Mary's Notes, March 30, 2007

Stephen Greenblatt began last night’s show as he did his NYRB piece, with an anecdote about discussing Macbeth with Bill Clinton in a White House receiving line in 1998.

‘Mr. President,’ I said, sticking out my hand, ‘don’t you think that Macbeth is a great play about an immensely ambitious man who feels compelled to do things that he knows are politically and morally disastrous?’ Clinton looked at me for a moment, still holding my hand, and said, ‘I think Macbeth is a great play about someone whose immense ambition has an ethically inadequate object.

Stephen Greenblatt, Shakespeare and the Uses of Power, The New York Review of Books, April 12, 2007.

So what is an “ethically adequate object” anyway? Here’s Chris’s explanation:

In the studio after the show, Greenblatt told me that it was a year or so later that Clinton jogged his thinking with the observation at King Hussein’s funeral in Jordan, that the late King had built his public life, as Clinton said, around an ‘ethically adequate object.’ So where, Greenblatt started wondering, is the line — in Shakespeare, politics and life — between the EIO and the EAO. What was clearly a recurrent phrase in the tool kit of Bill Clinton’s mind became the start of a new line of inquiry, with the startling conclusion on Greenblatt’s part that no Shakespeare character with a clear moral vision has a will for power, and none with an ambition to rule has an ethical goal. Shakespeare turns out to be intrigued with the people who don’t take the power that’s available, or try (like King Lear) to renounce it. I asked Greenblatt during the show last night if Al Gore or Mario Cuomo fit the type of power shunners… They’re too young (and maybe too ambitious) for the Lear comparison, Greenblatt thought. We liked his quick Shakespearean commentaries on the American lot of politicians: the notion of a war leader getting ten hours of sleep a night (and working out on a Stairmaster) would be inconceivable to the Bard; but Hillary might appeal strongly, Greenblatt thought, to the playwright who created so many strong women. Greenblatt did not answer the voters’ question for 2008: how to find an ambitious candidate with a moral foundation. Power in Shakespeare is an almost amoral drive — something like sex, Greenblatt suggested. People who gotta have it… just gotta go get it.

Christopher Lydon

That’s a wrap. Four excellent shows this week. Don’t you agree?