So, given Barack Obama’s dubious relationships in his former life, are we to credit him with the pattern of Hal, the tippling Prince, whose past blemishes will conspire to make glorious his personal reformation?
[Henry IV, 1 & 2] might better be called Fathers and Sons. While he is battling the Percys, Henry is also fighting for the loyalty and affection of his son and heir, Prince Hal. Hal, that “nimble-footed madcap Prince of Wales,” as Hotspur derisively calls him, has given himself up to bad living and bad companions, led by the fat and riotous Falstaff; his revolt against duty is a more serious threat to Henry’s kingdom than Hotspur and all his kin. The distraught Henry wishes that Hotspur had been his son and it could be proved that “some night-tripping fairy” had switched babies in their cradles.
The tug of war between Henry and Falstaff, or order and disorder, for the allegiance of Hal is the dominating theme of the first two Henrys. But what neither man knows is that the outcome has been foreordained: Hal, the consummate politician, is only pretending to be bad so that when it is time to be good he will seem all the better. “Yet will I imitate the sun,” he says, “who may be more wonder’d at, by breaking through the foul and ugly mists of vapors that did seem to strangle him.” Fortunately Shakespeare gives Hal a heart as well as a scheming head, and it is not certain until he becomes king that he will keep his promise to himself. By the time the third play, Henry V, begins, he is already the hero-king, preparing to enjoy that ancient English sport  invading France.
Hal’s transformation from brat to warrior is a shaky bridge for any actor to walk. Audiences have always found it hard to sympathize with his duplicity in leading on a lovable rogue like Falstaff, and the actor who plays him must make his deviousness seem right as well as logical. To preserve his life and his position he must be more clever than other men: he is the son of a regicide and knows that the throne he will inherit has been made slippery by blood. “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown,” cries his father. David Gwillim adroitly captures all Hal’s contradictions; then, like a master potter, he molds them into that noble vessel, Henry V.
Certainly, the alacrity with which Obama has cast some of his former friends under the bus (bit of anachronism there!) reminds one a bit of Harry’s treatment of Falstaff–an old Englandy stock character (fleshed out with Shakespearean brilliance) who must give way to a new age, a new polity, as ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. Or could it be that, instead, Obama is more like Richard III?
I am determined to prove a villain
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.
Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous. (1. 1. 32-34)
As I am an intellectual pundit (Tut! Palin?), this is how I pose the question, because I am so enamored of my own brilliance that it must be either one or the other, and so shall be, till Jeff returns from his projectile vomiting.
O!pine.
Hot like Hal at all.Hal was born to rule. More like any one of the countless Soviet or ChiCom apparatchics who have thrown everything decent under the treads of the T72 for a little political advantage.
Our Barak Obama has no center.
There is no honor there. He has nothing to measure himself against.
“Elmer Gantry” writ for the national stage.
“Or could it be that, instead, Obama is more like Richard III?”
That sounds about right to me. But then, I use cockney rhyming slang a lot.
It’s like when Bandit let Sally Field into the Trans Am, and Smokey – Sheriff Buford T. Justice was hot on his trail. You could almost spread the angst on a Trisket.
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That shat with us upon Tom Jefferson’s bumf.
Lady Obama:
Out, damn’d spot! out, I say!â€â€One; two: why, then
’tis time to do’t.â€â€Hell is murky.â€â€Fie, my lord, fie, a soldier, and
afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our
pow’r to accompt?â€â€Yet who would have thought the old man to
have had so much blood in him?
Had you ever crunched a Garden Herb or Cracked Pepper Triscuit, you’d know those elves don’t deserve you spreading smears. Those flavored fiber-filled Triscuits jam! Take back your metaphor!
…….or when Mr. Furley kept running up to Jack and Chrissy’s apartment to make sure their thermostat was set properly, but he was just trying to see someone naked.
That’s Obama.
Better.
Take back your metaphor!
Those crackers are whole wheat bro. They’ve got nothing to hide.
poor timing on both our parts thor.
Timing is everything!
Nice suit Furley!
When I get home, I’m gonna punch your Momma in the mouth.
But it’s such a purdy mouth!
I think you’re restricting yourself too much by looking to English monarchy for how Obama will turn out. It may be extreme to compare him to Little Boots, but I’m sure there are any number of other suitable historical figures.
Haeckel’s lie? So does the evolution of Obama create a fearful deceit, too dangerous for the nation’s executive office, or is he the end of a process that insists it produces superior humans that deserve power?
I now have a headache.
To the moon, Alice!
alppuccino –
“Those crackers are whole wheat bro.”
They grow wheat in Florida?
Who knew?
The host remains distant, aloof;
hark the wretching and the splattery echo
emanating from yon tiled vestibule
mayhap it signal interest on his part?
Or not.
Sometimes puke is just puke.
Anon. Zounds. Etc, etc, etc…
Rob, would you really say that to an MSM Intellectual?
Baldilocks writes a One-Act
Grim-visaged war hath smooth’d his wrinkled front;
And now, instead of mounting barbed steeds
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,
He capers nimbly in a lady’s chamber –
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute…
Nice work if you can get it, they say.
the milk has chosen to spoil
causing my cereal depression
rage that is brought to boil
this unforgiving transgression
“We few, we enlightened few. We band O! brethren.”
Perhaps more Richard II than Richard III.
What happens when the cheering dies, Sen. Obama, and those who fawned upon you turn upon you?
Give me the glass, and therein will I read.
No deeper wrinkles yet? hath sorrow struck
So many blows upon this face of mine,
And made no deeper wounds? O flattering glass,
Like to my followers in prosperity,
Thou dost beguile me! Was this face the face
That every day under his household roof
Did keep ten thousand men? was this the face
That, like the sun, did make beholders wink?
Was this the face that faced so many follies,
And was at last out-faced by Bolingbroke?
A brittle glory shineth in this face:
As brittle as the glory is the face;
(Dashes the glass against the ground)
For there it is, crack’d in a hundred shivers.
Mark, silent king, the moral of this sport,
How soon my sorrow hath destroy’d my face.
OT, but this would be funny.
urthshu, what if someone actually proves Obama is Kenyan by birth, and not American?
Moot question. The argumen hasn’t got a leg to stand on.
Little Boots
More of an Antoninus Heliogabalus, I’d say.
yeah, I don’t waste time on the Kenyan argument
SBP, I had to look that one up. Yep, sounds like a better parallel. And he only held office for four years!
That’s the great thing about Roman history, Rob. Practically everything you can imagine turned up at one time or another.
I suspect the same is true of Chinese history, but to my regret I don’t know as much of that as I should.
Roman history? Sure, but it was just a repeat of Greek history. There is nothing new under the Sun.
One good thing did come out of Senator Obama’s success:
“Thou never shalt hear herald (Ickes) any more.”
Meanwhile, thinking about the thugocracy Michael Barone has prophesied:
“We still have judgment here; that we but teach bloody instructions, which, being taught, return to plague the inventor: this even-handed justice commends the ingredience of our poison’d chalice to our own lips.”