I’m a little late to the party here, but the end of an era came, for me, slightly belatedly than cable television would have it: I just finished the final episode of Breaking Bad last night. Personally, I think it’s needless to say I found the series to be one of the best works of artistry across any platform. Throughout the show, I couldn’t help but try to define the literary qualities I saw laced throughout each character and episode.

Which is why I was happy to learn that actor Anthony Hopkins defined them for me (though quite incoherently). In a letter to the cast and writers of the show, Hopkins praised Breaking Bad as an “epic work” that finds its roots in “a great Jacobean, Shakespearean or Greek Tragedy.” And I couldn’t agree more. The qualities that mark Shakespeare are also evident in Breaking Bad—a breathtaking layering of subplot and characterization, complexity of motivations open to interpretation, and a vague sense of fate and higher spirituality that creeps into the mundanity of character decisions.

In this post, I’d like to focus on the parallel qualities Breaking Bad shares specifically with Shakespeare, and even more specifically with Henry IV and Richard III.

Shakespeare’s Henry IV

Shakespeare’s Henry IV presents a portrait of a king who has successfully grabbed the throne from the rightful king before him, but is unsure of how to cement his position in the new regime. Though successful in his coup, King Henry is impotent as regards the realization of his highest dream: Henry wants England to join the Crusade to aid the Christians in ridding the Holy Land of Islamic forces, the “pagans in those holy fields.” Since the domains of new kings are always relatively unstable in the wake of a successful rebellion, Henry believes that unifying his country by identifying an external common enemy will suppress the country’s ongoing civil war and galvanize his authority.

Ironically, however, the reason King Henry can’t garner the troops and send a united front to Jerusalem finds its source in the same endemic he wants to cure his people from in the first place: rebellion within his own country on all borders. Thus, from the start, Shakespeare’s Henry is a king overrun with troubles and worries, with his right to power remaining questionable, and his stately legitimacy left un-legitimized. Henry IV’s opening lines depicts the faltering state of England’s union and the uncertainty of its king, a feeling that borders terror as King Henry announces that he and the people are “[s]o shaken . . . , so wan with care.”

Heisenberg

Shaken and wan with care defines the underwear-clad Walter White viewers are first introduced to within the first three minutes of the first episode, a shaking chemistry teacher who struggles to hold a camera steady in an attempt to tell his family he loves them, believing he is about to get arrested after his very first attempt at producing methamphetamine runs afoul. But of course, Walter more than comes into his own over the course of the series, transforming from a man terrified at the mere mention of going on a ride-along to meth labs with Hank, into the mastermind responsible for the drug’s most massive distribution the region witnessed.

Just like King Henry IV, whose doubts about the civil war prod him to search for the strength and recklessness he needs to protect his country and prove himself, Walt is fueled to find his bravado from a civil war of his own—his cancer, a sickness causing his body to wreak havoc against itself.

Thus, on a more obvious level, this means Walt’s internal corruption always precludes his external corruption; Walt’s insides are literally corrupt. And this life threatening illness is exactly what pushes him to negatively impact so many others’ lives. No matter how cancerous his external actions are to others, his internal health is even more directly cancerous to himself, eating his own body. Were it not for the toxicity within him, Walter would never need to perform toxic actions in the name of family. Walter is human, and his mortality forces us to remember the humanity of his actions.

Shakespeare’s Richard III

The transformation of Richard III can shed further insight into Walter White’s transformation into the treacherous Heisenberg. Like King Henry’s civil war and Walter White’s bodily cancer, King Richard is spurred to heinous, immoral actions because of a physical corruption–Richard is physically deformed from birth, always hunched over.

Richard III opens in a soliloquy, with the king avowing, “I . . . am rudely stamped and want love’s majesty, / . . . / Cheated of feature by dissembling nature, / Deformed, unfinished . . . / Therefore, since i cannot prove a lover / To entertain these fair well-spoken days, / I am determined to prove a villain” (I.1.16-20). Thus, his physical deformity paves the way to his moral deformity.

This moral deformity, as expected, influences his conscience. He echoes this sentiment even more powerfully in the final act of the play when he says, “Conscience is but a word that cowards use, / Devised at first to keep the strong in awe,” boasting of his ability to adapt his moral prescripts like a chameleon to whatever the situation of the moment demands (V.6.39-40). Thus, because Richard saw he could never be accepted as physically attractive, he decided to compensate by committing himself to standards of beauty perhaps even more materially attractive: absolute power. Once he set his sights on power, he adapted his chameleon-conscience to justifying whatever action it took to cement his kingship. In his heart of hearts, he re-prioritized his conscience by placing stately power at the top, and subverting every other rational and moral oblation underneath.

By doing so, Richard was able to convert himself into a monster, killing family members, children, using religion as manipulation, and scaring Queen Anne into marrying him at her own husband’s funeral, who Richard has murdered. Richard drops the genius (?) line to Anne: “He that bereft thee, lady, of thy husband, / Did it to help thee to a better husband” (I.2.138-39), referring to himself, and Anne seemingly as surprised the line worked as Richard. Not surprisingly, Richard is later responsible for Anne’s death, too.

Heisenberg

King Richard can thus perhaps explain away some of the mysteriousness surrounding Walt’s complete transformation into a criminal mastermind. While his cancer gives him some motivation on the surface level to take huge risks and downplay life’s value as he contemplates the slow decay of his own.

But on a deeper level, Walt’s compete ruthlessness in the realm of action is first caused and preempted by his inner lack of morality. But it’s not that Walter lacks a moral compass–Walt, like King Richard, has a very strong conscience. The reason Walt is able to justify actions he initially believes to be wrong is that he allows his conscience to be hijacked by other considerations, namely family and protecting his kids.

Like King Richard, Walter is a moral chameleon, abdicating his moral responsibility of dictates like murder is wrong, and replacing it with an overwhelming sense of duty to something higher–the life and wellbeing of his family. In fact, it is because Walt has such a strong conscience that he is able to reject all societal norms of right and wrong, even of the people closest to him, precisely because he replaces what his conscience originally tells him (evidenced by him sweating even the thought of killing Krazy 8 in Jesse’s basement) with committing himself to whatever it takes as long as the end result is the betterment of his family–defined of course, by Walt himself. Of course, Walt believes murder is wrong; but only when not outweighed by a greater concrete obligation to Holly and Flynn.

Thus, like King Richard, Heisenberg is able to justify heinous actions by appealing to, ironically, his strong conscience, which adapts to whatever dire times call for. Like Richard, Walt murders many people, including poisoning a child, and capitalizing on his wife’s fear to manipulate her into staying with him in his iconic I am the one who knocks line. It would not be a stretch to think that Walt perhaps was able to say in the shower after saying this to Sklyer, what Richard III said himself: “Was ever woman in this humour wooed? / Was ever woman in this humour won?” (I.2.215-16). Richard and Walt perhaps wondered why they hadn’t resorted to aggressive, egocentric fear tactics earlier in their respective story lines.

It’s interesting that, though the story of Shakespeare’s Richard III had been portrayed by multiple playwrights in various versions throughout history before and after Shakespeare, Shakespeare’s version was one of the only to portray Richard in a favorable manner while still including all the immorality he perpetuated throughout his kingdom. Though Shakespeare’s Richard was a monstrous villain like all the rest, readers and viewers of the play still sympathize with him as a protagonist, the ignoble anti-hero for whom a piece of us still roots for. That sentiment describes Walter exactly. I still found in each one of Walt’s actions the same humanity I find in myself.

Elements of Fate in BB and Shakespeare

Lastly, though King Henry IV, King Richard III, and Heisenberg are easy to root for despite their monstrosity, an element of fate as a higher order creeps into each storyline. Though King Henry learns political prowess, it is his son, Prince Hal, who transcends his shallow desires for power, and rises to be the quintessential prince, both sensible, compassionate, and strong enough to be tyrannical when needed. In the end, Prince Hal is forced to step in and save his father, King Henry.

In Richard’s case, fate is represented by the ghosts who appears, and the curses that reign down on his head after the masses catch a glimpse of his real character. Though he is successful for a time in legitimizing is reign, at the end of the play, he nevertheless is forced to realize who he has become. “I love myself,” he says. “Wherefore? . . . O no, alas, I rather hate myself” (5.5.141-43).

The same is true for Walter. In the last episode, again akin to Richard, he seems to have a hint of regret as he tells Skyler, “All the things that I did, you need to understand . . . I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it. And I was alive.” In his final self-analysis, Walter is forced to reconcile his mental fantasies with the pressing reality of his wife and kids who now must endure without him. In this moment, it appears that Walt understands that his conscience has not led him in the right direction at every turn. And, like Prince Hal, the last scene ends with Jesse Pinkman–Walter’s de facto heir of the drug empire–arguably emerging as the sensible hero who has succeeded where Walter has not: Jesse, like Prince Hal, has learned when strength necessitates the taking of life, but also when to clings to compassion when humanity calls for it. Jesse can still value life; Jesse, the sensible medium.

Jesse’s final act of acquiescence is lowering the gun from Walter’s forehead, a merciful act demonstrating Jess’s strength to accept what has happened, his awareness that the killing Walter will only diminish what little freedom he has left. And though victorious till now, Walt has let his festering greed consume all of him, and he dies on the floor while Jesse drives away. Though some would see this as Fate’s last word–impressing its mark and leaving no one exempt from its judgment–maybe this is one last nod to Walter’s humanity. After all this, he’s just like me.