Wise words in the winter (spring, summer and fall) of our discontent

William Shakespeare never met Donald Trump. Of this I am certain, although reading some of the bard’s most famous quotations makes me wonder if he might have, in his own way, foretold the coming of our current faux-president and the national embarrassment he has caused.

For example, when Cassius spoke in Shakespeare's “Julius Caesar,” he could have been talking about the unlikely election results from November 2016:

“Men at some time are masters of their fates. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.”

That’s a much more creative way of saying “elections have consequences,” wouldn’t you agree?

Likewise, in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Puck could have been describing the typical Trump voter when he said, “Lord, what fools these mortals be!”

Or Claudio in “Measure for Measure,” who suggested, “The miserable have no other medicine, but only hope.” I would argue that hope in empty promises is no hope at all, but that’s just me, so moving on…

Regarding Trump’s history with women, Balthazar summed that up nicely in “Much Ado About Nothing.”

“Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,” he said. “Men were deceivers ever; one foot in sea, and one on shore, to one thing constant never.” I couldn’t have said it better myself.

On the subject of greed, Shakespeare had Trump down to a “T” when he wrote, “All that glitters is not gold” in “The Merchant of Venice.” He also spoke to Trump’s narcissism and arrogance in “King Lear:”  

“Have more than thou showest. Speak less than thou knowest. Lend less than thou owest. Ride more than thou goest. Learn more than thou trowest, and set less than thou throwest.”

As for Trump’s reality-show vision of the presidency, I offer this from “As You Like It:”

“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts.”  

As Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian collusion rolls on, I harken back to this quote from Cordelia in “King Lear:”

“Time shall unfold what plighted cunning hides. Who cover faults, at last shame them derides.”

One can only hope.

And this from Hamlet regarding Trump’s world view:

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

Or, from “Julius Caesar:”

“The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones."

And, “Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once.”

Nothing describes Donald Trump and his tweets, his rallies and his word-salad speeches better than my favorite Shakespeare quotation that comes from “MacBeth:”

“Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

But take heart, my friends, Shakespeare also predicted the public outcry, the refusal by many to accept Trump’s new normal and the organized resistance to his presidency in Act 3, Scene 1 of  “The Merchant of Venice,” when he wrote this:

  

“If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?”

The answers to those questions are “yes,” “yes,” “yes”…and “oh hell yes.”

And thereby hangs a tale.