Obama Mangles Protocol, Shakespeare

http://kylesmithonline.com/?p=8088

By Kyle | May 25, 2011

Others have remarked on how embarrassingly the president of the United States botched his toast. I’d like to add that he botched his literature as well. This is a man with two Ivy League degrees. A man who is frequently described as an intellectual. Is it too much to ask that he know the basics of the most famous Shakespeare scenes? If so, is it too much to ask for him to at least know what he’s talking about on those few occasions when he is quoting Shakespeare before the world?

The famous quotation from “Richard II” — “this scepter’d isle, this blessed plot, this Earth, this realm, this England” — used to be used in an airline commercial. It was foolishly misused then as it was by Obama. As Marjorie Garber writes in “Shakespeare After All,” people are forever quoting things Shakespeare’s characters say as though it is Shakespeare himself speaking and giving advice (and they are forever quoting Polonius’s stiff truisms from “Hamlet” as though they, too, are the kinds of peppy self-improvement nuggets that get recited on Graduation Day). The “Richard II” mistake is worse than these — because that John of Gaunt speech is a huge slam on England of the day. The whole point of the speech is that England’s glory days (as of the 14th century, when the play is set!) are long past and what’s left is a wasteland. Moreover, Gaunt says this at the end of the very same (long) sentence people are always quoting as a tribute to the magnificence of that “precious stone set in the silver sea.” It’s a stemwinder so skip to the bold part, if you wish, for the payoff:

   GAUNT.
   This royal throne of kings, this scepter’d isle,
   This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
   This other Eden, demi-paradise,
   This fortress built by Nature for herself
   Against infection and the hand of war,
   This happy breed of men, this little world,
   This precious stone set in the silver sea,
   Which serves it in the office of a wall,
   Or as a moat defensive to a house,
   Against the envy of less happier lands;
   This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,
   This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings,
   Fear’d by their breed, and famous by their birth,
   Renowned for their deeds as far from home,–
   For Christian service and true chivalry,–
   As is the sepulchre in stubborn Jewry
   Of the world’s ransom, blessed Mary’s Son:
   This land of such dear souls, this dear, dear land,
   Dear for her reputation through the world,
 * Is now leas’d out,–I die pronouncing it,–
 * Like to a tenement or pelting farm:
 * England, bound in with the triumphant sea,
 * Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege
 * Of watery Neptune, is now bound in with shame,
 * With inky blots, and rotten parchment bonds:
 * That England, that was wont to conquer others,
 * Hath made a shameful conquest of itself.
   Ah! would the scandal vanish with my life,
   How happy then were my ensuing death.

It’s as if Obama decided to quote the first half of a sentence about O.J. Simpson without bothering to read to the end: “This magnificent athlete, this Heisman trophy winner, this record-setting Buffalo Bills running back, this loving father and husband, this beloved “Naked Gun” comedian, this Hertz rental car spokesman, this pillar of the community….”


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