Shakespeare on power and authority

In King Lear, it is the old king himself, speaking to the viciously blinded Gloucester, who utters the most savage attack on all authority:

Lear: (to the maimed and blinded Gloucester) A man may see how the world goes with no eyes; look with thy ears. See how yon justice rails upon yon simple thief. Hark in thy ear: handy-dandy, which is the thief, which is the justice? Thou has’t seen a farmer’s dog bark at a beggar?

Gloucester: Ay, sir.

Lear: An the creature run from the cur, there thou mightst behold the great image of authority. A dog’s obeyed in office.

There is no going back from this. If the great image of authority is a cur biting the heels of a beggar, what does it matter who is king? Even the blind can see how the world goes: put a dog on the throne and men will bow before it. When Albany offers Lear the restoration of his kingdom, the old man does not even hear him. The divine right of kings, so insistently upheld by James, has become a thing of nothing. The King’s Man in his red royal livery plucked his master’s anxiety about the need for unquestioned authority and used it to summon up the deeper fear that, in their most secret selves, must haunt all kings.

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