ABSTRACT
The concern with private and public, with rulers, kings and tyrants, is much evident in Plato and Aristotle, figures so influential in the Middles Ages and Renaissance. All these dimensions of the personal and the political are intertwined. John of Salisbury, writing in the Middle Ages, shares some of the concerns of kingship and tyranny that classical and Renaissance writers do. William Shakespeare, his predecessors, contemporaries and successors, Thomas Norton, Thomas Sackville, Thomas Preston, Thomas Legge, Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson all give a multidimensional representation of the private and public elements of the lives of rulers, kings and tyrants.
