Kristof: Crowning Prince George (Brilliant analogy Shakespeare on *)

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/01/opinion/01kristof.html?hp=&pagewanted=print&position=

The most common literary allusion to President Bush is Shakespeare's Prince Hal, the hard-drinking, wild-living young man who sobers up, reforms and emerges as the great English warrior King Henry V.

So, as the Republicans once again crown Mr. Bush as their nominee, I decided to seek lessons from an expert on King Henry who is also one of the shrewdest analysts of current American politics and international affairs. That's right: Shakespeare. I went to Ashland for my annual pilgrimage to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, then started thinking about what Shakespeare might say if he were speaking at the Republican convention this week.

The paramount lesson in Shakespeare's plays is that the world is full of nuances and uncertainties, and that leaders self-destruct when they are too rigid, too sure of themselves or - Mr. President, lend me your ears - too intoxicated by moral clarity.

<snip>

"But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make when all those legs and arms and heads chopped off in a battle shall join together at the latter day and cry all 'We died at such and such a place,' some swearing, some crying for a surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left. I am afeared there are few die well that die in a battle."

[MikeG]

1. Good article - I'm a sucker for Henry V references.

[MikeG]

2. BTW - Bush is more like Falstaff.

[Green Lantern]

3. While I thought this a very good piece

and love Shakespeare, I rather think of Bushwa, in terms of "character", as Uriah Heep of Charles Dickens "David Copperfield". The mealy mouthed, weasely, slimey, smarmy-ok, you get the idea...