Swift (as a Shadow): Performing

One of the juiciest parallels between Swift’s career and Shakespeare’s lies in the concept of performing a part, especially performing the villain. In Macbeth, Lady Macbeth coaches her husband to hide his deadly intent behind a welcoming facade: “look like th’ innocent flower, but be the serpent under’t”. That potent image, a serpent coiled beneath a pretty bloom, has become idiomatic for deceptive appearances. It also became a reality for Taylor Swift in 2017. Branded a “snake” by the tabloids and internet trolls after a highly publicized feud, Swift did something ingenious on her next album Reputation: she embraced the identity of the serpent. Rather than fighting the label, she adopted it as an empowering motif, from the writhing reptilian graphics in her music videos and stage design, to the sly snake-like rhetoric in her lyrics. Swift essentially gave the audience a snake queen in a move Richard III would applaud.  Shakespeare’s Richard, one of literature's best villains, revels in his own duplicity. He famously admits, “And thus I clothe my naked villainy with old odd ends stolen out of holy writ; and seem a saint, when most I play the devil.”  In other words, Richard knows he is acting, intentionally cloaking his true nature with carefully chosen language and a seductive smile, playing whatever part will gain people’s trust before he ultimately strikes. 

Swift’s approach on Reputation is an inverse reflection of Richard’s. She takes the narrative of “Taylor Swift: Backstabbing Snake” that was imposed on her and turns it into a clever, self-aware performance. In the music video for “Look What You Made Me Do,” she literally sits on a golden throne flanked by giant serpents, sipping tea that a snake pours for her. The song is a theatrical wink, with Swift delivering the spoken-word interjection,  “I’m sorry,the old Taylor can’t come to the phone right now. Why? ‘Cause she’s dead!” She stages her own death and rebirth as a villain who is in on the joke. It is a scene that could be plucked straight from a Shakespearean play-within-a-play or a scene where a character adopts a disguise to make a point. On Reputation, Swift played the “devil” so incredibly that the audience was forced to see the sly part, that she was playing a role. Where Richard III weaponized a saintly facade to cloak his devilry, Swift weaponized a devilish facade to expose the absurdity of her supposed villainy. It’s performance as defiance, a strategy Shakespeare’s savvy characters often use. Consider Iago in Othello, who puts on the mask of the honest, humble servant while slyly declaring, “I am not what I am” – he too “seems a saint” while “playing the devil.” Swift’s self-reinvention was less nefarious, but it similarly relied on inverting public expectations. By leaning into the snake imagery (the very symbol of deception since man’s fall from the Garden of Eden), she robbed it of its power to hurt her. The innocent flower unveiled the serpent under it and that serpent looked the world in the eye, not ashamed of her actions. 

This change from America’s sweetheart to a wordly schemer did not happen overnight. Seeds of it were present even in Taylor Swift’s Speak Now era, albeit in a more naive form. Back in 2010, Swift wrote a cheeky track called “Better Than Revenge,” targeting a young actress who (in Swift’s view) “stole” her boyfriend. The song’s original lyrics infamously say “She’s better known for the things that she does on the mattress.” It is a scathing line delivered by an only 19-year-old Swift who was at the time venting her jealousy extremely bluntly. In essence, Swift briefly cast herself as the woman that is turned into the villain, out to smear the reputation of another woman. The irony is rich as this is exactly the kind of petty malice that Shakespeare might put into the mouth of an antagonist. One might recall Don John in Much Ado About Nothing, scheming to slander Hero’s virtue and to stop her wedding out of simple spite. Or even Othello, who is goaded by Iago into publicly shaming his innocent wife Desdemona as “that cunning whore of Venice.” Taylor’s teenage revenge song was fortunately far less catastrophic and over the years Swift grew to regret the misogynistic tone of that lyric, opting to change the infamous line when she re-recorded the song. Still, it is noteworthy that Swift has occupied both sides of the revenge equation in her art, both the avenger and the avenged.

This dual perspective resonates with Shakespeare’s exploration of revenge and villainy. In Othello, for instance, we find both a mastermind of revenge (Iago) and a victim of false accusation (Desdemona). Swift has, at times, played both roles. With “Better Than Revenge,” she was in Iago’s shoes – sowing a rumor, knocking down her perceived rival’s “good name.” Years later, during the Reputation era, Swift found herself in Desdemona’s place, publicly maligned and called a snake over conflicts and misunderstandings. The Reputation album in large part was her answer to that character assassination. Shakespeare keenly understood what Iago calls the value of a “good name.” As Iago chillingly tells Othello: “Good name in man and woman, dear my lord, is the immediate jewel of their souls… But he that filches from me my good name robs me of that which not enriches him and makes me poor indeed.” Swift likewise recognized that losing control of her narrative was a kind of theft. Reputation was her attempt to reclaim that, or at least to devalue it so that others couldn’t hold it for ransom. By making fun of her own ruined reputation (filling the “Look What You Made Me Do” video with tabloids headlines and caricatures of her past selves), she made it clear that no one gets to write her story but her.