(We’re mashing up current events with Hamlet, the whole play, and you can start here in the middle or with this post.)
The orange-haired Ghost, leader of Denmark in the high noon of its national harmony, whispers to Hamlet, to each of us, a dreadful secret that the mainstream news organs are immune to understanding and will go to their ratings deaths denying: His re-election was murdered:
Hamlet: “Whither wilt thou lead me? Speak. I’ll go no further.”
Ghost: “Mark me.”
Hamlet: “I will.”
Ghost: “My hour is almost come
When I to sulfurous and tormenting fumes
Must render up myself.”
Actually, he’s golfing most days in Florida’s balmy spring weather, enjoying a well-earned rest after four strenuous years of highly competent governance. So we’ll just drop that part of the analogy.
Hamlet: “Alas, poor ghost!”
Ghost: “Pity me not, but lend thy serious hearing
To what I shall unfold.”
Hamlet: “Speak, I am bound to hear.”
Ghost: “So art thou to revenge, when thou shalt hear.”
Hamlet: “What?”
Ghost: “I am thy father’s spirit,
Doomed for a certain term to walk the night,…
If thou didst ever thy dear father love – “
Hamlet: “O God!”
Gho: “Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.”
Hamlet: “Murder?”
The Ghost goes on to describe the circumstances of his demise, laying out the ballot harvesting, false signatures, running of the same ballots multiple times through voting machines, coordinated violation of state election laws by democrat secretaries of state, destruction of evidence after election day, and yet more:
Gho: “Murder most foul…
…Sleeping within my orchard,
My custom always of the afternoon,
Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole,
With juice of cursed hebona in a vial,
And in the porches of my ears did pour
The leprous distilment, whose effect
Holds such an enmity with blood of man…
Thus was I, by a brother’s hand
Of life, of crown, of queen at once dispatched,
Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin,…
No reckoning made, but sent to my account
With all my imperfections on my head.
O horrible! O, horrible, most horrible!
If thou hast nature in thee, bear it not.
Let not the royal bed of Denmark be
A couch for luxury and damned incest…
Adieu, adieu, adieu! Remember me.” [The Ghost exits]
The imperfections still on his head include the unfinished business with China and the Middle East, the draining of the swamp delayed by our perfidious Congress and federal agencies, and the restoration of a color-blind, upwardly mobile American culture and economy, all now painfully delayed, harming most the most vulnerable among us. (The distracted globe is Hamlet’s skull,):
Hamlet: “…Hold, hold, my heart;
And you, my sinews, grow not instant old,
But bear me stiffly up, Remember thee!
Aye, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat
In this distracted globe. Remember thee!
Yes, from the table of my memory
I’ll wipe away all trivial fond records,
And thy commandment all alone shall live
Within the book and volume of my brain…”
Hamlet orders the guards and Horatio to swear they will tell no one what they have seen. Hamlet and Horatio then reflect on the ghostly visitation:
Horatio: “O day and night, but this is wondrous strange!”
Hamlet: “And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy….
The time is out of joint. O cursed spite
That ever I was born to set it right!”
Yes, the time is out of joint. And we like Hamlet may curse the need to abandon our personal destinies in favor of correcting our national one.
Hope you’re enjoying this mashup of Hamlet and current events. The Blogging Hamlet series starts with this post.
