Shakespeare scholar says post-election Trump exhibiting 'classic Act V behavior'

(Image credit: Al Drago/Getty Images)

published 6 December 2020

President Trump is exhibiting 'classic Act V behavior" as he deals with the fallout of his election defeat, Jeffrey Wilson, a Shakespearean scholar at Harvard University, told The New York Times.

Wilson, who published a book titled Shakespeare and Trump earlier this year, said "the forces are being picked off and the tyrant is holed up in his castle and he's growing increasingly anxious and he feels insecure and he starts blustering about his legitimate sovereignty and he starts accusing the opposition of treason."

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Wilson suggested the comparisons to tragic Shakespearean figures like King Lear don't bode well for the next few weeks. "If there are these analogies between classic literature and society as it's operating right now, then that should give us some big cause for concern this December," he said. "We're approaching the end of the play here and that's where catastrophe always comes." Read more at The New York Times.

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Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.

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