As Shakespeare understood, the strategy is hardly without risk. The plan may go awry, as Buckingham’s does, and end in execution rather than escape. Friends and family may suffer. The tyrant may hold a loved one hostage, as when Richard III seizes Lord Stanley’s son in order to ensure his loyalty: “Look your heart be firm,” he tells the anguished father. “Or else his head’s assurance is but frail” (Richard III 4.4.495–96). As Macduff finds, the blow may fall heavily on innocent loved ones left behind.
