A Tale Told by an Idiot . . . Signifying Nothing
Nearly 60 years ago, “our crowd” of academically enriched students at Robert A. Millikan Junior High School (which as of February 8 of this year was renamed “Louis Armstrong Middle School”), flocked to a year-long elective class called, simply, “Reading Enrichment.” This class was taught by Edward Blakely, one of the most literate people we would ever know. His class was both brilliant and controversial, and made many demands upon us . . . like reading, reading, reading, writing, writing, writing. thinking, thinking, thinking, and memorizing, memorizing, memorizing. Part Renaissance man, part martinet, under Mr. Blakely’s entrancing guidance, we delved deeply into some of the world’s greatest, most noteworthy and censorable literature of all time. (n.b. It is rather doubtful that here, in Ron DeSantis’ Florida c. 2022, that a majority of the books, plays and essays we were assigned would remain on library bookshelves, let alone be taught in what today is referred to as a middle school.)
Even after so many, many years, I can still picture the students in that wonderful class: Gottlieb, Halpert, Korinblith, Miller, Saltzman, Sands, Scharf, Wilson, Wald, and yours truly. (Alan: any names I may have forgotten, please clue me . . . I, like you, am afflicted with junior moments). Even more importantly, many of us can still recite from memory passages of the novels, plays and essays our beloved teacher assigned us. Mr. Blakley was a galaxy-class instructor who introduced us to the joys and intricacies of such works and writers as:
Aristophanes (Lysistrata), a bawdy anti-war comedy, wherein the title character, a strong as nails woman, convinces the women of Greece to withhold sexual privileges from their husbands as a means of forcing the men to negotiate a peace;
Beowulf, an epic 8th century old English poem which tells the story of the Scandinavian hero Beowulf, who gains fame as a young man by vanquishing the monster Grendel and Grendel's mother, thus becoming king;
Boccaccio (The Decameron, also known as “The Human Comedy”) which is a series of 100 short tales told by 7 young men and 3 young women during a ten-day period in which they are quarantined due to a pandemic;
Chaucer (The Canterbury Tales), a so-called “frame story” (a narrative that frames or surrounds another story or set of stories), in which the framing device is used for the collection of stories told by 30 people on a pilgrimage to the shrine of Thomas Becket in Canterbury, Kent;
Charles Dickens (Great Expectations), likely the great English novel of all time, and
William Shakespeare’s, Macbeth, in which Three witches tell the Scottish general Macbeth that he will rise to become King of Scotland. Encouraged by his wife, Macbeth kills the king (Duncan), becomes the new king, and kills more people out of sheer paranoia. Civil war erupts to overthrow Macbeth, resulting in more death. Seventeen years after killing King Duncan, Malcolm Canmore, (the son of King Duncan) in turn murders Macbeth.
Macbeth is indeed, a most grisly play in 5 acts; it puts one of the most psychologically flawed (if not THE most psychologically flawed) characters in all classic literature right up there on center stage. It is also a deeply political work, much like Lysistrata, Beowulf, Great Expectations, and virtually every work Mr. Blakely assigned our class. And by “political,” I mean far more than the modern definition of “relating to the ideas or strategies of a particular party or group in politics.” Going way back to the days of Aristotle and Plato, they saw politics as being equal parts art, science, and strategy . . . a far cry from where we are today.
So what does all this “remembrance of things past” (not to be confused with Marcel Proust’s massive 7-volume novel of the same name [À la recherche du temps perdu]? Isn’t this a mostly political blog? And partisan politics at that?
Well, it is. With all the ink and hot air still accruing to our FPOTUS - especially in light of his recent announcement that he is once again running for the nation’s highest office - I find myself remembering the many, many months we spent reading, learning. contemplating and memorizing under the tutelage of Mr. Blakely . . . especially Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Or to be painfully precise, Act 5, Scene 5. lines 19-28. Tell me if you sense an eerie pre-prescience in this famous soliloquy. What is frequently forgotten is that before launching into his brief, dispirited downer, Seyton, Macbeth’s chief servant, informs him The Queen, my Lord, is dead. Macbeth responds not with grief for his mate, nor with tears staining his face , but with an oft-forgotten line: She should have died hereafter: / There would have been time for such a word.
It is only then that he launches into the meditation memorized and analyzed by oh so many over the past 400 years:
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
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.
I’ve listened to literally dozens of great actors (Orson Welles, Sir John Gielgud, Sir Patrick Stewart, Baron Olivier and Sir Ian McKellen, among others) pronounce these words. To my way of thinking, only Sir Ian seems to have gotten it right . . . putting the first “tomorrow” as the end of the sentence which preceded it. In other words, it should be read She should have died hereafter: / There would have been time for such a word TOMORROW.
Lady Macbeth’s death prompts Macbeth to reflect upon the futility of all of his actions: his ‘overweening ambition’, which had spurred him on to commit murder after murder (including that of King Duncan, no less) and take the kingdom for himself. It has all been for nothing; now he is truly alone, with most of the lords rallying to Macduff, and standing foursquarely against him.
Although not nearly so self-aware as Shakespeare’s fictional King, Donald Trump is every bit as avaricious and power mad as the Scottish thane-cum monarch. But listening to and watching him over the past several weeks, he finally seems, eerily, a bit more like Macbeth: beginning to grasp that much of what he has accomplished is, in the end of all his tomorrows, a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. I find myself wondering if, like the former Thane of Glammis and Thane of Cawdor, he is beginning to realize that all his mendacious verbiage has finally amounted to little more than A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
I have to wonder precisely what - or who - Donald Trump sees when he looks into his gilt mirror: a leader whose power and greatness are inspired by God above, or "a poor player who struts his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. Even Macbeth came to recognize that he was alone . . . that all his troops, advisors and acolytes had stormed out in droves, leaving him with only his blindly loyal attendant Seyton (could this be Shakespeare’s play on the name Satan?); a single “yes-man” to stand by his side to face his ultimate fate. Who does Donald Trump have left? Madison Cawthorn? Matt Gaetz? Mike “My Pillow” Lindell? Senator Tommy Tuberville? Former California Rep. Devin Nunes? Indeed, what he is left with is little more than “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
I do not in the least feel sorry for Donald Trump. I do feel both deeply angry and greatly concerned for what he has forced upon the American future. As a politically active member of a generation often accused of being pro-Communist and anti-American, I am stupefied by just how much the tables have turned. Those who accused us of being in league with drugs and the devil more than a half-century ago, are now the true anti-patriots; those who once considered themselves the most pro-American, are now the ones who could most easily destroy the American ideals of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.
Mr. Blakely, it turns out, was oh so wise to teach us everything he knew about Macbeth. Without knowing it, he was preparing us for the future. Turns out, his desire to teach was matched by our need to learn . . .
Copyright©2022 Kurt F. Stone