*originally published in FUMPTRUCK, edited by Anonymous, Written Backwards, December 16, 2024.

Karuna Das

In June of 2020, when it seemed to me that the current POTUS might try to hold onto power through antidemocratic means, I wrote a short story set in a fictional country in which a president about to lose office had succeeded in doing just that. “Blood and Puppet Theatre” takes place in Freeland. That’s the popular—and by then ironic—shorthand for the Federal Republic of Enlightened Existence. (A character notes that the name refers to the eighteenth-century ideals of the founders of the transparently near-future USA, not to mystical spiritual awakening.)

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The events of January 6, 2021 proved my instincts right about Trump’s intentions, if not his abilities to execute them at the time.

When the story was published that spring, what I wrote as a cautionary tale read more like a dodged bullet. The threat seemed to have been extinguished. Or at least it no longer felt so immediate. Idealist that I am, I even had faith the former president would be tried and convicted for his crimes.

I never imagined four years later that same would-be dictator would be reelected.

Appearing in the “Criminalization of Dissent” issue of a journal put out by a nonprofit organization dedicated to minimizing harm against marginalized communities, my story features a queer, nonbinary protagonist. Alongside their female partner, they operate a subversive theatre troupe that attracts the attention of both the autocrat and an agent—a Black woman—of an underground movement seeking to incite a revolution and restore democracy. The main conflict explores the roles of art, nonviolence, and compassion in combatting systematic oppression.

The protagonist recalls a role they played years before, having been cross-gender cast as a man in a college production of Othello, making an implicit comparison to their nation’s leader:

Playing Iago really messes with you. You have to commit to embodying his sickening combination of cruelty, vulgarity, and egotism, unlike anything else in all of Shakespeare, if not all of drama. Until recently I would’ve added maybe even in all of humanity.

You also have to decide what motivates him to lie about essentially everything to essentially everyone, possibly including himself and the audience. He gives multiple, shifting reasons for his behavior, some of which seem credible (but invalid as justifications) and some of which seem made up on the spot. What does he have to gain from destroying so many lives? Is he simply a sociopath who gets off on others’ suffering?

And then there’s all the racist things he says. Do they reflect his actual beliefs, or are they feigned to exploit the racist attitudes of those around him? He certainly uses them that way.

Other characters ultimately see Iago as a monstrous departure from the norms of their culture. But he’s really the epitome of them.

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As I try to come to terms with the 2024 election results, I want to believe that flocks of voters supported Trump due to disinformation and ignorance about his economic and other policies. Yet I can’t shake the feeling that something about the ugliness of Trump’s behavior holds deep-rooted—perhaps subconscious—appeal to a broader swath of the American public than most of us prefer to acknowledge. I suspect that until we figure out how to purge those impulses from our collective identity, we will at best succeed in suppressing them for brief periods. People more qualified than me on the matter likely have ideas about how to do this. Early twentieth-century French theorist and artist Antonin Artaud sure did. See his collection of essays The Theater and Its Double for his vision. (FYI: He died in a psychiatric clinic at age 51.)

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I’ll stick to what insights we might glean into our current socio-political moment from one of my areas of expertise: literature, especially that written for the stage. I titled this piece with the opening line of another Shakespearean play, Richard III. That work dramatizes the final chapter of the Wars of the Roses, a lengthy series of real-life civil wars between the Houses of Lancaster and York, rival factions within the House of Plantagenet, over control of the English throne. Their respective colors were red and white rather than red and blue.

I’m sure I’m not the first to draw a parallel between Trump and Richard, just as others have no doubt compared him to the villain from Othello. In one obvious way it’s a better fit: Richard becomes king. And he lies and schemes his way there. He also commits and orders murders. I won’t allege killings have occurred directly at the hands or instructions of Trump. But it seems fair to say he’s caused a lot of death through his (mis)handling of the COVID pandemic, his denial of climate science, and his fanning the flames of hate. I shudder to think what he might do now that he’s been given the keys to the kingdom by the electorate and a Supreme Court ruling that grants him immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts. Later in that same opening speech, Richard tells the audience, “I am determined to prove a villain” (1.1.30), a line that calls to mind Trump’s campaign promises to exact revenge on political opponents and employ other strongman tactics.

Despite what the protagonist of “Blood and Puppet Theatre” thinks about the challenge of embodying Iago, actors generally relish the opportunity to play either of these characters. Any psychic burden notwithstanding, the roles are showcases for their talents. What’s more, having acted as one of Shakespeare’s lesser villains—Iachimo in Cymbeline—myself, I’d suggest there’s something liberating in performing “taboo” behaviors without the risk of any real consequences.

Here’s how my protagonist describes their process:

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To portray a character truthfully, you have to see them from their point of view. Better still if you can feel empathy for them or even find some aspect of them admirable or enticing. With Iago, the most obvious candidate for that is his skill as a manipulator, and especially his ability to dupe people into thinking he’s on their side even as he works against them. For most of the play, until fires he’s lit burn down everything and everyone around him, he proves himself to be an expert puppet master.

In the end, I managed to develop a kind of double consciousness. I identified with Iago’s perspective and his talents even while I detached myself from his actions, and especially from their results.

Audiences derive great pleasure from watching that skillful manipulation. Both Iago and Richard tell the audience what they’re up to. They’re unapologetic about what they’re doing. Part of us can’t help but admire them, perhaps wishing we could get away with that kind of audacity, even if we’re appalled by their actions. In the theatre, we know the harm they cause is not real.

Throughout the recent election campaign, I read accounts that many voters still didn’t believe Trump meant the threats he made. Is there something about him in particular that creates this dissonance? Or are we living in such a technology-mediated world so inundated by images of violence and suffering that nothing seems real to people unless it impacts them firsthand?

If first-term Trump represented our Iago-in-Chief, lighting fires that eventually burned down everything around him, perhaps we can learn something from the final scene of Othello and what finally trips up Iago. He survives the play, unlike the insecure title character, innocent Desdemona, and others, although he’s taken away to be tortured until he reveals the motives for his malignity. Yet he might’ve avoided exposure at all were it not for the insistence of his wife, Emilia, to defend the honor of her mistress Desdemona against the wishes of her husband.

EMILIA. Villainy, villainy, villainy!
I think upon’t, I think I smell’t, O villainy!
I thought so then: I’ll kill myself for grief!
O villainy, villainy!

IAGO. What, are you mad? I charge you, get you home.

EMILIA. Good gentlemen, let me have leave to speak.
’Tis proper I obey him—but not now.
Perchance, Iago, I will ne’er go home.

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EMILIA. O God, O heavenly God!

IAGO. Zounds, hold your peace!

EMILIA. ’Twill out, ’twill out! I peace?
No, I will speak as liberal as the north.
Let heaven and men and devils, let them all,
All, all cry shame against me, yet I’ll speak.

IAGO. Be wise and get you home.

EMILIA. I will not.

[Iago tries to stab Emilia.] (5.2.187-222)

After a final attempt to hush Emilia fails and she divulges key information that reveals his deception, Iago’s last-ditch attempt to deny the charges—“Filth, thou liest” (5.2.229)—convinces no one. Iago then succeeds in giving her a fatal stab wound. But it’s too late. In Shakespeare’s Venice, everyone trusts the word of a woman who won’t be hushed, and the man who tries to silence the truth is disgraced and punished. (D’oh!) Is now a good time to mention that one of Iago’s stated motives is wanting promotion to a position with greater authority? And that another is his outrage over a Black man being put in charge?

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Rest assured, my purpose in writing this essay goes beyond making you wish you inhabited a world that modeled the justice of a Shakespearean tragedy.

After not being held accountable for his deeds as our Iago-in-Chief, or for crimes he committed to even be our Iago-in-Chief, will second-term Trump become our Richard-in-Chief? It took a literal civil war to defeat the original. I watched Alex Garland’s film Civil War for the first time in the weeks before the election. I still hold out hope we’re not headed for a scenario like that. As I write this in mid-November, Trump’s picks for his cabinet suggest he intends to follow through on his promises and flout presidential norms and dismantle the rule of law.

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In turning from the tragedy of Othello to Richard III—officially a chronicle or history play, but one that also meets the criteria for the genre of tragedy—let’s consider the context in which the Bard penned his work. He wrote it a century after the end of the Wars of the Roses. With Queen Elizabeth I more than three decades into her reign, the British monarchy had experienced a long period of stability under the Tudor dynasty that began with Richard’s successor, Henry VII. Historians point out that Shakespeare’s stage version of Richard performs much viler acts than anything attributed to the real-life figure. Some critics claim that Shakespeare—perhaps unwittingly, relying on the sources available to him—wrote a piece of propaganda in support of the current administration. Others suggest he quite deliberately wrote a cautionary tale about the dangers of a possible future tyrant, as concerns about succession grew stronger due to the childless queen’s old age. Still others read the play’s central character as an example of the “scourge” figure, evil used by God to combat evil. In view of that interpretation, the religious right’s zealous support of Trump makes sense.

In any case, a self-avowed tyrant now ascends to the throne in the Oval Office. Might the way Shakespeare dramatizes his villain’s downfall offer guidance into how we can strategize unseating ours?

Like Iago, Richard eventually creates so much chaos he can no longer manage it all, no matter how skilled he is. He underestimates others, especially a trio of women, and essentially everyone turns on him. If the Republican-majority Senate does its constitutional duty to constrain the executive branch, we might see a parallel there to the stand taken against Richard by members of the aristocracy in the play. Many of those nobles even join the rebellious forces of the Earl of Richmond, the future Henry VII. This happened to some extent—an insufficient uprising apparently—with Liz Cheney and others campaigning on behalf of Kamala Harris.

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In the end, just before Richard’s defeat in single combat by Richmond on the battlefield, all but one of his compatriots abandon him. His steed slain, forced to fight on foot, he utters his famous last line, “A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!” (5.4.13).

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Feel free to take a moment to indulge your imagination in your wildest fantasy version of how this outcome might translate to our present situation. I’ll wait.

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With that out of our system, let’s return to the play and examine the way Shakespeare exhibits Richard’s guilty conscience through theatrical technique. As the king and Richmond sleep in their tents on opposite sides of the stage the night before their climactic battle, a parade of Ghosts appear representing Richard’s victims. Each, in turn, curses Richard and blesses Richmond, nearly all of them repeating the phrases “despair and die” and “live and flourish” (5.3). As the parade concludes, Richard stirs, still dreaming as he exclaims, “Give me another horse!” (5.3.178), a need we’ll hear again, of course, at that point understanding his dream as prophetic. That reinforces the play’s moral order, the Christian doctrine of providential design prevalent in Shakespeare’s England. Richard doesn’t know that yet, though, and once he awakens and realizes he was dreaming, he launches into an eloquent, poignant soliloquy:

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K. RICH. O coward conscience, how dost thou afflict me!
The lights burn blue; it is now dead midnight;
Cold fearful drops stand on my trembling flesh.
What do I fear? Myself? There’s none else by;
Richard loves Richard, that is, I and I.
Is there a murderer here? No. Yes, I am!
Then fly. What, from myself? Great reason why,
Lest I revenge? What, myself upon myself?
Alack, I love myself. Wherefore? For any good
That I myself have done unto myself?
O no, alas, I rather hate myself
For hateful deeds committed by myself.
I am a villain—yet I lie, I am not!
Fool, of thyself speak well! Fool, do not flatter.
My conscience hath a thousand several tongues,
And every tongue brings in a several tale,
And every tale condemns me for a villain:
Perjury, perjury, in the highest degree;
Murder, stern murder, in the direst degree;
All several sins, all us’d in each degree,
Throng to the bar, crying all, ‘Guilty, guilty!’
I shall despair. There is no creature loves me,
And if I die, no soul will pity me—
And wherefore should they, since that I myself
Find in myself no pity to myself?
Methought the souls of all that I had murder’d
Came to my tent, and every one did threat
Tomorrow’s vengeance on the head of Richard. (5.3.180-207)

This speech sets Richard apart from Iago. We never hear anything like it from the latter. Iago is the villain in Othello’s tragedy. Richard is the villain in his own, a classic antihero and a legitimate tragic figure. His demise is necessary for the restoration of order, but unlike Iago’s unmasking and punishment, which bring only relief, it evokes a measure of sadness from us. He’s humanized by this moment of vulnerability.

I can’t blame you if you struggle to think of Trump as a tragic figure. He shows no sign of possessing any inkling of conscience, any moral compass. His politics of grievance position him as a modern-day Iago even as he assumes the authority of a Richard.

On our real-world, contemporary stage, Emilia’s revelations didn’t prevent Iago’s escape from punishment and ascension to power. It seems unlikely that enough of the aristocracy will turn on the king to depose him. There’s no divinely ordained Richmond coming to save us.

If we want to preserve democracy, we’ll have to fight for it. And keep fighting for it.

The protagonist-narrator of “Blood and Puppet Theatre” must decide whether or not to join the movement seeking to overthrow their tyrannical leader. Doing so likely means being the indirect cause of violence, which goes against their most deeply held values.

“I don’t have the stomach for it,” I told Sabrina. She stared across the bar at me with an unreadable expression. I couldn’t tell if she’d even heard me over the buzz of the sizable crowd.

“I know,” she said, setting in front of me the glass of seltzer she’d poured. She started to move away.

I grabbed her hand. “But I do have the heart for it.” She raised an eyebrow but said nothing. “I despise that motherfucker and every one of his minions.” She snorted. “Still, I refuse to let hate rule me. I refuse to let it motivate my actions.” I searched for words to articulate what I felt flow through me. “Justice motivates me. Compassion motivates me. I want that to be true for everyone. Do you think we can pull it off? Can we incite an uprising of love?” Her lips formed a slight smile. Damn I wanted to kiss them. So I did.

People around us cheered.

“I think we just incited one. A mini one anyway.”

“Compassion for everyone. Even for him and his minions. And all his other enablers.”

“Hmm.”

“They must be stopped. Whatever it takes. If we claim to love the people most harmed by them, we have to stand up to them with everything, with our very lives, and destroy the system they perpetuate, that they epitomize. Otherwise we perpetuate it, too. If that means destroying them, then that’s what we need to do.”

“Okay.”

“But not with hate in our hearts. We don’t have to like them or even understand them. We do have to feel compassion for them. For their emotional suffering. Same as we feel it for the emotional and material suffering of all those they harm. Think how much pain they must have inside them to be able to cause so much pain for so many others.”

“Or maybe they’re just evil.” She recited a familiar line: “Villainy, villainy, villainy!”

“We all have a potential Iago inside us. Can we get people to see it that way? To see the potential inside themselves? So if they do commit acts of violence to stop our Iago-in-Chief, it’s out of and with compassion?”

“Realistically …” She gazed into my eyes. “Probably not gonna happen. Not everyone. But your integrity comes from your heart alone.”

Whatever our fight ends up requiring, remember those words: Your integrity comes from your heart alone. As inhumanely Iago-like as Trump may seem on the outside, I assure you there’s a wounded, vulnerable Richard lurking somewhere deep inside, no matter how much battle armor he wears to protect and hide it.

The same holds true for all his minions and enablers.

I’ll see you on the battlefield. As my coat of arms, I’ll wear a peace symbol inside a heart.

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WORKS CITED

Artaud, Antonin. The Theater and Its Double. Translated by Mary Caroline Richards, Grove Press, 1958.

Das, Karuna. “Blood and Puppet Theatre.” Karuna Das Writer.

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Shakespeare, William. King Richard III. Edited by Anthony Hammond, Arden Third Series, Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1981.

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---. Othello. Edited by E. A. J. Honigman, Arden Third Series, Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1997.