shakespeare unplugged

West Oakland,2008 © Jill Posener All Rights Reserved

I've been very quiet, I know. I've been fretting about some things, and getting all riled up about the usual stuff - the nature of love, passion, drama, relationships and the futility of it all - but really it's all just been simmering like an overcooked pot of beef stew - no, make that lamb, in light of the recent beef recall - on the back burner of my trembling busy brain.

It was Super Tuesday Part The Second yesterday - did y'all read Shakespeare when you were at school? This election is looking more Shakespearian than the Bard himself. You've got Ancient McCain who is really having difficulty reading the teleprompter. He does this strange thing with his eyes, where he seems to make a punctuation mark by opening them wide. It's unnerving. He then repeats the words 'my friends' and I keep expecting 'romans, countrymen' to follow. And isn't it a little unsettling that he has a name which could have come straight out of Macbeth? He is prone to evoking '100 year wars' and 'the battle for the soul of Islam'. I'm waiting for the medical report on this guy. Who exactly is going to be his VP choice? Aaaarggghhhh. I see Ancient McCain sitting in an empty castle in the highlands of West Virginia, with only lobbyists entering the inner sanctum while Mac is getting his daily shot of botox and getting the teeth glued so that they don't chatter so much when he speaks. And when he speaks, even at a victory celebration, the guy is barely awake, Never mind Barack not being able to answer the 3am 'emergency red' phone call - McCain's emergency phone is hooked directly to voicemail after 7pm. 'Hi this is Ancient Johnny, please call back during business hours'.

But then you've got an epic battle across the aisle. The former queen decides to revenge herself on her lying cheating king by taking the crown herself and forcing him to do the flower arrangements and work out menus for state dinners with the heads of countries with weird food requests for four (or more) years. But alas, the courtiers who once served her king are flocking to a young upstart prince who brings together the tribes of Kansas and Kenya and challenges Queen Hilaire to a duel in the plains of Texas, where much blood has been shed in the past.

There are accusations of an ugly child fathered by a woman in a man's suit, there are consorts declaring they have never been proud of their country, candidates who when they leave the battle declare that the whole campaign has been about unborn children. One candidate is declaring 'hope', another declaring 'faith', but none so far declaring 'charity'. There are battles being fought on foreign soil with men and women in inadequate armour dying for a cause they know little about. True there are no place names like Elsinore and Cawdor, but Abu Ghraib and Kabul are at least as hauntingly poetic and equally tragic. Kabul's ancient Greek name was Kofin, meaning the place were bees accumulate - the place of honey. It was home to an ancient tribe called Nuristanis. In the late 19th century Islamc rulers in the area attacked. The men were forced to join the army and the women who survived were taken into harems.

If only Will Shakespeare were alive to chronicle this terrible time - a moment in history more dramatic than Hamlet, a scene more sinister than the slaughters in Macbeth, a time more in need of a hero than the epic Henry V. Perhaps only Othello comes close to the dreadful unfolding of this monstrous family and tribal battle. There'll be some eyes poked out before too long.

Next week! Where is Falstaff when we need him most? Is Barack really Puck? Where is the love between Antonio and Sebastian from Twelfth Night when we need it, and who is our modern Jack Cade who leads a proletarian revolution in Henry VI Part 2 (of course)

Comments

[Deb in Minniesota]

Jill! I was wondering where you were keeping yourself. I almost sent out a search team there to California. ::waves to you from Minnesota::

Well, I hope things turn out to be a comedy (in the classical sense) rather than a tragedy.

[gillian]

Brilliant! Just brilliant - love that about the queen and the king - wish more people had a good enough education to make analogies to Shakespeare like this. Guess we'll have to import them from England?

Also loved the part about poking out of eyes - I'm sure that will be happening soon enough, metaphorically speaking.

Thanks for the humor that also engages the mind - we need more of that.

[Barbara]

Great! Maybe the play has barely begun. When is Shylock going to appear? for surely the pound of flesh will be required of someone at some point. I wish Hillary would display the determination and independence of the Shrew and give better than she gets more often. I also hope that the predictied attacks on Barack will not reduce him to a Hamlet role.

[Suzy]

Hi there Jill,
Claire and I had a good laugh over your witty Shakespearian commentary - love it! With all the stamping up and down on the grand stage over your way, you may have missed our own wonderful drama down under, with Kevin Rudd's apology to the Stolen Generations. If anything could demonstrate the power of ritual in the drama of public life, this has been it. Even my relatively conservative workplace downed tools and watched the extraordinary occasion on a big screen in the Chambers - Claire and I managed to get to Canberra, just to be there. A shift has happened... we have been elated and mourning both. What a moment in history it has been. But not the last act we hope - feels like the stage has opened wide inviting so many little actors like you and me to take our next shaky steps in a new, more hopeful, drama, writing it as we go ...
Not happy to hear you have been fretting dear. Maybe you should drop by for dinner Sunday night?
Suzy

[Suzy]

Hi there, me again,
If you're interested, you can read/see Rudd's speech at:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/events/apology/
And I loved the picture of him hugging Lowitja O'Donahue and others at this site:
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23206140-2,00.html?CMP=KNC-google
Suzy