thee of thy name; And thou wilt show more bright and seem more virtuous When she is gone. Then open not thy lips. Firm and irrevocable is my doom Which I have pass'd upon her; she is banish'd. (I.iii.481 487) The callousness of this speech, the ease with which he justifies banishing his daughter s best friend for her virtuous qualities, and the self delusion he displays through believing getting rid of Celia s friend is in Celia s best interests all indicate to the reader that Frederick is an unsavory leader. Our unfavorable view of him is furthered when he sets out to attack his banished brother and niece, who have taken up residence in a nearby forest. To attack the people he has already exiled when they are now living peacefully with no influence on Frederick s throne strikes the reader as unmistakably evil. But instead of continuing on his evil, power mad quest, Frederick is stopped by something:
To the skirts of this wild wood he came; Where meeting with an old religious man, After some question with him, was converted Both from his enterprise and from the world, His crown bequeathing to his banish'd brother, And all their lands restored to them again That were with him exiled. (V.iv.159 165) In this moment, Shakespeare provides us with the reverse of the transformations undergone by Goneril, Regan, and Zimbardo s subjects. On the surface, the process of an evil man easily reverting to good subverts the argument that power corrupts people. However, the way in which this transformation occurs is very significant. Frederick doesn t merely realize he s been a bad brother, father, and leader and apologize; instead, he is converted by an old religious man, renounces the civilized world, and goes off into the forest. He swings from one extreme to the other. The drasticness of this change serves to reinforce the dangerous nature of power in that to escape from it, to undo the harm his power hungry actions had done to him, Frederick s only option was to become an ascetic. That symbolism, of religious cleansing being the only way to fix a corrupted ruler s soul, strengthens Shakespeare s message and simultaneously disarms its detractors. Yes, the damage done by unchecked power can be reversed; but it s going to take a hell of a lot of effort. The influence of environmental factors and psychological changes in those granted power are simply incredibly strong forces to overcome. Overall, it is apparent that while Dr. Zimbardo may have analytically described the
nature of power and evil in his experiments, his conclusions should not be considered discoveries. Shakespeare artfully laid out similar themes in his plays 400 years earlier.