
The fact that Shakespeare was a master of the art of creating and mocking fools does not really help decide the question of who Shakespeare really was. A stage actor who owned a theater in Elizabethan times and apparently focused on being the bit player, the butler, the second man on the castle wall in the great plays, would certainly know enough of flim-flam, being a con man, or artfully throwing turds at kings and queens in ways that get rewarded rather than beheaded. But a nobleman who has unpopular and unwelcome-but-probably-wise insights into the back-stabbing-goings-on of the royal court of England would equally be capable of putting the most memorable of critiques of humanity into the mouth of the fool or the clown in the great stage-play of life. Even the most depressing and violent of the Shakespearean tragedies is enhanced and made pointed by the presence of the fool and the comic relief. In some ways everything that Shakespeare wrote was a comedy.

Whoever Shakespeare was, he shared Mark Twain’s overall assessment of “That damned human race” and often declared all men fools in the eyes of the playwright. Puck’s observation on humanity is delivered about not only Bottom and the other poor players who carry on their vain attempts at performing Pyramus and Thisbe while Bottom magically wears the head of an ass, but also the easily fooled lovers who mistake their true loves for one another, and even the clueless mortal King Theseus of Athens.

In the play within a play, Nick Bottom wants to be not only his own role, Pyramus the romantic lead, but argues that he should be Thisbe, the lion, and Pyramus all at once, making a satire of human nature and its overreaching ways that we could only pray Donald Trump will one day watch and magically understand. In fact, Shakespeare’s entire body of work is an extended investigation of foolishness versus wisdom, and with Shakespeare, the verdict always goes to the fool.

The plays of William Shakespeare are filled with fools doing foolish things… and fools being accidentally wise. (Think Jacques in As You Like It giving his famous “All the world’s a stage” soliloquy in which he elucidates the seven ages of man.) There are fools too who prove to be wise. (Think of the ironic advice given by the jester Touchstone in As You Like It, or the pithy commentary of King Lear’s fool). The fools in Shakespeare’s work are not merely the comedy relief, but the main point that Shakespeare makes about humanity.

Whoever the man was who wrote the plays of Shakespeare, he was someone who had a deep understanding of the basic irony underlying all of human life. And someone with that vital sense of the bittersweet, a philosophy of life that encompasses the highest heights and lowest depths that a soul can reach, is someone who has suffered as well as known great joy, someone who has experienced loss as often as profit, and has known real love as well as real hatred. It is the fool that Shakespeare shakes us by the neck with to make us recognize the fool in all of us which makes the plays resonate so deeply within us. It is watching the path of the fool unfolding that makes us shake our head and say to ourselves, “Yes, that is what life is really like.”






















Could Trump Actually Be Good For Liberals?
Yes, I did wash my mouth out with soap after saying that title out loud. But I can’t help thinking such strange thoughts. It is probably because Trump’s healthcare plans already have me off my meds.
I hear you screaming at your WordPress Reader saying, “How can you possibly be thinking such un-Democratic and really dumb thoughts?”
Well, if you think about it… I mean, hit your head three times near the reasoning center of the brain with a really hard rock… some of the greatest things that have happened to mankind have come from the very worst things that ever happened.
Because of World War Two and Hitler, we ended up inventing computers, and we ended up with a space program because beating Hitler gave us Werner Von Braun and some of the best rocket science minds in Germany. Because LBJ felt guilty about helping the CIA murder Kennedy he enacted the Great Society and Civil Rights reforms that make up the best of Kennedy’s legacy. (What? You say that’s crazy conspiracy theory? Well, I have been hitting my own head with a rock.) In fact, the combination of Hitler and Kennedy’s assassination put men on the moon.
Yes, humanity needs really bad times to happen to force them to make changes for the better. And Trump is really bad times. He takes food away from school children and old home-bound people so he can play more golf at Mar-a-Lago on the taxpayers’ dime. (Well, actually, it costs significantly more than a dime.) He puts coal plant waste into rivers and the drinking water of millions. He cuts regulations so corporate polluters are free to pour more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and keep us all so toasty warm with global warming that our faces will eventually melt. (And can you imagine what beauty pageants will be like when the contestants no longer have faces? Mr. Trump will no longer even be anxious to make those un-announced tours of the dressing rooms.)
The only choice we will have for survival if we are not Walmart heirs or Koch brothers is to fight back and correct the situation. It is possible that enough people will wake up to the whole Trump trauma to take back the House of Representatives in 2018. Then the investigations can really begin. Trump is waking up a sleeping giant. The public is ready to start fighting back. Bill Nye the Science Guy is ready to throw some punches for science.
Things that are necessary are never easy. It is by making too many easy choices that we got ourselves into this mess. There is a lot of stupidity and incompetence and badness out there to overcome now. And we must face it or it will kill us.
And it may be a good thing that Trump won the election. Hillary would’ve been a competent president and nothing would really have changed about the status quo. We would’ve continued to complacently allow Republicans to run the House and Senate and oppose even the most mild and wishy-washy things that President Hillary would’ve tried to get done. Now, the Trump backlash may propel us onward towards actual solutions to very real problems like climate change, excessive money in politics, ignorance among the voting public, and income inequality that is tipping us toward a new dark ages and a feudal-technological society.
So the big splash that Trump is sure to make might be a very good thing for liberals who hope to change things for the betterment of a majority of the people.
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Tagged as Donald Trump, irony, political humor, politics and goofiness, problem solving