Burke: Borrowing from The Bard on the path before us
Published 1:30 am Wednesday, November 19, 2025
By Tom Burke / Herald Columnist
That ‘ole Will Shakespeare sure knew a thing or two.
He knew about love (“Romeo and Juliet”); and comedy (“Much Ado About Nothing”); and madness, greed, lust for power, and murder (“MacBeth,” “King Lear,” “Hamlet,” and “Julius Ceasar”).
And his observations from 425 years ago fit very nicely into our current political maelstrom.
Consider, gentle reader, the best known line from “Romeo and Juliet”:
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet;”
Or, from “Hamlet,” where Marcellus decries the current politics of his country:
“Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.”
Or MacBeth’s comment on the folly of ambition,
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
So let’s take that rose.
It smells as sweet no matter its name, said Juliet.
But today, the bloom is off the rose and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, now Trump’s private army, could be called by another name — the Gestapo; or the Stasi; or the KGB, Cheka, NKVD, Kempeitai, Seguridad Nacional, or Touton Macoute — and it would smell as foul and rotted and act as despicably as its precursors did, at the command of the dictator, above the law, and hated, absolutely hated by the people it terrorizes.
As to what’s rotten, not in Denmark as Hamlet’s friend observes, but in Trump’s White House, consider: Trump is firing some of our best military leaders; the grift and graft of Trump’s crypto and bitcoin scams; his pardons to the Jan. 6 insurrectionists and dozens of other convicted criminals (George Santos, Rudy Giuliani); the death of 600,000 souls from his U.S. AID cuts; troops in the streets; extra-judicial killings on the high seas; his new “ballroom;” Epstein; or his politization of the Department of Justice.
For MacBeth’s observation on ambition it’s as if Shakespeare had been watching Trump ever since he came down that ridiculous golden escalator.
Trump is truly:
…a poor player (Poor in empathy, ethics, and education) That struts and frets his hour upon the stage (his endless monologues at his campaign rallies or his clownish “dance” to Y-M-C-A). And then is heard no more: (his) is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
And history will record the Trump “Era” as an aberration; a hiccup in American history such as we’ve had before ala Warren Harding and the Teapot Dome scandal, or Franklin Pierce’s total ineffectuality, or Richard Nixon’s crimes in the Oval Office.
Another thing The Bard apparently knew about was motivation. And there’s no better example than King Henry V’s “Band of Brothers” address to his troops just before the Battle of Agincourt.
That battle, fought on Saint Crispin’s Day, Oct. 25, 1415, near the northern French city of Azincort was an unexpected, and decisive, English victory in the Hundred Years’ War when Henry’s exhausted 6,000-man English army faced a fresh French force of 25,000 knights and footmen.
The English won. Big time.
And their victory has been attributed to a combination of terrain favoring the English; rain (the battlefield was such a quagmire the French knights sank into the mud losing any advantage from their numbers); and the English longbow; a kind of combination long-range artillery and short-range machine gun that decimated the French ranks.
How big was the win?
Six-hundred English died. Six-thousand French perished.
Now, how did Shakespear’s Henry motivate his troops? And how does that relate to our modern fight to maintain democracy, the rule of law, and adherence to the Constitution today?
Listen first to what Henry said:
“We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; For he to-day that sheds his blood with me Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile, This day shall gentle his condition: And gentlemen in England now a-bed Shall think themselves accursed they were not here, And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.”
And then consider that we (not) so few, (it’s a majority of Americans), we happy few, we band of brothers and sisters fight this day, and every day, against the MAGA/Trump campaign to install a king or dictator or authoritarian; that poor, wretched, seriously sick narcissist dedicated to greed and grift who has no idea of his job, or responsibility, or the future of this great nation and great people.
(To get the full Shakespearian effect, watch Kenneth Branagh deliver the address. If you’re not motivated to grab a pike or draw a bow in defense of the English crown, woe betide you: www.youtube.com/watch?v=680NlRI3v2I).
Gentle reader, I look with great admiration on those who are marching and speaking out on behalf of our democracy.
Their stand for freedom and against tyranny will, I think, one day be viewed in the same vein as those who stood on Lexington Green, who resisted the Red Scare of Joe McCarthy; marched for freedom with Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce; sat in at lunch counters or marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge; or simply gave what little they could to elect someone who would not betray their trust and would work to make things better, not the few, richer.
And to conclude, let’s quote MacBeth on the determination to fight on,
“Lay on, Macduff, And damn’d be him that first cries, ‘Hold, enough!’”
Slava Ukraini.
Tom Burke’s email address is t.burke.column@gmail.com.
