Rent All the King's Men

Synopsis

...[W]hen I entered Louisiana, my imagination was already trapped in speculation about the struggle for power in the world of politics--specifically in a Southern state....[I]f you were living in Louisiana, you knew you were living in history defining itself before your eyes. And you knew that you were not seeing a half-drunk hick buffoon performing an old routine, but were witnessing a drama which was a version of the world's drama, and the drama of history, too, the old drama of power and ethics....One of my duties was to teach a senior Shakespeare class, and in Shakespeare that question of power and ethics--and the question of determination in history--is frequent and vivid. I read Shakespeare, and many books about him, with a growing thought of Huey [Long]--who, behind his mask of idiotic or vulgar clowning, might suddenly be brilliant, inevitable, ruthless.

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