Peter Conrad: “Shakespeare’s history plays about feudal England and republican Rome have become a nightmare from which the present is trying to awake. Tory plotters against the enfeebled Theresa May could be auditioning for the role of Richard III, who deftly kills his way to the crown. Meanwhile Donald Trump, according to his lawyer John Dowd, behaves like ‘an aggrieved Shakespearean king’ – a petulant Richard II or a deranged Lear, astonished by the disrespect of his subjects. Trump also matches two of Shakespeare’s Romans – a would-be Julius Caesar with despotic longings, he is as titanically tetchy as Coriolanus, given to volleys of abuse that betray his mental instability.”