What Shakespeare Can Teach Us About the Villain
As the trial of Bryan Kohberger approached its conclusion, the families of those he murdered were given the opportunity to address him directly in court. Their words, shaped by grief and moral clarity, carried a weight that all who heard them could feel. These family members had lost their loved ones for no reason that could ever make sense. When Kohberger was asked if he wished to offer any explanation for his actions, he replied simply, “I respectfully decline.” It was a final cruelty, an act of withholding that twisted the knife further. From a man who had shown no respect for the sanctity of life, this newly found “respect” only sharpened the pain.
But what explanation were the victims’ families hoping to receive? Would any reason, if indeed one were given, be sufficient? Judge Steven Hippler seemed to understand the limits of what could be expected. He told the court: “The more we struggle to seek for explanation for the unexplainable, the more power and control we give to him.” That insight lingers. There is a kind of power in evil’s opacity, in its refusal to be made coherent. And perhaps that is part of the point: evil does not merely resist justice; it resists reason itself.
Shakespeare understood this. Again and again, his greatest villains descend into incoherence, even when, especially when, they are given the chance to explain themselves. Consider Othello. The titular character, entirely innocent of the charges that have driven him to murder his beloved Desdemona, is overcome with grief when the truth is finally revealed. In a moment of anguish, he turns to Cassio and, in the presence of the villain, Iago, pleads: “Will you, I pray, demand that demi-devil why he hath thus ensnared my soul and body?”
The question is a natural one. Why did Iago do it? What was the motive? What, exactly, justifies the destruction he has wrought?
We know Iago’s stated reason: he was passed over for a promotion. He felt his honor had been slighted. But the disproportion is staggering. If Iago were to say plainly, “I destroyed your life because I was angry about my career,” would that help Othello grieve? Would that restore meaning to the senseless?
Iago, in the end, says nothing. “Demand me nothing,” he replies. “What you know, you know. From this time forth I never will speak word.” The silence is chilling. But it is not merely rhetorical. Iago’s muteness reflects a deeper truth: to speak coherently requires a word, it is to participate in the Logos, and he has rejected the Logos. His silence is not cunning; it is the collapse of meaning. He can no longer speak because he no longer possesses a reason worth speaking. From that moment forward, including into eternity, he has nothing left to say.
By contrast, Othello’s final act is to request that his story be told rightly. He longs for coherence. For moral understanding. For some measure of justice. Iago hides from the light of judgment. Othello, broken and repentant, steps into it.
We see something similar in Macbeth. In his famous “Tomorrow” soliloquy, Macbeth reflects bitterly on the futility of life: “Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more.” We are all actors, he says, but the playwright, the one writing the script, is a fool. He does not name God, but the implication is clear. In Macbeth’s despair, he declares that it is God, not Macbeth, who is a fool..
But it is not the playwright who is incoherent; it is Macbeth. His life, his actions, his justifications, these have become “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” The nihilism is not a revelation about the universe; it is a confession of his own moral and intellectual failure. For all the warnings his conscience gave him, more than any of Shakespeare’s tragic villains, he never once does the coherent thing and repent. He only plunges deeper into darkness, further into his compact with hell, ending not with a final word of meaning, but with the cold silence of spiritual death.
What is Shakespeare showing us? That evil, in its final form, cannot be explained. It resists rationality. It rejects the Logos. It collapses into incoherence.
At times, evil pretends to offer reasons. Consider Richard III. Unlike Macbeth, Richard is coolly logical, at least at first. He loves to speak directly to the audience, laying out his plots and plans. He knows how to get from step 1 to step 2 to step 3 to the crown. He revels in his manipulations. He does not think in spirals like Macbeth, nor in jealous torments, like Iago. He thinks like a tactician. But even Richard cannot sustain the illusion.
On the eve of battle, Richard is haunted by the ghosts of those he murdered. He awakens in dread, crying out: “Have mercy, Jesu! Soft, I did but dream. O coward conscience, how dost thou afflict me!” What follows is a moment of startling introspection: “Is there a murderer here? No. Yes, I am. Then fly! What, myself from myself? … I rather hate myself for hateful deeds committed by myself.”
It seems, for a moment, that Richard might repent. He acknowledges that he hates himself. He recognizes the horror of what he has done. He is right there, asking mercy from Jesus, and he pushes it all away. The morning light dispels the spell. By daylight, he mocks conscience: “Conscience is but a word that cowards use.” And then he leads his men into battle with the final, fatal rally: “March on! Join bravely! Let us to it pell-mell. If not to heaven, then hand in hand to hell.”
It is the cry of a soul unmoored. If heaven or hell are interchangeable, then nothing matters: not virtue, not truth, not judgment. Not even speech. Richard, like Iago and Macbeth, ends in incoherence.
What Shakespeare shows us in all three of these figures is that evil is not simply wrong—it is irrational. It is, fundamentally, a rejection of the Word, of the Truth, of the Light that gives meaning to our being. “In him was life, and the life was the light of men,” John tells us. And those who reject that light are left only with darkness. Their “reasons” become absurdities. Their justifications collapse. Their final act is silence, not because they are silenced by others, but because they have nothing left to say.
In this light, Judge Hippler’s words take on deeper meaning. When we seek to understand the unexplainable, we risk granting evil a power it does not deserve. We imagine that evil has depth, that it is intellectually serious, that it can be justified if only we listen long enough. But Shakespeare and Scripture remind us otherwise. Evil is not deep; it is hollow. It is not brilliant; it is mad. And its final state is not defiant eloquence, but muttered incoherence.
To be sure, justice must be done. Like Macduff confronting Macbeth, the victims and their families rightly cry out for moral recompense. But there is a justice deeper than the courtroom, a divine, ontological justice that cannot be evaded. Human courts may be bribed or manipulated. But the moral law, written into the fabric of reality, holds firm. And the consequence of evil, in that court, is not merely punishment—it is dissolution. The villain loses his coherence. He can no longer explain himself to others because he cannot explain himself to himself. His mind is darkened.
This is why Christians, when confronted with public evil, must speak—not with ambiguity, but with clarity. Not with fascination, but with sound judgment. Not because we presume to know the heart, but because we know what evil does to the heart. We know that silence in the face of sin is not neutrality; it is surrender. And we know that the Word, the Logos, still speaks. “He is there and he is not silent.” To be mature means you can rightly discern good and evil (Heb 5:14).
Shakespeare is rarely overtly theological, but he is always teaching us theology.
Even now, in the shadow of incoherence, the Light shines in the darkness. And the darkness has not overcome it. “In him was life, and that life is the light of man.”
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