The Mind of a (Shakespearean) Villain

(This is an essay written for a Shakespeare course I took in spring 2019 and is being used as a writing sample.)

To be seen as morally wrong, evil, and a threat from the moment one is born is a terrifying reality, especially if that perception does not change throughout one’s life, but stays the same or even grows in intensity. The glowering looks, the biting words, and even physical violence or threats, just because of the way a person looks or the situation in which they were born, would be impossible to ignore. For some, looking past these prejudices and opinions about their morality as human beings is impossible, or could lead to death if ignored or fought against. So many stories in the news detail horrific deaths of people killed because of a skewed perception of them relating to their religion, nationality, or race, and many others like them live in fear of a similar fate. One way to cope with the onslaught of negative perceptions is to conform to the system and be the bad person that everyone else already believes one is. Even though this is a dark, dangerous way to live, for some people, it is the only way to cope with the horrific societal perceptions and negative opinions. On top of that, this is not a new occurrence by any means, and xenophobia, racism, religious prosecution, and other discriminatory behavior has impacted the lives of the ‘other’ for centuries. During Shakespeare’s time, there was a burst of xenophobic behavior relating to African peoples coming to England, and the discrimination of illegitimate children, and by extension cuckoldry and premarital sex, was still widely done. To be different from the standards and expectations of the ‘proper’ English society was a dangerous thing, and what the English did not understand, they demonized- this included human beings. These standards were known by everyone, although there was little said in public about protecting the rights of minorities or bastard children, and nothing was done to change this culture of demonizing for a long time. However, even though it was taboo to discuss human rights outright during Shakespeare’s time, this did not mean that Shakespeare was not discussing this indirectly. Don John from Much Ado About Nothing and Aaron from Titus Andronicus are the villains of their respective plays because they are fulfilling the expectations set by other people, not because they were born evil.

Don John’s character in Much Ado About Nothing is not one whose motives are greatly elaborated on throughout the play, however his position regarding Hero and Claudio’s marriage in particular is vital. When Don John is introduced, it becomes abundantly clear that he has a bad history with his beloved brother when Leonato says to him, “Being reconciled to the prince your brother, I owe you all the duty” although their history is not explained until later (1.1.148–9). The audience gets the first look into Don John’s thought process in 1.3, when he is sulking and explains to Conrad why he is in such bad spirits. Don John says, “I cannot hide what I am, I must be sad when I have cause”, meaning that he cannot hide his true feelings and has trouble putting up a polite façade around other people (1.3.11–12). This is an issue because he is welcomed mostly because of the sway and reputation of his brother, and if he does not act proper, he very easily can get shunned. Don John does not want to conform to the way other people act, and he feels different from them in ways that he cannot hide. In response to this, Conrad replies with “Yea, but you must not make the full show of this till you may do it without controlment. You have of late stood out against your brother, and he hath ta’en you newly into his grace” (1.3.17–20). Conrad confirms to the audience that Don John’s true actions are being held back because he recently fought and reconciled with his brother; perhaps he believes that if Don John acts the way he normally does, Don Pedro will anger and shun him from his life for good. However, Don John resists this notion, retorting that, “it better fits my blood to be disdained of all than to fashion a carriage to rob love from any” (1.3.25–6). This is the line that seems to fully embody the motive behind Don John’s villainous behaviors from here on out. Don John believes that acting evilly ‘fits his blood’ — which represents his true nature, but also his literal blood, which is impure and illegitimate. He follows that up by saying that it would suit him better to be hated by everyone rather than loved for pretending to be somebody he’s not, and put in simpler terms, he would rather be hated for being himself than loved for being somebody else. Perhaps Don John does not truly believe that evil deeds are the actions that make him who he is, but instead believes that being hated for conforming to his identity as a bastard is better than sucking up to his brother for the rest of his life. He even continues by saying, “I am trusted with a muzzle and enfranchised with a clog, therefore I have decreed not to sing in my cage”, meaning that even though Don John is currently on good terms with his brother, he is not trusted by him at all (1.3.29–30). Since his brother still has his reservations about trusting him completely, Don John decides with this line that he will stop ‘singing in his cage’ and break from his bonds completely. However, acting out against the polite society that he is allowed a part of, but denied the same privileges as his legitimate brother, means that the only way to rebel is to be evil rather than nice.

What begins to complicate Don John’s claims in this scene are the actions that he takes throughout the rest of the play. Don John’s role as a self-proclaimed “plain-dealing villain” gets questioned when, after his initial and relatively harmless scheme backfires, Don John goes to extremes to destroy Claudio and Hero’s lives (1.3.28–9). At first, Don John wants to mess with Claudio’s relationship because he and Don Pedro are close friends, and because the two of them were planning on seducing Hero by making her fall in love with Don Pedro first. The audience is led to believe that through Don John’s jealousy towards his brother, he manipulates a situation to tear apart a great friendship between his brother and his brother’s best friend. Also, Hero happens to be involved too, but she is not the focus, and arguably neither is the marriage that Don John is attempting to destroy. Don Pedro gets to have everything that Don John should have but cannot because of something that was decided before he was even born. Envious of his brother’s good life and strong friendships, Don John seeks to destroy them and make Don Pedro’s life at little more like his own. When his plan fails, however, Don John starts to lose sight of his intentions and becomes overcome with rage towards the strong friendship that Claudio and Don Pedro share despite his efforts. It is true that Don John spirals down the road of seemingly purposeless villainy from this point onwards, however, at the heart of his misdeeds lies hurt feelings from unjust exclusion and negative perceptions.

Another group of people that experienced prejudice during Shakespeare’s time were the Moors, a term that the English would use “interchangeably with such similarly ambiguous terms as ‘African’, ‘Ethiopian’, ‘Negro’, and even ‘Indian’” to describe a person that was black or Muslim (Bartels 434). In Shakespeare’s plays, he depicts only a few Moor characters, the first being Aaron from Titus Andronicus. Aaron’s position as one of the most evil and immoral villains that Shakespeare has ever written is widely acknowledged, and even Aaron himself appears to want people to view him as a terrible person within the play. From his first appearance in 2.1, it is established that Aaron has a loyalty to his mistress, Tamora, and also that he is a terrible, rotten person. When Chiron and Demetrius approach Aaron and inform him that they are both in love with Lavinia, Aaron responds with the suggestion to take Lavinia by force because “Lucrece was not more chaste Than this Lavinia” (2.1.108–9). By making a connection between the story of Lucrece, who was raped and had her tongue cut off so she could not name her rapist, and Lavinia, Aaron is directly encouraging them to do something unspeakably horrible to a girl who is innocent. Unlike Don John, whose actions were not so terrible at the start of the play, Aaron starts the play off with an explosion of bad behavior that immediately lets the audience know that he is a hopelessly evil character. Aaron’s actions for the rest of the play only affirm this over and over, from setting up the trap to kill Quintus and Martius to tricking Titus into chopping off his hand, Aaron is never portrayed as having a single shred of remorse for his misdeeds. In addition, the frequent reminders within the play that Aaron is a Moor subtly give explanation as to why he is written as being so heartlessly villainous. However, there is something that happens which will change how Aaron is portrayed for the last part of the play: the birth of Aaron’s child.

Before his son is born, Aaron was willing to do anything for his mistress and her sons without question, but when his baby is born and Tamora demands that he be killed, Aaron stands up for himself. He says, “My mistress is my mistress; this myself, The vigor and the picture of my youth. This before all the world do I prefer, This maugre all the world I will keep safe, Or some of you shall smoke for it in Rome!” (4.2.107–11). First and foremost, even though Tamora wants the baby disposed of, Aaron refuses the word of his mistress for the first time in the play. Aaron’s strong love for his son is powerful, and Aaron feels a responsibility to protect his son even though everyone around him wants the baby dead. In addition to the fact that the baby is illegitimate, it is also obviously dark skinned, and the words that Chiron, Demetrius, and the nurse say about the baby are frightfully harsh. The Nurse even refers to the baby as, “a devil” and as “loathsome as a toad” simply because of the color of his skin (4.2.64, 67). In response to this, Aaron quips back, “is black so base a hue?” and reassures the baby that he is “a beauteous blossom” (4.2.71–2). These negative comments towards Aaron’s baby are not only extreme, since he is a newborn and could not control the situation of his birth, but they also insult Aaron and show the others’ true feelings about him that had not been previously iterated. They clearly believe that Aaron is as foul as his son, and instead of defending himself or Tamora, Aaron instead chooses to defend his baby and will continue to do so for the rest of the play. He does not dwell on what those words mean about him, perhaps because he has heard them all many times before.

Later on, when the baby is discovered to be the child of Tamora and Aaron by the Goths and is threatened to be executed, Aaron steps up to protect his son in a way that completely fights against his previously established persona of evilness: he confesses to his sins and offers himself in place of his son. With the line, “Lucius, save the child, And bear it from me to the empress. If thou do this, I’ll show thee wondrous things That highly may advantage thee to hear”, Aaron barters with Lucius to free his son in exchange for a confession of all of the misdeeds Aaron has done (5.1.53–57). Even though Aaron was previously quite sneaky with his villainous actions, he is willing to confess to everything, and likely get executed for them, so that his son will not have to face the same fate. His willingness to sacrifice himself and reveal all of his villainous secrets for the sake of an infant’s life is astounding, and proves that Aaron is not completely evil, even though he is certainly still evil. Despite his horrible deeds, Aaron is still willing to give it all up in order to save his son, so perhaps being an evil person is not really who he wants to be, but an expectation he is stuck with because of the color of his skin. His son is called a devil within moments after his birth, and Aaron is called a devil after having done innumerable horrible acts of villainy; having done crimes or not, they are both marked as evil, so why bother fighting it?

There is a pretty prevalent opinion among scholars that neither Don John from Much Ado About Nothing nor Aaron from Titus Andronicus have actual motives behind their evil deeds. Albert Shepherd wrote that, “Aaron […] is not a character in the true sense of the word, but more of a stock figure. Don John […] gives us the only example of absolutely motiveless villainy” (Shepherd 346). Regarding Shepherd’s claim that Don John is completely motiveless, this simply ignores 1.3 when Don John expresses how difficult it is for him to act proper when he is neither trusted nor given the same rights as his brother just on the basis of his illegitimacy. Both Aaron and Don John suffer with the perceptions people have of them, and both found it easier or favorable to simply act as evil as they are expected to act. Regarding Aaron, Emily Bartels wrote that “while Shakespeare brings Aaron near the center of the staged court, accords him a voice of eloquence and knowledge, and allows his scheme to shape the plot, he concomitantly keeps the Moor on the outside, literally and figuratively, and both answers and promotes the darkest vision of the stereotype” (Bartels 442). While it is true that Aaron, on the surface, is just another dimensionless and racist representation of a Moor, as Shepherd suggests, he actually displays great intelligence and emotional sincerity towards his son. Aaron’s connection to his child and how this is continuously presented throughout the play fights against Bartel’s claim that Titus Andronicus only affirms the negative stereotypes that English people had against Moors. In fact, the inclusion of Aaron’s love for his son counters many negative perceptions that the English people had.

Widespread negative perceptions and stereotypes about groups of people is something that has existed for a very long time, and likely will not be going away anytime soon. In recent years, there has been an increase in prejudice against immigrants, and almost exclusively immigrants of color. O’Keefe states that, “Survey research on Americans with anti-immigrant attitudes has found numerous false beliefs regarding immigrants’ involvement in violent crime, social expenditure […] and rate of influx […] despite available evidence” (O’Keefe 184). Not too far from this irrational belief of today’s time is how the English during Shakespeare’s time believed that Moors were evil for absurd reasons. Apparently, “since Satan was black, it followed that black people were satanic. By this satanic reasoning, Africans were lustful, cruel savages who delighted in evil for evil’s sake”, even though this was most certainly factually incorrect (Papp and Kirkland 56). The widespread perception that outsiders are evil or dangerous not only impacts individual people within these groups, but also can affect policy regarding how they are treated by the law. To have one’s fate dangle before one’s eyes simply because of a false perception based on the unchangeable way that one was born is a terrifying concept, but one that countless people have to deal with every day. Perhaps it is understandable, to a certain degree, that people would choose to cope with the onslaught of negative expectations by adhering to them. For Don John and Aaron, at least, they chose to do this even though it inevitably led to their own demises. However, would they have had fulfilling lives even if they did not do this? Maybe choosing to live their lives the way they did protected them and allowed them to find some level of satisfaction that they would not have been able to find if they tried to resist the perceptions.

Works Cited

Bartels, Emily C. “Making More of the Moor: Aaron, Othello, and Renaissance Refashionings of Race.” Shakespeare Quarterly, vol. 41, no. 4, 1990, pp. 433–454. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2870775. Accessed 8 May 2019.

O’Keefe, Denis J. “Perception vs. Reality: Testing the Viability of a Psychohistorical Interpretation of the Group Threat Approach to Negative Attitudes Toward Immigrants and the Role of Ideological and Personality Traits in Perception Biases.” Journal of Psychohistory, vol. 46, no. 3, Winter 2019, pp. 179–206. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=134540672&site=ehost-live&scope=site. Accessed 8 May 2019.

Papp, Joseph and Elizabeth Kirkland. Shakespeare Alive! Bantam Books, 1988, pp. 54–57.

Shakespeare, William. “Much Ado About Nothing.” Edited by Peter Holland, Penguin Books, 1999.

Shakespeare, William. “Titus Andronicus.” The Complete Pelican Shakespeare. Edited by Stephen Orgel and A.R Braunmuller, Penguin Books, 2002, pp. 1219–1250.

Shepherd, J. Albert. “The Self-Revelations of Shakespeare’s Villains.” The Sewanee Review, vol. 10, no. 3, 1902, pp. 341–363. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/27530502. Accessed 8 May 2019.