In this chapter, I argue that Shakespeare's response to the moral foundation of authority is not located in the speeches of his political leaders because authority is not synonymous with power. Authority must be earned, whereas power is usually bestowed. Therefore, we must look to the relationships between characters of different social rank, especially between servants and their masters. In Shakespeare's plays these relationships often take the form of freely chosen employment as opposed to feudal oaths of fealty. This is because paid employment became the new norm as early capitalism flourished in the 1500s, and the last remnants of the old feudal order were swept away. Focusing on the relationship between Adam and Orlando in As You Like It, the contrast between Kent and Oswald in King Lear, and the relationship between Flavius the steward and Timon in Timon of Athens, I contend that in Shakespeare's plays virtuous authority entails reciprocal good service. Good service is found not in mere obedience but in a sense of duty, which might on occasion directly contradict the wishes of the master. In the ideal scenario, which is glimpsed in the relationship between Adam and Orlando in As You Like It, good leadership is rewarded with good service. However, sometimes – as in the cases of Kent and Lear, and Flavius and Timon – poor leaders are rewarded with good service, which (as bad leaders) they fail to recognise. Even so, good servants seem to derive a sense of meaningful purpose from their duty, while characters who fail to transcend self-interest find only existential despair. In virtually all cases, if authority is mistaken for oppressive power, and if liberty is mistaken for subversion, tyranny follows.

Few topics have been as thoroughly mined out as that of Shakespeare's depiction of power, which was an obsession of new historicist and cultural materialist critics from the 1980s to the mid-2000s. I have analysed the strengths and shortcomings of these two schools elsewhere at length.