Although insecurity, overconfidence, and murderous rage are strange bedfellows, they all coexist in the tyrant’s soul. He has servants and associates, but in effect he is alone. Institutional restraints have all failed. The internal and external censors that keep most ordinary mortals, let alone rulers of nations, from sending irrational messages in the middle of the night or acting on every crazed impulse are absent. “From this moment,” Macbeth declares, “The very firstlings of my heart shall be/The firstlings of my hand” (4.1.145–46).
