President Biden took a special dosage of reanimating medications, and emerged from a daytime nap to address the nation. The Capitol was sparsely attended with masked politicians, their confidence bolstered by the hastily erected 12-foot-high barbed wire wall they recently placed between themselves and the citizenry they claim to represent.

Shakespeare constructed this very same farce in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, when, in Act V, the “mechanicals,” a handful of dim-witted Athenian tradesmen who had been rehearsing a play for the Duke of Athens, were permitted to present their entertainment. The story was of Pyramus and Thisby, a story of two lovers separated by a wall. A tradesman named Snout portrays the Wall:

Snout: “In this same interlude it doth befall
That I, one Snout by name, present a wall;
And such a wall, as I would have you think,
That had in it a crannied hole or chink,
Through which the lovers, Pyramus and Thisby,
Did whisper often very secretly.”

Biden in our telling is Pyramus, peeking out from behind a wall to address his imagined lover, the American people, represented by Thisby. Ah, but Thisby isn’t there:

Biden, portraying Bottom, portraying Pyramus:

“O grim-look’d night! O night with hue so black!
O night, which ever art when day is not!
O night, O night! alack, alack, alack,
I fear my Thisby’s promise is forgot!
And thou, O wall, O sweet, O lovely wall,
That stand’st between her father’s ground and mine!
Thou wall, O wall, O sweet and lovely wall,
Show me thy chink, to blink through with mine eyne!
[Wall holds up his fingers]
Thanks, courteous wall: Jove shield thee well for this!
But what see I? No Thisby do I see.
O wicked wall, through whom I see no bliss!
Cursed be thy stones for thus deceiving me!”

Thisby’s father would be the founders of our republic, not happy at all with this latest 78-year-old suitor for their daughter’s hand. And like Polonius’ daughter Ophelia in Hamlet, we are the daughter.

Thisby arrives at their meeting-place, a chink in the Wall, but is chased off by a lion, dropping her cloak behind. The lion had recently fed on a separate prey, and he leaves blood on the cloak. Pyramus later arrives, and sees the bloodied cloak, and just like Romeo, wrongly concludes that Thisby is dead, and he does what Romeo does.

Here’s Biden as Bottom as Pyramus and Romeo, expecting to court America as Thisby through the chink in the Wall, but discovering that his true love has been devoured by his policies; that is, by a lion:

Biden, as Bottom, as Pyramus:

“O wherefore, Nature, didst thou lions frame?
Since lion vile hath here deflower’d my dear:
Which is—no, no—which was the fairest dame
That lived, that loved, that liked, that look’d
with cheer.
Come, tears, confound;
Out, sword, and wound
The pap of Pyramus;
Ay, that left pap,
Where heart doth hop:
[Stabs himself]
Thus die I, thus, thus, thus.
Now am I dead,
Now am I fled;
My soul is in the sky:
Tongue, lose thy light;
Moon take thy flight:
[Exit Moonshine]
Now die, die, die, die, die.”

As you may have figured out, Shakespeare uses this antique story to satirize his own earlier play – Romeo & Juliet. Meanwhile, our own story remains beyond satire.

And that’s abardseyeview’s take on the State of the Union.