In a darkened den of thieves, democrat party operatives, aided by more than a few key corrupt republicans, dream of dividing a valiant but gullible nation, portrayed by Count Claudio, from its stalwart, fair-haired leader, President Trump, portrayed a bit incongruously by the blushing maiden Hero. It may be a heavy lift to equate President Trump with the virginal maiden in Much Ado About Nothing, but if the wedding dress fits, we should wear it. Today’s bard’s eye view of the present-day mayhem is an ambitious one, so buckle up…
The nation is just about to re-elect its leader; that is, Claudio is just about to marry Hero, but the democrats cannot allow it. Let’s listen in:
Don John. It is so; the Count Claudio shall marry the
daughter of Leonato.
Borachio. Yea, my lord; but I can cross it.
Don John. Any bar, any cross, any impediment will be
medicinable to me: I am sick in displeasure to him,
and whatsoever comes athwart his affection ranges
evenly with mine. How canst thou cross this marriage?
Borachio. Not honestly, my lord; but so covertly that no
dishonesty shall appear in me.
Don John. Show me briefly how.
Borachio. I think I told your lordship a year since, how much
I am in the favor of Margaret, the waiting gentlewoman to Hero.
Don John. I remember.
Borachio, who is Don John’s henchman (in our world he would be a Dominion software engineer or a printer of fake ballots in Philadelphia), is saying that he has been having an affair with Margaret, that is, someone in Trump’s inner circle. (We could select any number of candidates for that role, from Paul Ryan to Liz Cheney to the news media. I’m sure there has been communication between these two groups.) Borachio goes on:
Borachio. I can, at any unseasonable instant of the night,
appoint her to look out at her lady’s chamber window.
Don John. What life is in that, to be the death of this marriage?…
Borachio. Find me a meet hour to draw … the
Count Claudio alone: tell them that you know
that Hero loves me; … They will scarcely believe this
without trial: offer them instances; which shall bear
no less likelihood than to see me at her chamber-window,
hear me call Margaret Hero, hear Margaret term me
Claudio; and bring them to see this the very night
before the intended wedding,…”
Borachio is going to use Margaret to create a fake President Trump, that is a fake Hero, who will stand at Hero’s balcony window, just as Trump stood before the Capitol on the day the electoral votes were counted to say some perfectly reasonable and accurate things about how the election was being stolen. Of course, Margaret, the fake Trump/Hero created by our news media, will call for an insurrection and make herself look guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors. Borachio the democrat operative goes on:
Borachio: “—for in the meantime I will so fashion
the matter that Hero shall be absent,—and there
shall appear such seeming truth of Hero’s disloyalty
that jealousy shall be called assurance and all the
preparation overthrown.”
Don John: “Grow this to what adverse issue it can, I will put
it in practice. Be cunning in the working this, and thy
fee is a thousand ducats.”
Actually, Borachio’s fee, recently paid by U.S. taxpayers, was $1.9 trillion, to be split between all the democrat interest groups that lugged Biden’s disintegrating carcass across the finish line and into the White House.
OK, things are now set up for the wedding ceremony, which should have been Trump’s inauguration after being re-elected, but instead is his second impeachment trial. We have a minister in Friar Francis (that would have been Chief Justice Roberts but will instead by the straw-filled husk known as Senator Leahy), Leonato, who is Hero’s father (as gullible as Claudio, and so we’ll make him a low-information voter), and a few other characters we’ll introduce as we go along. Please note that by now, Count Claudio, the gullible portion of America, has been shown the false evidence of the fake Trump Margaret, dressed as the real Trump Hero, calling for insurrection and blowing kisses to the democrat operative Borachio. Here comes the bride (by “Father” Claudio is addressing his future father-in-law, Trump-voter Leonato, and you learn me means you teach me):
Friar Francis. You come hither, my lord, to marry this lady.
Claudio. No.
Leonato. To be married to her: friar, you come to marry her.
Friar Francis. Lady, you come hither to be married to this count.
Hero. I do.
Friar Francis. If either of you know any inward impediment why you
should not be conjoined, charge you, on your souls, to utter it…
Claudio. Stand thee by, friar. Father, by your leave:
Will you with free and unconstrained soul
Give me this maid, your daughter?
Leonato. As freely, son, as God did give her me.
Claudio. And what have I to give you back, whose worth
May counterpoise this rich and precious gift?
Don Pedro. Nothing, unless you render her again.
Claudio. Sweet prince, you learn me noble thankfulness.
There, Leonato, take her back again:
Give not this rotten orange to your friend;
She’s but the sign and semblance of her honour.”
Rotten orange! Even 400 years in advance of the event, Shakespeare could foresee Trump’s emblematic color. The misled and misguided Claudio continues:
Claudio: “Behold how like a maid she blushes here!
O, what authority and show of truth
Can cunning sin cover itself withal!
Comes not that blood as modest evidence
To witness simple virtue? Would you not swear,
All you that see her, that she were a maid,
By these exterior shows? But she is none:
She knows the heat of a luxurious bed;
Her blush is guiltiness, not modesty.”
We can see here how the impeachment managers have assembled their case. Trump’s show of innocence, the lack of any statement he made calling on his supporters to break any law, his affirmative call to peaceful assembly and protest, all of these exterior shows, are evidence not of his simple virtue, but of his guilt. We are strapping witches into dunking chairs at this point.
Hero at length swoons (I admit that Trump would never do that), and she is carted away to her palatial estate in Florida. Beatrice and Benedick, who are the voices of reason in this play, surmise what must have happened (John the bastard is democrat fixer Don John, Borachio’s boss):
Beatrice. O, on my soul, my cousin is belied!…
Benedick. The practise of it lives in John the bastard,
Whose spirits toil in frame of villanies.
At last Leonato, our low-information voter who until now simply couldn’t believe that Don John, a prince after all would play him false, begins to cotton on to the idea that he is being manipulated:
Leonato. I know not. If they speak but truth of her,
These hands shall tear her; if they wrong her honour,
The proudest of them shall well hear of it.
Time hath not yet so dried this blood of mine,
Nor age so eat up my invention,
Nor fortune made such havoc of my means,
Nor my bad life reft me so much of friends,
But they shall find, awaked in such a kind,
Both strength of limb and policy of mind,
Ability in means and choice of friends,
To quit me of them….”
Friar Francis then comes up with a strategem that another Friar, named Lawrence, used in Romeo and Juliet, to publish that Hero has died:
Friar Francis: Let her awhile be secretly kept in,
And publish it that she is dead indeed;…
Leonato. What shall become of this? what will this do?
Friar Francis. Marry, this…shall on her behalf
Change slander to remorse; … for it so falls out
That what we have we prize not to the worth
Whiles we enjoy it, but being lack’d and lost,
Why, then we rack the value, then we find
The virtue that possession would not show us
Whiles it was ours…”
We can be sure that Trump’s absence from the White House will have a similar effect. And perhaps we can take heart from the fact that, in Much Ado About Nothing, Hero arises from the dead. Leonato, pronouncing on her resurrection, says, this:
“She died, my lord, but whiles her slander lived.”
