I find the people strangely fantasied,
Possessed with rumors, full of idle dreams,
Not knowing what they fear, but full of fear.” —English playwright-poet William Shakespeare (1564-1616), King John (1594-6), Act 4, Scene 3
William Shakespeare died on this day in 1616 at age 52, but his influence reverberates to this day.
Following decades of Tudor authoritarianism, Shakespeare knew that it was safer to project his insights into distant times (King John’s death predated the playwright’s by four centuries) and even distant lands (in the case of The Tempest, a small, remote island in the Mediterranean).
His
history play King John is one of his thornier and less performed works,
but such was The Bard’s genius that even in this passage from the play, he served
as a profound analyst of how corruption and tyranny at the highest government
levels lead inevitably to rampant conspiracy theories and contagious fear.
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