An account of a dinner with an old Slovenian friend and intellectual.
Tag Archives: King Lear
My Dinner with Mladen
Trump & GOP as Shakespearean Drama
To see the decline of the GOP as a Shakespeare drama, one must draw on “Macbeth,” “Hamlet,,” “Henry IV,” and “King Lear.” And throw in Marlowe’s “Dr. Faustus.”
Trump in Chaucer, Shakespeare & Conrad
When compared to people called “dotard” in Chaucer and Shakespeare, Trump fits the insult hurled at him by Kim Jong-un. His statement to African leaders, meanwhile, makes him sound like a “Heart of Darkness” ivory trader.
Trump’s Cabinet as Goneril and Regan
Everyday, it seems, Trump proves to us that he’s King Lear. The latest example is when he subjected his Cabinet to a love test.
Will Trump, Like Lear, Take Us All Down?
“The Washington Post” recently found numerous parallels between Lear and our own president, with “his zigzagging proclamations, his grandiose promises, his spasmodic attachments.”
Trump as Lear, Howling in the Storm
Donald Trump has a lot in common with King Lear. I suspect, however, that Lear has the happier ending.
My Cataract Surgery Recalls Oedipus, Lear
Recent cataract surgery had me recalling all those literary passages where sharp objects get poked into people’s eyes. The real drama, however, was renegotiating my professional identity.
Shakespeare Understood Trumpism
According to Adam Gopnik, Shakespeare would have understood the rise of Donald Trump better than we do today. Whereas we see him as a historical oddity, Shakespeare would have seen him as the kind of evil that has always resided within humankind.

