6 DECEMBER 1997, Page 10

SHARED OPINION

The play's the thing.

Or possibly, the thing's the play

FRANK JOHNSON

The late Denis Brogan, as interpreter of the United States to generations of Britons, was always being asked by our diplomats en route for Washington what they should read first to understand the presidency. He did not reply with a book about America, but with Saint-Simon's Memoires of early 18th-century Versailles; by which he meant that the White House was a court.

The arrival in London this week from Stratford-upon-Avon of the Royal Shake- speare Company's Hamlet suggested to me that Hamlet is the first work one should read in order to understand the present British government. It is a court too — but Elsinore. There is the same air of suspicion that all concerned are playing some compli- cated game against each other.

For example, last week Mr Gordon Brown was made Parliamentarian of the Year in the Spectator/Highland Park Awards. The previous month Mr Brown had delivered the annual Spectator/ Allied Dunbar lecture. On hearing of the award to Mr Brown, one of those young New Labour apparatchiks asked me why The Spectator was 'sucking up to Gordon'. First the lec- ture, then this award: Tony wouldn't be pleased, he assured me.

I tried to explain that lecture and award were unconnected. We asked Mr Brown to deliver the lecture because it was Labour's turn. The previous year Mr Major had delivered it, the year before that, Mr Blair. As for the award, The Spectator was power- less to determine who should win it. The editor chaired the judges, but the judges were eight in number. They included two from the Guardian, one from the Indepen- dent on Sunday and one from Channel 4, as well as those from more Tory publications. It would be impossible to manoeuvre such a disparate crew into making an award in the interests of this magazine. In any case, why should The Spectator want to 'suck up to Gordon'? Or suck up to Mr Blair; or Mr Mandelson, or anyone else in this govern- ment? We do not seek, or imagine, any favours from it.

Yeah, yeah, my apparatchik acquain- tance smiled, by which he meant: no, no. He did not believe a word of it. Something was going on. That is the way in Elsinore. All participants assume that something is going on which they do not know about. Actually, it is. But those of us observing the court are not participating in the goings-on. Those of us who are not New Labour, or are Tories, are more in the position of Fortinbras, Prince of Norway, who arrives at the end to take over Denmark. We watch from across the border. We welcome all sign of dissension. Sometimes we exag- gerate such signs as we think we see. We repose hope in the merest left-wing stir- rings against Miss Harman or against Mr Geoffrey Robinson's private financial arrangements. We hope, admittedly many years hence, to turn up at the end like Fort- inbras, there to discover a court strewn with corpses. 'Take up the bodies. Such a sight as this becomes the field, but here shows much amiss.'

We do not, however, presume to partic- ipate in Elsinore's intrigues. We may seek, probably without success, to influence them. We may intrude our spies, though they are likely to be double agents at least. Observers we remain, however.

But surely all governments consist of people plotting against one another, and using stratagems to try to find out what is going on. That is so, but for various rea- sons, it is probably more so with this gov- ernment. Why, though, is the play Hamlet a good guide to it all?

After all, it is not usually thought of as one of Shakespeare's 'political' plays. Julius Caesar, Coriolanus and Richard II are on the face of it better examples. Hamlet is usually thought to be less about the exterior than the interior world. Shakespeare is usu- ally thought to have taken over this typical, rickety old revenge plot, and made it into a profound meditation on revenge's useless- ness. I think that this is all true, but there is more politics in the play than is often noticed.

When the murdering King Claudius first appears, it seems to be at some sort of privy council or cabinet meeting. Two men pre- sent seem to be either diplomats or minis- ters connected with foreign affairs. It is perhaps the first, or one of the first, meet- ings since the old king's death or Claudius's accession.

Claudius opens proceedings with some pieties about the late king before getting down to the main business: potential trou- ble from Fortinbras. He despatches the two foreign policy experts, Cornelius and Voltemand, to Norway with narrowly defined instructions to make it clear that advantage should not be taken of the change of Danish government. It is only after this business is concluded, and per- haps the official part of the meeting is itself concluded, that Claudius begins what he possibly hopes will be small talk with Ham- let. Earlier he seems to be small-talking with Laertes (`And now, Laertes, what's the news with you?'). But this could also be part of official business, since the next line is, 'You told us of some suit: what is it, Laertes?'

Only one book, to my knowledge, has made much of Hamlet's politics: Dover Wilson's pre-war What Happens in Hamlet?, still in print. Dover Wilson believed that Hamlet's complaint against Claudius was not just that he had murdered his father but that he had usurped a crown which was rightly Hamlet's. Dover Wilson crushes the objection that Denmark was an elective monarchy, and that Claudius must there- fore have been elected. Shakespeare knew nothing about Denmark. The only polity he knew about, or was interested in, was Eliza- bethan and Jacobean England. Dover Wil- son shows that all Hamlet's political and court procedures derive from there.

The plot of Hamlet, then, is about usurpation: a political subject. Shakespeare may make this subject more interesting by using it to tell us what he thinks about life and death. That is not the case when Mr Mandelson privately complains about Mr Brown usurping whatever it is Mr Mandel- son thinks he has most recently usurped. But government runs through the play.

And the play runs through this govern- ment, especially the idea of usurpation. Our own trained observer of the New Labour court, Sign Simon, says relations between Mr Blair and Mr Brown, and their respective courtiers, are all right. But some of Mr Brown's admirers still believe that Mr Blair usurped the party leadership. Mr Mandelson, by all accounts, believes that Mr Brown tried to usurp European policy and would usurp much more if he could.

So far, these are the routine rivalries of mere politicians. Perhaps, however, there are profounder forces behind it all. There is the possibility that the entire government is a vast act of usurpation. To be elected, it usurped Tory economic policy, especially about taxation. It did so in order to usurp the middle classes from the Tories. That is something unnatural for Labour to do. In Shakespeare, the disturbers of nature always suffer in the end. Some of us await Fortinbras, but not too soon. We are enjoy- ing the play too much.