Shakespeare on Our ‘Scurvy Politicians’

Four hundred years later, the Bard of Avon still tells us more about our pols than any Fox News or CNN debate ever could.

First Folio in the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, D.C. (WikiCommons).

By Michael Judge

This year marks the 400th anniversary of Mr. William Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies, better known as the First Folio, a collection of 36 plays that changed humanity’s perception of itself perhaps more than any other single book, aside from the sacred texts of the world’s major religions. 

Published in 1623, seven years after Shakespeare’s death, it includes Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Macbeth, Measure for Measure, The Tempest, Othello, Much Ado About Nothing, Henry IV, Parts I-II, Richard II, Richard III, Julius Caesar, and what I and many others consider the Bard of Avon’s crowning achievement: King Lear.

By revisiting Shakespeare’s plays, what I’ve experienced is not so much an escape from the tragedy and comedy of what may be a Trump v. Biden rematch, but greater insight into the character of our political royalty.

It’s hard to imagine a world without these plays or their author…