Before George Orwell predicted, in 1984, the dystopian nightmare our corrupted election has awakened us to, Shakespeare saw the effect that the illegitimate exercise of authority has on the human spirit, and the need that tyrants have to force us to deny everyday reality. Blatant, murderous act of jihad by radicalized Muslims must be flatly ignored. Massive electoral fraud cannot even be discussed – the mere mention will make you an unperson, doxed and deplatformed.
The democratic party won’t be satisfied with usurping the executive branch. Even after they do that, conservatives, and non-political Americans who recognize the theft, will still be here. They need to crush our spirits, and they are fully aware of this need.
Obviously, this brings us to Shakespeare, and The Taming of the Shrew.
The play’s story is fairly well known. Petruchio comes to Padua to marry into wealth, and he isn’t shy about saying so: “I come to wive it wealthily in Padua!” is his ebullient way of putting it. He learns that a rich heiress, Katherina, is available but she comes with a cost: She is “curst,” or shrewish. Petruchio, very much like the democrat party but without the same verve, pursues a multifaceted campaign designed to tame Katherina, and you will see for yourself its resemblance to what Joe Biden’s minions are trying to do to us.
We’ll take up the action after a shotgun wedding (read: fixed election), when Petruchio (portraying the activist left) and Katherina (portraying America) are returning from his small estate in Verona to her father’s larger one in Padua to attend her sister’s wedding, accompanied by Petruchio’s friend, Hortensio:
Petruchio: “Come on, a God’s name; once more toward our father’s.
Good Lord, how bright and goodly shines the moon!”
Katherina: “The moon? The sun! It is not moonlight now.”
Petruchio: “I say it is the moon that shines so bright.”
Katherina: “I know it is the sun that shines so bright.”
Petruchio: “Now by my mother’s son, and that’s myself,
It shall be moon, or star, or what I list,
Or ere I journey to your father’s house.
Go on and fetch our horses back again.
Evermore cross’d and cross’d; nothing but cross’d!”
When Twitter deplatforms the President of the United States for issuing a statement condemning violence, and Facebook follows, not even bothering to offer even a false excuse, we know that day is being called night. A stolen election is followed immediately by HR1, a bill that removes state voter identity laws? No questions, please. The democrats’ (that is, Petruchio’s) temper tantrum is icing on the cake.
Oh, and it’s easy to miss what’s going on in that first line. Petruchio is swearing an oath, but rather than swear to God, or on his mother’s grave, or like Romeo, to the moon, he swears to – himself. Pure atheism, in 21st century terms. Remove God, and remove even the gods, as the activist left has just spent a century doing, and the ultimate authority becomes oneself. Hortensio pipes up, revealing himself to be swamp creature of the first order:
Hortensio: “Say as he says, or we shall never go.”
Katherina: “Forward, I pray, since we have come so far,
And be it moon, or sun, or what you please;
And if you please to call it a rush-candle,
Henceforth I vow it shall be so for me.”
Petruchio: “I say it is the moon.”
Katherina: “I know it is the moon.”
OK, Katherina is wilting under the strain, just as the activist left desires. Radical Muslim Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa kills ten in Boulder, Colorado? Disgruntled employee. At this point she’s a NeverTrumper, perhaps Elaine Chao or Mitt Romney (there are too many to choose from, sadly), hoping to sue for peace. But there will be no peace:
Petruchio: “Nay, then you lie; it is the blessed sun.”
Katherina: “Then, God be bless’d, it is the blessed sun;
But sun it is not, when you say it is not;
And the moon changes even as your mind.
What you will have it nam’d, even that it is,
And so it shall be so for Katherine.”
Hortensio: “Petruchio, go thy ways, the field is won.”
Petruchio: “Well, forward, forward!…”
Shakespeare is actually kinder to his audience than history right now is being to us. When this play is staged (sadly, that’s less often now, since it’s deemed “problematic”), the audience leaves smiling. It’s made clear at the end that Katherina’s spirit has not been broken. In fact, she and Petruchio fall in love, and his campaign to tame her is itself tamed; she pretends to be acknowledge his primacy, and he pretends not to notice that she is pretending. It’s a wise way to organize a marriage between two alpha personalities.
But there’s little hope of that kind of resolution for us.
This season’s blog posts reflect the discouraging events now occurring in our public life. But I hope that, especially in times like these, the classics, and Shakespeare chief among them, can keep us connected to the highest and best in Western culture, even as we navigate the remnants of our fallen republic, and gather the strength to reclaim it.
So I hope you enjoyed today’s Shakespeare snack…
P.S. I wanted to let you all know that my recasting of Hamlet as the 2020 election is now up for sale as an e-book and paperback through this link.
‘Hamlet’s 2020 Vision; A recasting of Hamlet as the tragedy of the 2020 election,’ reimagines Hamlet as the 2020 election by substituting the main players on our national stage for the play’s original cast of characters. I think the result is highly entertaining, but it also provides surprising insights into our current predicament, and it gives readers a chance to enjoy Shakespeare’s great tragedy from an entirely new angle.
