The plays of William Shakespeare serve as an encyclopedia of human nature, and their characters are complex and rich, portrayed always with contradictions and nuances like real people. Some of these portraits are delightful and full of life, such as the character Puck, who appears in the comedy of Athenian wild fantasy called A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
I believe the first tragedy I read was Antony and Cleopatra. Shakespeare’s ingenious use of blank verses, which are unrhymed iambic pentameter, is more eloquent than any historical account of the actual Cleopatra. But I must acknowledge that popular audiences became somewhat ensnared in the peplum genre, shot in technicolor, which is ideal for napping during the next Easter holidays after indulging in a plate of deep-fried doughnuts, called nun's fart, a sweet treat similar to the beignets of New Orleans. We call them "bunyols" in the Catalan language, closer to the French Quarter than you might think.
Reading Shakespeare is akin to witnessing the breathtaking beauty of the Rings of Saturn through the lens of a telescope. I feel a pang of regret for not attending any of his plays in theaters. However, the experience was challenging when the director insisted that the characters wear elaborate costumes resembling drag. I guess that's the price of fame. Too many people trying to make an original version or to cover genius with mediocrity.
The real deal would be traveling in time to the Globe playhouse and sit in a two-penny room to see Richard III. I would love that. In the meantime, and since time travel is just a fiction genre, as a form of consolation, I have thought up about Laurence Olivier's movie from 1955. It helped me a lot this April's Fool to cope with the unfolding events of the present Tariff War.
On the play, strongly filtered by the new Tudor dynasty propaganda, Shakespeare told us about the historical English king Richard III, the last Plantagenet who ruled for almost four centuries. It was supposed to be historical in somewhat, but the Bard of Avon spun instead a wacky character with a Machiavellian way to reach power.
He's a hunchback, his teeth are crooked, and even more, he has a limp and a withered arm. And this grotesque character is an insufferable blabbermouth that during the play has many asides with the audience, telling them the bad things he is about to do and make them kind of complicit in it. He is flooding us with constant political maneuvering, widening that strong bond with constant updates, which includes the killing of his two brothers, nephews, even his wife, to wear the crown. He's the anti-hero speaking his mind.
Understanding our present moment through a Shakesperean lens, it's my point.
Trump is wacky as Richard III. The freakish hairdo, the shiny orange bronze, the veneers of porcelain, the gigantic red tie. When he was a young socialite, he certainly had the stamina to keep everybody believing that he was a dynamic businessman. But the same guy went from that celebrity niche to old age like everybody does, becoming a wacky Liberace with his gold TV remote, ranting to his fans through social media about how much the entire world has abused of the bountiful America.
I'm convinced we go through our lifespan like the ants on a Möbius strip, crawling along both sides and creating an infinite recursive feeling because of the way it twists on itself. Trump is repeating the same mantra when he was young. America is being ripped off.
While in the first term he was taking a lot of criticism, and the press had a profitable and long run with his scandals, the second term after a four-year hiatus, he's much more authoritarian. Seeing is believing. All the hawkish agenda of George Bush that he used to mock, as the time and treasure spent in nation-building like Bush tried in the distant Iraq, now it's his agenda with his close neighbors Greenland and Canada.
According to Fukuyama, we believed we had reached the end of history. National borders were carved in stone, and economic growth had no limits. However, if our wacky Richard III continues to push the boundaries, while simultaneously updating us with purchases or invasions of sovereign countries, China could seize the opportunity and invade Taiwan, the capital of nanotechnology.
I’m too old for this, and if I stay fit and healthy and productive, and some plague won't leak again from a lab, I’ll be around no more than 2050. But I have already lived enough to assist at the decline of Western civilization, looming large over the horizon. My generation won’t live as well as our parents did. And good luck to the next one!
This Liberace we have for King Richard III, who dances like jerking off two guys at the same time, laughable as he indeed is, under the Shakespearean lens, had a horrible end during the fray of a battle. Remember that line? "A horse, a horse! my kingdom for a horse!". And Trump almost had it last summer when a bullet grazed his ear instead of blowing his brains out. I guess one of the thousands federal workers that Elon Musk and his crew has already fired will not miss the shot.
Trump found himself on the receiving end of Obama’s sharp humor in April 30, 2011. Look in this link the footage of that unraveling moment of being, and forget Obama's charm to focus only in the brief glimpses of Trump while he was taking it. It was Walpurgis Night, and a Faustian pact was made. Trump sold his soul for wanting what Obama had. Power and endless adulation. Richard III would have begun whispering to us the celebrated first aside–now is the winter of our discontent, made glorious summer by this son of York–as if we were seeing Shakespeare's play, revealing his ambition and determination to be king.
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