Thursday
Thanks to my friend Glenda Funk, I now know the Shakespeare allusion in Adam Schiff’s warning that Republicans blindly supported Donald Trump in his Senate trial because they feared having their heads hoisted on pikes. Henry VI, Part II is one of the bard’s bloodier plays.
Although Republicans bitterly complained about Shiff, I suspect it’s because they recognized the truth behind his assertion. We saw a call for pike hoisting yesterday from Donald Trump, Jr. as he tweeted out that “Mitt must be expelled from the @SenateGOP conference.” This after the Utah Senator was the only Republican legislator who found Trump guilty of attempting to extort Ukraine for dirt on Joe Biden.
A lot of beheading and threats of beheading occur in Shakespeare’s play. First off, there’s Gloucester’s dream:
Methought this staff, mine office-badge in court,
Was broke in twain; by whom I have forgot,
But, as I think, it was by the cardinal;
And on the pieces of the broken wand
Were placed the heads of Edmund Duke of Somerset,
And William de la Pole, first duke of Suffolk.
This was my dream: what it doth bode, God knows.
And then there’s rabble rouser Jack Cade, whose determination to “kill all the lawyers” we’ve all heard quoted. Cade is all too ready to undertake the dirty work:
Go, take him away, I say, and strike
off his head presently; and then break into his
son-in-law’s house, Sir James Cromer, and strike off
his head, and bring them both upon two poles hither.
This leads to a particularly grisly scene where Cade imagines the two heads kissing each other:
[Re-enter one with the heads]
But is not this braver? Let them kiss one another,
for they loved well when they were alive. Now part
them again, lest they consult about the giving up of
some more towns in France.
Is this how the GOP sees people conspiring after it has driven them from the party?
If Shiff, whether knowingly or not, turned to Shakespeare, Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin turned to a play about Shakespeare’s era in a column about what Republicans have received in return for selling their soul. Very little, she concludes:
Republican senators will vote to acquit President Trump of obvious, serious and certainly impeachable conduct. They have made their pact with the Devil, and there is no turning back. However, on close examination, it sure seems as though they’ve gotten a raw deal.
Republicans’ thinking goes: “Sure, he is a monster, but look at all we got!” Comparing his fabricated account with his actual record, however, one is struck by how little he has done.
After examining and noting the lack of real accomplishments, she concludes, “As with so much that Trump does, the hype dwarfs the reality.” Then she quotes from Robert Bolt’s Man for all Seasons:
It profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world. But for Wales?
The passage occurs in an interchange between Thomas More and a man who has perjured himself to send him to the chopping block:
MORE I have one question to ask the witness. (RICH stops) That’s a chain of office you are wearing. (Reluctantly RICH faces him) May I see it? (NORFOLK motions him to approach. MORE examines the medallion) The red dragon. (To CROMWELL) What’s this?
CROMWELL Sir Richard is appointed Attorney-General for Wales.
MORE (Looking into RICH’S face, with pain and amusement) For Wales? Why, Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world . . . But for Wales!
For all their becoming “intellectual and moral pretzels in service of Trump,” Rubin observes, they have gotten no more than a Wales equivalent.
One Republican, however, proved to be a Thomas More.