SHAKESPEARE'S TREATMENT OF TYRANNY 39 How to deny them; who t'advance, and who To trash for overtopping, that is,, once he mastered the art of politicking and, of manipulating men, ...set all hearts i9 th9 state To what tune pleased his ear, 8 and, confederating with the king of Naples, and even submitting his "coronet" to Naples's "crown", seized power. It was nothing but a coup d'etat. This is in the last play which Shakespeare wrote. Going back to early Shakespeare, in Richard III, it is "upon the stroke of four", a significant pre-dawn hour, that a messenger from Lord Stanley comes to Lord Hastings with the warning "to shun the danger that his (Stanley^) soul divines".4 We know it is the hour when decisions are made and executed in high places. It is the hour when the crooked tentacles of monstrous tyrants pack you off to the flint bosom of a prison or dump you in a den where death stalks. From the begining to the end there is the same preoccupation with the nightmarish doings and happenings in the "cunning passages and contrived corridors" in high places: the same story of dethronements, usurpations, banishments and assassinations. In comedies, tragedies and histories, and in all the phases or stages of his career, Shakespeare points his finger at the struggle for power. In some of the more important works he strips this struggle of all mythology and shows it in its pure state. Shakespeare, as it were, declares this intention through Richard the Second: For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground, And tell sad stories of the death of kings: How some have been deposed., some slain in war, Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed; Some poisoned by their wives, some sleeping killed; All murdered.5 Yes, all murdered. Also, all of them murderers. Here is the gallery of Richards, Henrys, Hamlets, Macbeths. We have all this not only in the gory histories. There is usurpation (or, better, power struggle) even in such a sunny comedy as As Tou Like It, Shakespeare^s Italian dukes and Roman generals as well as English kings are all at some point or other of iheir lives engaged in this soul-twisting struggle. "We that are great, our own self-good still moves us." Moved by "self-good" what terrible crimes do they commit! What gruesome miseries do they bring to their fellow beings! They act cleverly, decisively, efficiently, and unscrupulously. They act untouched by remorse or conscience. They seize power and become tyrants. And, as Aristotle says, ''Men do not become tyrants to keep out the cold." They become tyrants to enjoy the fruits of power. Naturally, they endeavour to retain it. In that ^rim endeavour they deny elementary human decencies to their