Shortly after Kevin Rudd was ousted from the Lodge last month, Malcolm Turnbull decided to console him with some words from Shakespeare. In a Fairfax op-ed entitled 'Axed and humiliated: Someone should give this poor bastard a hug', Turnbull quotes Coriolanus:
You common cry of curs, whose breath I hate
As reek of the rotten fen, whose loves I prize
As the dead carcasses of unburied men
That do corrupt my air, I banish you!
The Roman general Coriolanus is a reviled control freak, full of patrician disdain for the plebeian masses. He turns on Rome and defects to the enemy. Not a kind comparison to make.
Of course, Turnbull's own bloody leadership spill last year was more like something out of Titus Andronicus: like that tragedy's characters, the Liberal Party was predisposed to mutilate and cannibalise.
Shakespeare's plays have long been mined for political parallels. These comparisons thrive partly because Shakespeare is the acknowledged master-observer of human behaviour. His works are recognised as a readymade source for human archetypes and circumstances.
It has to do with the inherent drama of politics. Political crises can be extraordinarily theatrical (which is why they lend themselves so readily to stage and film adaptations). And some of our political leaders often seem to adore the limelight.
Usually we compare politicians to either Richard III (for cunning Machiavels) or Julius Caesar (for victims of political assassinations). Less often, Richard II (for doomed philosopher-kings) might get trotted out.
Comparing politicians to Shakespeare's characters is easy enough to do. Just take an incident — say, Julia Gillard's successful negotiations with the mining bosses — and find a vaguely appropriate analogue in Shakespeare: 'Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings.' That's Richard III.
Politicians sometimes invoke Shakespeare to flatter their own cause. But this rhetorical trick is fraught with dangers. The first risk is that they come off sounding pompous. The second risk is that their analogies backfire.
In 1938, Neville Chamberlain prepared to fly off to Munich to appease Hitler by agreeing to the annexation of Sudetenland. He quoted Henry IV: 'When I come back I hope I may be able to say, as Hotspur said in Henry IV, "Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety".'
But Arthur Greenwood later pointed out in the House of Commons that Chamberlain had failed to quote the rest of the passage: 'The purpose you undertake is dangerous; the friends you have named, uncertain; the time itself unsorted; and