“Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.”
Kingship and leadership is a human concept. Contraptions and fiction invented by human beings that hold the fabric of society together. It is the job of the leader to make the fiction work for the good of all. The quote above evokes the overall feeling about kingship held by both Prince Hal and his father in Shakespeare’s Henry plays. Being a leader is perhaps the most difficult position one can ever attain. And in the same vein that King Henry IV says this above line, so does his son King Henry V offer this lament:
The slave, a member of the country’s peace,
Enjoys it; but in gross brain little wots
What watch the King keeps to maintain the peace,
Whose hours the peasant best advantages. (Henry V: IV.i 280-4)
Shakespeare was acutely aware that there was little difference between a real king and a player-king. He gives us Henry V, a prince who knows how to be both. We see him as a politician dealing with ambassadors and a diplomat dealing with his advisors. He dispenses justice and mercy. He must know when to execute traitors and thieves and when to free drunks who insult him in the streets. He is a warrior and an oratorical wizard. He inspires courage in the face of desperate circumstances and perhaps most importantly he knows how to seem one thing while he is another. All these qualities make Hal Shakespeare’s quintessential prince and these are the qualities that Niccolo Machiavelli saw as necessities for any “good” leader of a people.
The Prince, written in Florence in the year 1513, by Machiavelli, is one of the most hotly debated, controversial and disturbing contributions to political thought in Western Civilization. This book has caused Machiavelli’s name to become synonymous with evil. It is perhaps also one of the most famous books written on politics other than Plato’s Republic. But unlike Plato, Machiavelli does not co...