America needs two healthy political parties to maintain itself, and we haven’t been in that condition since perhaps JFK. If you want to argue that the democrat party retained some semblance of love of the country it periodically governed until Carter or perhaps Clinton, be my guest; in any case, that semblance is now clearly gone. The American ship of state is listing. Mom and dad are fighting. Yin and Yang are out of balance. Shakespeare covers exactly this situation with the falling out that occurs between Oberon and Titania in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, culminating in Titania’s grand speech in Act II. It’s preceded by an exchange between the king and queen of the fairies, Oberon and Titania, who are feuding.

Oberon. Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania.

Titania. What, jealous Oberon! Fairies, skip hence:
I have forsworn his bed and company.

The king and queen are immortal, in the same way that our political parties think they are, although the Whigs up until 1860 likely thought they were immortal as well. While in our present hour the republicans are more credible than the demented democrats, I’m not inclined to defend the republicans today, a scant week after our House caucus voted the backstabbing, war-mongering, Trump-obsessed Liz Cheney back into leadership. So we’ll just note that the two parties are feuding, unable to govern jointly, and watch what Shakespeare has Oberon and Titania reveal about this situation:

Oberon. Tarry, rash wanton: am not I thy lord?

Titania. Then I must be thy lady: but I know
When thou hast stolen away from fairy land,
And in the shape of Corin sat all day,
Playing on pipes of corn and versing love
To amorous Phillida….

Oberon. How canst thou thus for shame, Titania,
Glance at my credit with Hippolyta,
Knowing I know thy love to Theseus?…

Apparently, when you’re immortal, you have affairs to pass the time, and then you trade jealous barbs. With that brief explanation of their tiff out of the way, Titania now begins her stunningly beautiful speech, which lays out the consequences that result when mom and dad just can’t get along:

You’ll need a brief glossary, but it’s worth it: mead means meadow; beached margent means shoreline; made so proud means swollen; overborne their continents means flooded the riverbanks;

Titania. These are the forgeries of jealousy:
And never, since the middle summer’s spring,
Met we on hill, in dale, forest or mead,
By paved fountain or by rushy brook,
Or in the beached margent of the sea,
To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind,
But with thy brawls thou hast disturb’d our sport.
Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain,
As in revenge, have suck’d up from the sea
Contagious fogs; which falling in the land
Have every pelting river made so proud
That they have overborne their continents:
The ox hath therefore stretch’d his yoke in vain,
The ploughman lost his sweat, and the green corn
Hath rotted ere his youth attain’d a beard;

I think it’s fair to say our country will suffer these injuries and far more before Biden leaves office. Were his party willing to compromise with the republicans, there would still be vast damage, but less than we can expect.

More words (again, I feel it’s worth it, and hope you agree): The fold means the sheep pen; murrion flock means a flock of dead, carrion sheep; nine men’s morris is a field marked for a popular outdoor game; the wanton green means an wild, abandoned field or pasture:

The fold stands empty in the drowned field,
And crows are fatted with the murrion flock;
The nine men’s morris is fill’d up with mud,
And the quaint mazes in the wanton green
For lack of tread are undistinguishable:
The human mortals want their winter here;

Everything up to this point is a beautiful description of a ruined land. Let’s hope we give no future poet the opportunity to describe our country in this way. And Shakespeare next explains why the humans were unable to prevent it. Because it’s summer, far from Christmas season, the mortal world, and that is us, lacks the divine protection it could give itself through prayer (Hiem is the god of winter; wonted liveries means usual clothes):

No night is now with hymn or carol blest:
Therefore the moon, the governess of floods,
Pale in her anger, washes all the air,
That rheumatic diseases do abound:
And thorough this distemperature we see
The seasons alter: hoary-headed frosts
Far in the fresh lap of the crimson rose,
And on old Hiems’ thin and icy crown
An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds
Is, as in mockery, set: the spring, the summer,
The childing autumn, angry winter, change
Their wonted liveries, and the mazed world,
By their increase, now knows not which is which:
And this same progeny of evils comes
From our debate, from our dissension;
We are their parents and original.”

When I was younger I enjoyed this speech for its simple beauty. I never thought that it would begin to read like an indictment of our present time.

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.