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Get started at vanta.com. This is Jane Pauley. What can you say about a playwright who wrote in the 16th century and whose works are still getting Tony Award nominations 400 years later?
Sunday morning's Mo Rocca talks with New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd and a cast of thousands about The Bard, William Shakespeare. When you were 13, you had an imaginary boyfriend. You found out about that. And it wasn't Troy Donahue.
No, no. When I was 13, my older brother took me to see my first Shakespeare in an outdoor theater right near here. And it was Hamlet. And I immediately decided Hamlet was my boyfriend, not realizing he may be the worst boyfriend in the world. And so for many years, I just was hoping he would be more ambivalent about me than he was about anyone else. And then I finally realized now I had to break up with him.
He was terrible. But I began studying Shakespeare in school and completely fell in love with his work. That was probably pretty atypical for you to be 13, 14 years old and really into Shakespeare. I was really into vampires too, which I was afraid to tell anyone about. And then later, vampires became the biggest money-making proposition in the world.
So, yeah, I had many freak flags as a teenager. Right. But Shakespeare has played a really big part in your work and your career.
Right. What I love about Shakespeare is he deals in primary colors. I mean, all the emotions and passions that are so vivid and central. And he is about revenge and murder and treachery and perfidy and lives ruined.
And that's actually exactly how I program my Netflix algorithm. So to me, he's very modern. I mean, I think I have one answer to this, but are there plays that you keep coming back to over and over again when you're writing your column?
No, it kind of depends on who I'm writing about. Like different leaders remind me of different characters. Donald Trump, for instance, reminds me of several different plays. He's kind of like late Lear howling at the moon. He's also like Julius Caesar in a republic, but trying to grab the crown and think of himself as an emperor. President Obama, I think, is, once I saw the totality of it, he's like a Fortinbra character or a Richmond character in Richard III, where he's the good guy who comes in at the end and has to clean up the mess. But he himself is a little bit of a cipher. I mean, really, Shakespeare, what's so interesting about him, especially with regard to the White House or Washington, is many of his plays are about the moment where you realize that you are your own worst enemy.
And that is a very dangerous place to be. And that applies more to presidents like Nixon and Bill Clinton, where they're doing something that is just definitely going to bring them down, but they can't stop themselves. Is that sort of a central mystery to you or something? Because, right, these people at the pinnacle of power. Right. I always find it confusing because when a president is elected, I originally thought, well, they should be completely filled with confidence.
They've gotten this endorsement from the electorate. They should feel good about themselves. But for some reason, their insecurities and gremlins often kick in just at that moment, and they begin doing really self-destructive things. And Shakespeare is about the use of power and abuse of power and often the failure of leadership. When I became a White House reporter, I was only the second woman at The New York Times to have that job, and I was very nervous.
And I wanted to do a good job, and I thought maybe I could cover it like a Shakespearean court because basically Shakespeare is about the use and abuse of power and everything that can go wrong when you are at the top. And at the time, a lot of the guys thought that was silly because they thought you should just cover policy or if you're covering a campaign, the horse race. And I was focusing on the president as a person, his character, behavior, flaws. And yes, sometimes, like I remember one guy saying, it was too emotional, which I didn't understand at all. Because in the history of America, when we have had really horrible scarring incidents, it comes back to a president's gremlins, Watergate, Vietnam, Iraq.
All of those can be directly traced to a president's gremlins, not to some policy they stated when they were candidates. And Shakespeare understands that. Yes. No one knows more about power than Shakespeare.
I mean, it's and about love because it's all the power dynamic of the court and of love. We'll have more from our Sunday morning extended interview after this break. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same premium wireless for $15 a month plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities. So do like I did and have one of your assistants assistants switch you to Mint Mobile today.
I'm told it's super easy to do at MintMobile.com slash switch upfront payment of $45 for three month plan equivalent to $15 per month required intro rate first three months only then full price plan options available taxes and fees extra default terms at MintMobile.com. You know, I grew up in the Washington area and I always thought it was kind of odd that the Folger Shakespeare library was here, but is it actually bidding that it's in Washington? Yes. The Folgers fell in love with Washington when they were here briefly on a break from another trip. And they walked around and fell in love with it. And outside in the garden, there's a silvery statue of Puck from Midsummer Night's Dream.
And with the line, Lord, what fools these mortals be. And it faces the Capitol. So it's almost like a dialogue between Puck and Congress and the White House is right nearby too.
And there's never been a more apt description of politics in Washington than that. Did Shakespeare play a big role in the founding of this country? Thomas Jefferson advised people to read Shakespeare from the time it got dark till the time they went to bed. And John Adams and Abigail Adams constantly read Shakespeare. And so it was really woven into the American flag.
It was, this is what they were reading, Adams and Jefferson, when they founded the country. And they were using the psychology of Shakespeare to figure out how to make this country great. Because Shakespeare understood power. You know, it's funny because Freud used to study Shakespeare constantly. And he understood the psychology of power and how people use it. And sometimes they succeed, but mostly in Shakespeare they're failing. Hence the system of checks and balances.
Right, right. And so the founding fathers were studying him very carefully to see how they could learn about power and how it could be misused and how they could protect us from that. If you could have our political leaders read any one Shakespeare play, which would it be? Hmm.
I don't know. Well, I have to say lately it might be King Lear. Because if Joe Biden had read King Lear, he would have realized the dangers of the gerontocracy. And you really should not cling to power, you know, and suffocate the younger people who are coming along from having their day in the sun when you are, you know, too old to really exercise power. What did George W. Bush need to read?
Well, let's see. I would say Othello. Because Othello was smarter than everyone and more charismatic. He had everything going for him.
But at some level we all have that little insecure gremlin in us. And Iago was a genius at bringing that out in Othello. And that was Dick Cheney. And during your years covering Bill Clinton, was there one Shakespeare play or character that you went back to more than others? Let's see. Bill Clinton.
I don't know. You know, Clinton just is such a classic Shakespeare character because he just had this tragic flaw of recklessness. And, you know, he also had a syndrome where he needed to know how much he was loved. It was like, will you love me if I screw up this much?
Will you still love me? And his story is very much at the heart of, you know, when you become your own worst enemy, which is the topic Shakespeare often deals with. I mean, on some level, some of this stuff is so grim and so serious with big implications. But is it also fun for you to go back to this?
Or what is it? Is it enriching to go back to this material when you're writing about these people? I know I do keep going back because I just went back and got my master's degree in English literature focusing on Shakespeare at Columbia. And that was a lot of work to do while I had a full-time job.
But you did it because? I just think you have to keep challenging yourself. And with Shakespeare, there are always more layers. And as you say, there is always humor, even in the most tragic Shakespearean stories, he always has the fool and he has humorous characters because, you know, it has, tragedy has to be leavened with that. I mean, do you find yourself wondering how one person could contain so much, could produce so much material that survived? No, it's incredible. I mean, it's a constant source of amazement. And when I went back to Columbia, every time you study a play, you see it in a completely different way.
And productions can do these plays in a completely different way. When I was at Columbia, you know, I was in class with 20-year-old students. And if you would study the Taming of the Shrew, like I would talk to some of the young women there about it, and they'd be kind of like, well, this part is sexist. And I was like, well, you have to understand he was writing 400 years ago. And 400 years ago, he was an unbelievable feminist for that time. And he created these incredible women in the comedies, especially, who are independent, and they talk back to the men, and they're saucy.
Shakespeare combined history and myth, and he had every character that can be known to man. I'm Jane Pauley. Thank you for listening. And for more of our extended interviews, follow and listen to Sunday Morning on the free Odyssey app, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Whoa. This is the best. And a bloody good time. Almost forgot the best part. It's the first great action comedy of the year. Let the magic happen. That's good. Looking forward to it. Novocaine, rated R, now streaming on Paramount+. That sounds like fun. Obviously, murder's not fun.
